Department of wishful thinking?

Thu, 07/23/2009 - 12:18pm

Welcoming Joe Biden to Tbilisi yesterday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili declared that "in America, as anywhere on earth you can find lots of cynics and realpolitik followers. But in America, idealists ultimately run the show."

It's easy to understand why Saakashvili said this: he's desperate for American backing and that requires portraying Georgia as a beacon of democracy and freedom and making a none-too-subtle appeal to America’s commitment to defend these values everywhere. Why? Because it requires real creativity to divine a powerful strategic interest for an alliance with Georgia, especially when Washington is trying to get Russian cooperation on issues that clearly matter more, like Iran. It also requires overlooking Saakashvili's less-than-democratic behavior in the past, and the foolish war that he launched a year ago.

In any case, I hope Saakashvili also read the Times piece on U.S. policy in Central Asia, where human rights and other idealistic considerations are taking a back seat to strategic interests (i.e., the need for regional backing for the U.S. war in Afghanistan). It suggests that Saakashvili has got American foreign policy exactly backwards: yes, you can always find lots of "idealists" trying to get the United States to take on various philanthropic projects overseas, and of course U.S. leaders will always invoke cherished U.S. ideals when describing their policies. But in the end, realpolitik tends to win out, even if we don't like to say so too openly. To be sure, sometimes various special interest groups succeed in getting their pet projects onto the policy agenda, especially if they know how to work the American political system, and sometimes hubris leads U.S. leaders to take on grandiose plans to spread democracy or human rights, or other admittedly desirable things. Indeed, because the United States is so strong and comparatively secure, it's been able to take on more of these projects than anyone else, and probably more than it should. 

But when push comes to shove, U.S. leaders usually fall back on the less sentimental calculations of realpolitik, and they are rarely willing to risk much blood or treasure on behalf of purely moral concerns. I hope the Georgians keep that in mind.

VANO SHLAMOV/AFP/Getty Images

Stephen M. Walt | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
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Dear Walt: Is this where lots of the money comes from?

by Kenneth Sorensen on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 8:01am

Reading your and John's book, and thinking about the massive amounts of money that The Israel lobby uses, I was kind of putting two and two together, and thinking that people with dirty money and affiliations to Israel could catch 2 flies with one smack, by using dirty money, and if they are going through a cleanage process on the way (ie. somebody buying checks for cash, like these synagogues did) somebody are even going to get a tax refund if they are channelled to Israel or any other 'charitable' cause. Somewhere along the way these money could find themselves financing senators and guvernors, or if these are hostile to Israel - their opponents.

CBSNews July 23, 2009 :Thou Shall Not Steal: Rabbis Masterminded Money Laundering Ring, Say Feds

Federal prosecutors say five highly-placed rabbis in New York and New Jersey were also arrested, including Eliahu Ben Haim, of Long Branch, N.J., Saul Kassin and Mordchai Fish of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Edmund Nahum, of Deal, N.J. Fish’s brother, also a rabbi, was charged as well.

All five rabbis have been charged with money laundering of proceeds derived from criminal activity, with synagogues allegedly “cleaning up” dirty money in exchange for fees.

Dear Walt: A suggestion for your next book

by Kenneth Sorensen on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 8:03am

Reading in Trita Parsis book about his interview with Efraim Inbar, an Israeli at the conservative Begin-Sadat Center in Jerusalem and how he told Parsi that Rabin overplayed the Iranian threat -

Trita Parsi: Treacherous Alliance

"There was a feeling in Israel that because of the end of the Cold War, relations with the U.S. were cooling and we needed some new glue for the alliance… And the new glue… was radical Islam. And Iran was radical Islam."

- I put two and two together and thought that this was the reason why neoconservatives were so keen about the artificial prolongement of the Cold War, which could have ended in the early 1970ies, when there was a thaw between the two sides. And remember how they were vehemently against that Reagan should negociate with Gorbatjov. Had they allready at that time foreseen that Israel would loose its strategic importance, if the Cold War was to end? What do you think of this, and to you think there is anything to it?

Because it requires real

by Brett on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 4:34pm

Because it requires real creativity to divine a powerful strategic interest for an alliance with Georgia, especially when Washington is trying to get Russian cooperation on issues that clearly matter more, like Iran.

To be fair, his country does sit astride a pipeline route that would allow us to bypass Russia and Ukraine, so it's not entirely unjustified.

Of course, we probably never should have given him the guarantee we gave in the first place, since it's not as if the foolishness that led him to launch the attack on South Ossetia was unprecedented - he had been making strong noises about re-incorporating various areas that were only loosely tied to Georgia going back to the early 1990s (largely because they ended up in Georgia by accident).

Saakishvilli should be among

by A balanced view on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 9:07am

Saakishvilli should be among the idealists on trial at the Hague, for having bombed, with no warning, civilian centers, murdering thousands of innocents. WE should have rolled in WITH the russians, and gone one step further by taking that scumbag and putting him on trial for war crimes.