How Many Armies Does Decency Have?
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There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.
But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character. ~David Brooks
Does Brooks really think that the most important thing to be done in developing Russia policy is to “rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption”? Does he believe that the relationship with Russia can be reduced to a confrontation between virtue and vice? Isn’t Russia policy exactly one of those areas that requires trade-offs and policy expertise? Or is this an admission that “confronting Putin” is nothing more than egregious posturing? Is this an acknowledgement that the whole of McCain’s Russia policy is nothing more than one long exercise in moralistic posturing divorced from policy expertise? One wonders what the “assertion of sterling character” will do in shaping the U.S.-Russia relationship, unless it is to convince Moscow that our leaders are prone to windy bluster and empty threats. Perhaps the next time Saakashvili launches an ill-advised military strike, he can call upon the Armies of Decency to support his campaign, since McCain, he of the sterling character assertions, will not be able to do much for him.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
5 Responses to “How Many Armies Does Decency Have?”
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Does he believe that the relationship with Russia can be reduced to a confrontation between virtue and vice?
I don’t know about David Brooks (don’t read his columns) but I do.
It is in particular a confrontation between virtue and vice that requires tradeoffs and policy expertise. Simply, the Hobbesean/Darwinian pursuit of empire is wrong for Russia whether or not it works. This doesn’t say anything about missiles in Poland or US military advisers in Georgia or whatever. But there simply is no good way to indulge Russia’s amour-propre regarding what its sphere of influence “ought” to be.
I second Koz.
Russia’s invasion of Georgia is naked aggression by any standards. Russian attempts to justify it by claims of ‘genocide’ and by citing the precedent of Kosovo are simply insulting. The Russians, and their Ossetian militias, have committed ethnic cleansing, driving Georgians out of their villages.
I have been watching this block closely of late to see if Larison would be the only Western pundit to be a willing Putin apologist. I’m ashamed to see that he has. I wonder, rather than just taking potshots, would he be willing to explain and defend the Putin regime’s position in full? Was it right for the Russians to burn Georgian villages? To keep troops stationed in Poti and elsewhere in Georgia proper? Does he approve of the new doctrine of protecting Russian citizens wherever they are? Does he think the charges of “genocide” were justified, or, if not, was it an acceptable tactic to use inflammatory, slanderous lies to achieve whatever diplomatic ends the Russians thought they were trying to achieve, or not? Is Russia’s historic control of Georgia, or its “sphere of influence,” somehow, a justification for its invasion? If so, should Russia invade the Crimea, as well?
If he’s not willing to do this, perhaps Larison should join the rest of the Western pundits and call evil by its name.
As anyone who read my posts when the war broke out knows, I have been far from a Putin apologist, and it is embarrassing for you to suggest that I am anything of the kind. You should be ashamed of how oblivious you have been. I deplored the destruction of Georgian infrastructure, said that Georgian sovereignty should be respected, called for a halt to the Russian offensive and said that the war was unnecessary, and all of this in the first three days. If I did not fall into fits of Russia-bashing and alarmism about the return of the Soviet Union, I should think that helps my credibility rather than hurts it. The Russian response to Georgia’s escalation was minimal when compared to the truly excessive campaign against Lebanon. I wonder whether any of those now lamenting Russian aggression, so called, had a single thing to say against the wrecking of that country two years ago. If not, perhaps they should tone down their moralizing.
Obviously Russian or Russian-backed Ossetian destruction of Georgian villages in Ossetia or in Georgia proper is awful and should be condemned, and I condemn it. There is no excuse for forcibly displacing civilians, no matter how small-scale the displacement may be. I assume that Mr. Smith’s heart similarly bled for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese two years ago. I find the charges of genocide in this war to be absurd on their face, and I am sure I never claimed that they were anything other than propaganda. That is all these charges were in 1999, and it is what they very often are these days.
Is it right that Moscow deployed outright falsehoods during its war in Georgia? Obviously not. What I find tiresome and obnoxious is the pretensions of Western governments and pundits that Moscow has been doing anything substantively different from what NATO did in 1999. By any measure, Russia had more justification for its incursion than NATO had in Kosovo, but I think both wars were excessive and unnecessary. If I am a Putin apologist, I am doing a really terrible job.
What I think is that it is none of America’s business whether Russia exerts influence in countries that border on Russia, and I think it is crazy for Washington to make states bordering Russia into front-line proxies, but I do not think that a sphere of influence therefore provides justification for military action inside the territory of other states. The reality is that great powers are going to exercise influence in the countries around them, but that does not, and should not, void the sovereignty of those countries.
Daniel, will you, please, consider running for office once you’ve finished your Ph.D.? I mean this from the bottom of my heart.
I was enormously edified by your posts, Mr. Larison, when the war in Georgia and South Ossetia broke out and thought you were spot on. My own formulation is less well argued, but I do think as a general matter that one gets into terrible international trouble when one decides, or declares, or tut-tuts which borders and neighboring enclaves, should be (or shouldn’t be) important to, for example, China or Turkey or Argentina, based only on one’s sense of propriety or pique, or good and evil, in what is, after all, a fallen world.
Big important countries (US allies and US enemies alike) will act big and important in their own neighborhoods (small countries will try too, but with less success). And it should go without saying that not every act of cross-border aggression is tantamount to 1938.