Where Did Our Leverage Go? Posted by David Shorr

The Georgia situation is so revealing of so many things wrong with our foreign policy, which have been well remarked, here and elsewhere. In response to Michael, his what-are-our-interests question is a bit bloodless for my taste. The way I see it, we can and should be just as frank about the immorality of Russia's moves as about our lack of many (any?) options to resist them.

The drains on American leverage is a depressing litany: compromised moral authority, military overstretch, high oil prices, ballooning debt, attention to only one region of the world... And then there's our overburdened and utterly un-strategic agenda of issues with Russia -- nuclear threat reduction, Iran, nuclear cooperation, NATO expansion, Ukraine & Georgia, the great game of energy pipelines ... and MISSILE DEFENSE !?#$@#! In a nutshell, no bilateral relationship works if you're asking the other side to do a long list of things you want (and don't offer much in return, by the way).

Basically I agree with Max on two scores, but wanted to press the point. Max is right that we shouldn't be too quick to slam NATO expansion. Let me turn up the confoundment / exasperation dial on this fight over missile defense. Whatever the possible imprudence of pulling Georgia into NATO -- seemingly moot now that we patently (and not wrongly) -- don't have the stomache to defend it, there is a legitimate issue about the value of NATO and a nation's own sovereign right to join alliances of its own choosing.

But regardless of whether missile defense is pointed at Russia or not, it seems utterly absurd to me that so much diplomatic capital has to be spent and so much attention devoted to a weapon system of such dubious technological efficacy. Let me get this straight, here we are in the middle of a crisis / tragedy, and one of the complicating factors is a system that isn't likely to work as advertised (if ever) for a very long time. If nothing else, we have handed Moscow the gift of a pretext for them to lecture us. How is that smart exactly?

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

Whatever the possible imprudence of pulling Georgia into NATO -- seemingly moot now that we patently (and not wrongly) -- don't have the stomache to defend it, there is a legitimate issue about the value of NATO and a nation's own sovereign right to join alliances of its own choosing.

I don't understand the principle that nations have a right to join alliances of their own choosing, David. That's like saying everyone has a right to decide what house or shelter they will live in, even if the house they want to live in is your house or my house. NATO is a defensive military alliance. The fundamental right at work here is the collective right of the states who are already members of NATO to defend themselves. They maintain NATO to secure and advance that right, and remain in NATO because they believe accepting the mutual commitments NATO requires pays for itself in terms of the security it provides. The members of NATO have a right to determine whom to let in or whom to kick out, and their decisions should be based on the extent to which changes in membership do or do not enhance their security.

NATO does have lots of value, but it loses value the further it is stretched, since the reliability of the mutual commitment is stretched along with it, as well as the borders that have to be defended, and the greater multitude and proximity of potential threats that then come into play. NATO is not just some sort of social club that everyone should be entitled to join because the club is non-restrictive.

[David Shorr]

Looking back, I can see that sentence is badly written and my meaning is not clear. It is indeed the prerogative of the members of NATO to decide who they want to invite into their alliance. Looking at Georgian or Ukrainian membership from the other side -- i.e. if the current allies wanted to issue the invitation -- the Russian Federation should not have a veto over their ability to join, nor should any other country.

[Dan Kervick]

Veto, David? That complaint sounds similar to the rhetoric conservatives used when they complained that John Kerry would give the UN a “veto” over American security decisions. I’m not sure what kinds of potential NATO decisions you would say amount to granting a figurative veto to the Russians. But if your point is that NATO membership decisions should be made without regard to the needs, anxieties, interests, likely responses or preoccupations of the Russians, I can’t agree. Whether we like it or not, our understanding of Russia attitudes must be a component factor in these calculations.

This isn’t a question that should be addressed at the level of abstract rights or rules and procedures. It is a practical, prudential question. The whole point of NATO is to enhance its members’ security. Beyond that, we might hope that the decisions NATO makes contribute to building a safer and more secure world. If someone wants to extend NATO membership to Georgia and the Ukraine, the burden is on them to explain how that makes its members safer, and creates a better and safer world. For my part, it is hard for me to see how such a move enhances our security. It makes war more likely rather than less. It entangles the security of the United States and the existing members of NATO with countries that are internally unstable, and that have complicated relations with Russia, including the fact that they contain sizable sub-populations that want either independence, or want their countries to have very close relations with their neighbor.

[David Shorr]

Dan--
Really, I'm not sure we disagree at all on this one. Of course NATO has to factor Russia into these decisions; to do otherwise would be flying blind. What's problematic is the idea that, even if NATO would have them, Moscow presumes that it can keep Ukraine from ever accepting the offer.

[Dan Kervick]

I'm not sure Russia is presuming anything about what it can and can't do. But it clearly wants to keep Ukraine and Georgia out of NATO, and is prepared to take some vigorous steps to stop it. It's desire to keep Georgia and Ukraine out of NATO, seen from the standpoint of its own interests and security needs, are rationally understandable, and somewhat akin to our own desire in the early sixties to keep missiles out of Cuba.

So I suppose what we have to decide whether the benefits to NATO of admitting Ukraine and/or Georgia are substantial enough to incur the costs of the kinds of resistance that the Russians might put up. Personally, I don't see what those benefits are. But I suppose there are some people who think we should let the Ukraine into NATO just to prove the point that the Russians can't stop us.

By the way, are there any discussions in human rights circles about bringing Saakashvili up on charges for what he did to Tskhinvali?

[Zathras]

Missile defense gives the Czechs and Poles a handy way to express their nervousness about Russia. This is about the first public benefit the program has produced in about twenty years.

Look, the reason missile defense isn't controversial is because no one in this country has tried to make it controversial. Name me a Democratic politician not on the wacky fringe -- the kind of Democrat who opposes missile defense because he thinks it might work -- who has recently made a public case against this enormous boondoggle that costs billions of dollars every year without providing any protection against the nuclear threats we know exist. Sen. Obama hasn't. Sen. Clinton hasn't. President Clinton didn't, even when he was in the White House.

This is what happens when a political party decides an entire area of public policy just isn't worth its time -- the agenda of some people in the other party gets acted on, and takes us where it will.

[seth edenbaum]

The logic of this post is either pathetic or just deeply, deeply cynical. We are not a neutral arbiter of international law. Citizens of any country should condemn Russia's actions, and Georgia's but partisan theorists of the American school of international relations have no business pretending to represent anything else. Your stated intentions are irrelevant to outside viewers familiar with the record of US "engagements" elsewhere. And as Helena Cobban points out, Israel at its most generous has done no more than offer the status of Finlandization to any Palestinian state, in terms far inferior to those enjoyed by Finland.

And now I'm caught saying that the idiot Thomas Friedman is more honest than you are.

No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they’ll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.

“The Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams acted on the basis of two false premises,” said Mandelbaum. “One was that Russia is innately aggressive and that the end of the cold war could not possibly change this, so we had to expand our military alliance up to its borders. Despite all the pious blather about using NATO to promote democracy, the belief in Russia’s eternal aggressiveness is the only basis on which NATO expansion ever made sense — especially when you consider that the Russians were told they could not join. The other premise was that Russia would always be too weak to endanger any new NATO members, so we would never have to commit troops to defend them. It would cost us nothing. They were wrong on both counts.”

The delusions persist among those who dream the US as the necessary country: as judge and jury and honest broker.

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