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Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away 03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim 03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare! 03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm Media Watching
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire 03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel 03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia 03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion 03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax 03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq 03.03 It's Snow News 03.03 The Woeful Washington Post Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution US Politics, Policy & Culture
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives" 03.09 Thinking About Countings 03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism 02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium High Crimes?
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid 03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda 03.16 America's Secret Prisons 03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem 03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue 03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children 03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session 03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid 03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda 02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks 03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity 03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network 03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource 03.05 Is the Recovery Real? 03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You 03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction" 03.01 Thinking About Fees International
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception 03.03 Muslim Disunity 03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation 02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Rice’s Recipe for Duck SoupWhether Georgia or Russia has sovereignty over Abkhazia and South Ossetia really doesn’t matter in the long run.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deserves credit for knowing how to make good use of a bad historical analogy. Where any other Republican Secretary of State would have chosen the Munich analogy to denounce the current Russian military intervention in Georgia, Rice reminded her audience of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 during a press conference on August 13: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it.,” she said. “Things have changed.” What merits attention is that Rice did not draw an actual parallel between 1968 and 2008. Instead she simply conjured the image of the Soviet Union/Russia as bully. That was smart, because the two events are so fundamentally dissimilar. First, there was no territorial dispute involving minority ethnic regions in Czechoslovakia whose people preferred to be part of the Soviet Union. Majorities in both Abkazia and South Ossetia appear to prefer being part of the Russian Federation rather than the Republic of Georgia. Second, Czech President Alexander Dub?ek did not deliberately provoke the Soviet Union into a punishing military response by ordering the Czech army to attack Soviet peacekeepers. Georgian President Mikheil Saak’ashvili deliberately provoked the Russians by ordering his U.S.-trained Georgian army to attack the handful of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, killing 10 and wounding 30. He did that despite knowing that the Russian 58th Army was stationed just on the other side of the border. If Secretary Rice had wanted to offer a proper historical analogy, she could have compared the current conflict with the 1864 Second War of Schleswig by which Schleswig and Holstein, two provinces with ethnic German populations, were detached from the insecure grasp of Denmark and then annexed to Germany. That was the first of several successful limited wars by which the brilliant Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck finally unified Germany and then established it as a Great Power. It is unwise to encourage the masses to wonder why their political elites are so agitated about the ownership of some distant smear of color on the world map. Neo-realist international relations scholars interpret the current conflict as another step in Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s strategy for the reemergence of Russia as a Great Power by asserting power in its traditional sphere of influence. Rice is obviously unlikely to deploy this historical analogy. First, only a fraction of her American audience will know the historical reference or have ever heard of Schleswig and Holstein. Even mentioning it risks alerting them that whether Georgia or Russia has sovereignty over Abkhazia and South Ossetia really doesn’t matter in the long run.whether Georgia or Russia has sovereignty over Abkhazia and South Ossetia really doesn’t matter in the long run. It is unwise to encourage the masses to wonder why their political elites are so agitated about the ownership of some distant smear of color on the world map. Worse, Rice would appear too much the smarty pants intellectual for the sort of populist conservative who seeks political wisdom from the likes of Jeff Beck and Toby Keith. And that could be a negative for any plans she might have for a future political career. Second, comparing the two little wars would suggest that Putin was on a par with Bismarck. She can‘t have that. After all, history will deem the president she serves anything but a strategic genius, and she has played a major role in helping him squander so much of America’s power in the world. There may be no good historical parallel for the disastrous decision-making of Georgian President Saak’ashvili. Instead, a cinematic reference is necessary. Listening to Saak’ashvili’s rambling performance during a August 15th joint press conference with Rice is like watching the immortal Groucho Marx perform in the 1938 Marx Brothers’ comedy "Duck Soup." Groucho’s character is Rufus T. Firefly, the new President of Freedonia, who snatches war from the jaws of peace by insulting the ambassador of neighboring Sylvania and thus torpedoing a negotiated peace settlement. As the Freedonian army collapses and the Sylvanian army closes in on the presidential palace, Firefly goes on the radio to plead for international assistance: “Calling all nations! Calling all nations! This is Rufus T. Firefly...(We’re in a mess folks!) Rush to Freedonia. Three men and one woman are trapped in a building. Send help at once.” Here is Saak’ashvili fulminating at the Russians during an August 15th joint press conference with Rice:
What deprives the Georgian Firefly’s performance of its comedic punch is that his decisions resulted in the deaths of actual human beings and made refugees of many more. That, and the fact that he seems unstable. If there is a silver lining to the dark cloud that is this absurd little war in the Caucuses it is that more Americans may begin to question why the Bush administration would endorse making Georgia and neighboring countries members of NATO. If there is a silver lining to the dark cloud that is this absurd little war in the Caucuses it is that more Americans may begin to question why the Bush administration would endorse making Georgia and neighboring countries members of NATO. What they will be asking is whether it makes sense to obligate the U.S. armed forces to defend their political elites from the consequences of their irresponsible actions. How often will Americans have to watch the leader of a NATO “ally” on the borders of Russia appear on television to deliver an unfunny version of Grouch’s lyrics?: “Tell them the enemy comes from afar, with a hey nonny-nonny and a ha-cha-cha.” John Hickman is associate professor of comparative politics at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. His published work on electoral politics, media, and international affairs has appeared in Asian Perspective, American Politics Research, Comparative State Politics, Contemporary South Asia, Contemporary Strategy, Current Politics and Economics of Asia, East European Quarterly, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Jouvert, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Science, Review of Religious Research, Women & Politics, and Yamanashigakuin Law Review. He may be reached at jhickman@berry.edu.
Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on August 17, 2008. |
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