A New Missile Crisis

For a new cold war
 

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca
8/17/08

I have to admit that when it comes to thermonuclear holocausts, I’m a complete weenie.

While manly men on the far right are ripping off their shirts in a manly manner to show off their hairy chests to the Russians and snarl “Oh, bring it ON!”, I’m making little soft whimpering noises and looking around for a twig or a piece of newspaper or something that I can hold up over my head which might slightly decrease my chances of being incinerated.

So when I heard that George had told Putin that he was annoyed about the whole Georgia thing, and was going to put missiles in Poland in response, I started making little soft whimpering noises. When Putin responded that if George did that, he would nuke Poland, I started looking around for a twig or a piece of newspaper, even though I am presently not in Poland.

Now, will George have the sense to back off? Putin isn’t the sort to make jokes. And I doubt he’s bluffing in this case. Russia feels the same way about missiles in Poland as America did about missiles in Cuba in 1962.

The big problem is that the US has been cock of the walk for 15 years now, and has built up a pretty good case of national hubris. If it wasn’t American sports fans loudly and endlessly chanting “We’re Number One!” at all international sporting events and just generally acting like assholes, then it was the government, especially after 2001, deciding that it was above international law, didn’t have to respect treaties, didn’t have to respect the sovereignty of other countries, and could pretty much set up military presences wherever it pleased. It extended to domestic affairs, where a party political operative pretty much determined domestic policy, including spying, politicization of the courts and suborning the media to lie to the people, and the American people stood still for it because darn it, when you’re number one, you’ve got to be tough and ready to take one for the team. They even managed to equate contempt for the environment with virility and patriotism for a while.

What I’m hoping is that Putin is thinking along the same lines, and is confronting a schoolyard bully who doesn’t play by the rules because he doesn’t have to. A major threat now might stop a fight later. If the bully has enough sense to listen. If he doesn’t, well, I don’t think Putin is bluffing about that. He has his own powerful nationalists and ideologues who will destroy him if he backs down. He may even be hoping to avoid a major war.

One problem with brinkmanship – and that is the game being played here – is that it eventually fails. Hitler, having bluffed his way into the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, thought the allies wouldn’t fight if he invaded Poland. Khrushchev felt that the inexperienced Kennedy would back down in the face of missiles in Cuba. Saddam felt no-one would mind if he took back province 19, aka Kuwait. At one point, one side misgauges the resolve of the other, and a war breaks out.

It comes at a time when America is saddled with a president who is arrogant, emotionally brittle, more than a bit stupid, and unused to taking “no” for an answer. A spoiled frat boy.

It comes at a time when Russia has an icy authoritarian who knows that his future rests on making Russia appear to be the strongest nation in the world who cannot be pushed around by the West.

That’s not a good combination. Think of Gene Hackman as the drunk bully sheriff as George, and Clint Eastwood as the cold plainsman bent on revenge as Putin, and you have a likely scenario for how things might play out between the two men. “The Unforgiven” with nukes. Whimper. Where’s a twig when you really need one?

George needs to climb down without it appearing that’s what he’s doing. And he has to do it slowly enough that Russia doesn’t get the idea that they can push the US around at will, because they are just as susceptible to becoming the schoolyard bully, and won’t be any improvement.

One of the little factors not mentioned in the press is that as part of its drive to bring Georgia into NATO, the US spent six years and tens of billions of dollars building Georgia two top of the line army bases, including training, equipment, and materiel, and a top of the line naval port.

It took the Russians six days to overrun them and destroy or remove anything of interest there. Six days.

The American military isn’t the all-powerful machine people thought it was in 2000. Spread thin by two failed occupations, it’s also been subject to crooked contractors, privatized, and just generally halliburtoned to death. Given how politically popular ripping off the government on largely fake military contracts was, no administration was going to stop the practice, and thus the military was turned into the most expensive boondoggle in the history of the world, and despite the inflated price tag, is no longer a very good military. Iraq and Afghanistan showed the limits of US power, and Russia almost casually crushed what was supposed to be top examples of it while engaging in an altogether different objective. They didn’t mean to crush American military know-how; they just sort of stepped on it and flattened it by accident.

It was definitely an un-hubris moment for America.

Hopefully, George can send a signal that will get him a late night call from Vlad saying something like. “Georgie-porgie, you mek little joke with Ivan. Is not good mekin of little joke with Ivan, not understandink of American humor. Come, drink many vodkas, vomit in corners. We celebrate friendship by engaging in ancient Russian pastime of going in street and pissing on pussycats.”

Well, one can hope, anyway.

The American empire visualized by PNAC in the late twentieth century has, like many nascent empires, imploded in just 20 years. It was brought down by smugness, insularity, arrogance and ignorance, plus a healthy dose of corruption and profiteering at home.

It doesn’t mean America has fallen and can’t get up.

It just means that America can no longer be the schoolyard bully.

And while we still have the big, big problem of Putin to solve, I think that in the long run, this will prove to be good for America, and Americans.