The Double Sputnik of 2008: An End to Illusions




The Double Sputnik of 2008: An End to Illusions


James Pinkerton
Posted August 12, 2008 | 08:42 AM (EST)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-pinkerton/the-double-sputnik-of-200_b_118359.html

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With apologies to George W. Bush, I don't think our President looked
very clearly into Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw the alleged goodness
of his soul . I think Putin was wearing his KGB happyface when the two
men first met in 2001, and Bush fell for it.

With apologies to Al Gore, I don't think the Russian invasion of
nearby Georgia will be "carbon neutral." I don't think the Russians
give a kopeck about our precious global warming concerns, and to the
extent they might believe that global warming is a real phenomenon,
they are all for it: Who wouldn't want to warm up Siberia and turn the
Russian Arctic into a blue-water coastline?

With apologies to Bill Clinton, who let the Chinese have our missile
technology, and then called the Chinese our "strategic partner," I
don't think the Chinese have any sort of plan for "partnering" with
us. China has a plan for trading with us, and for building up its
financial capital and their industrial capacity, and so far its plan
is working marvelously.

Meanwhile, the Chinese achievement at the Olympics -- especially the
opening ceremony, which made virtually no political or cultural
concessions to the West -- is a signal as to where China is headed.
They have every intention of cooperating with us in areas agreeable to
them (free trade and other international competitions that they can
win), and no intention of cooperating in areas disagreeable to them
(human rights, autonomy for Tibet, independence for Taiwan).

The truth is that the Chinese aren't looking to America for a single
thing other than money and technology. They don't want our national
vision, they want their national vision. They don't want to be
Americans, they want to be Chinese. To be sure, there are plenty of
Chinese who don't agree with the overall thrust of Chinese politics --
but most of the vocal critics live outside of China.

Today, in August 2008, we are seeing the end of the illusion that
American political values will shape the rest of the world. Indeed, we
are seeing what Michael Lind of the New America Foundation first
called a "Double Sputnik" -- that is, incidents in which the Russians,
as well as Chinese, show their strength, their determination not to
let the 21st century be another American Century.

In the meantime, President Bush, in Beijing as the crisis deepened,
seemed more interested in schmoozing with the Chinese -- on their
terms, not his -- than in confronting the geopolitical upheaval of the
Russian invasion of Georgia. The photo of the president on the White
House website as of 3:30 pm ET on Monday, showing him tossing a pitch
to the US Olympics baseball team, leads one to ask: Just what,
exactly, is going through 43's mind? Most likely, Bush is thinking to
himself that the US is already fully committed to Iraq and Afghanistan
-- with an Iran war always a possibility -- and so America simply
can't afford to have another enemy.

Late Monday afternoon, Bush belatedly came out against the Russian
offensive, about the time that the Russians announced that they would
stop the offensive. But nobody takes the Russians seriously, and one
has to wonder, too, about Bush.

And so where's the rest of the world on the Georgia crisis?

Let's start with the United Nations: What's the UN Security Council
going to do? Well, we know the answer, of course: Nothing. If the five
permanent members (the US, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China)
can each veto anything coming out of the Security Council, then
nothing negative about any of them will ever emerge from the Security
Council.

So what of other political formations? How about NATO? Sure, European
leaders are talking, but the Russians aren't listening -- because they
don't need to heed mere talk. To be sure, a few European voices have
been raised: The BBC reports that Tory leader David Cameron has
labeled Russia a "dangerous bully." And Cameron has further suggested
that Georgia's membership application for NATO membership be "speeded
up."

Well, that's a nice thought, coming from someone out of power, but it
isn't going to happen, even if Cameron were to gain power and become
the next British Prime Minister. Article Five of the North Atlantic
Treaty calls for full mutual defense among NATO members -- that is, an
attack on one is an attack on all. Which is to say, if Georgia were in
NATO right now, all 26 members, including the US, would be at war with
Russia. So that's why Georgia will not be in NATO.

Many insightful observers believe that Georgian president Mikheil
Saakashvili badly overplayed his geopolitical hand. That's no excuse
for Russia's bad behavior, of course, merely one more explanation for
why the "world community" isn't doing much.

In the meantime, Saakashvili is surely correct when he says that the
Russians "want to get rid of us. They want to make regime change."
Indeed. And that's a reminder that more than one country can play the
regime-change game.

What's happening in Christian Georgia is surely tragedy, but one of
the illusions that we must part with, in 2008, is the notion that we
are moving toward some sort of "end of history" -- in which countries
will grow closer together through democracy and capitalism, leaving us
more time to concentrate on such peaceable pursuits as the reduction
of carbon emissions. To put it another way, the environmental movement
has hit a big roadblock: The world can only really think about
difficult environmental cooperation in the absence of overt military
confrontation.

The truth seems to be that the world might be moving away from
communism, but it is not moving toward freedom--and certainly not
carbon reduction.

As syndicated columnist Cal Thomas put it in a a column last week
commemorating the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian
dissident was a firm enemy of Soviet-style totalitarianism, but he was
not particularly a fan of American-style freedom--certainly not for
his homeland of Russia. As Thomas put it:

"Mr. Solzhenitsyn warned the West not to be deluded by what he said
was a false belief that all nations yearn to be like us. This thinking
is at the heart of President Bush's doctrine for dealing with the Arab
and Muslim world. Mr. Solzhenitsyn called this 'the blindness of
superiority' and warned against thinking that only 'wicked
governments' temporarily prevent other nations from 'adopting the
Western way of life.'"
And so if the world isn't becoming more like the West, then what is it
becoming like? The answer, most likely, is that the world is going to
revert back to the way it was before the US won World War Two and
imposed a Pax Americana on what we called "The Free World." Pre-1945,
there were lots of great powers jockeying around, fighting proxy wars
constantly, attacking each other when it suited them. And now, it
seems, we are returning back to that world.

It is indeed sad when the illusions of an age melt away in the hot
glare of a new era--although, of course, the great work of defending
the United States, and its values, must continue in any era.

But meanwhile, the Russians are going to be Russians, the Chinese are
going to be Chinese - -and the rest of the world, too, will go its
various ways.

So in the future, we Americans will look out at the world and see
power plays, fighting, more power plays, and more fighting. And we had
better be ready.



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