Wednesday, 04.02.08
Steak Kiev
SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images
Ukraine and Nato
01 April 2008
It's a weird time for President Bush to antagonize Russia, Matt Yglesias observes.
Ukraine's Orange Revolution
14 December 2004
Mad props to the Decider for this one. I mean, who cares if only 33 percent of Ukrainians want to join? Who cares if France and Germany think admitting Ukraine would be destabilizing? Who cares if it riles the Russians (who needs them, anyway?), and pokes a finger in the eye of the man whose soul once seemed so "trustworthy"? What matters is that, unlike his father, the current president isn't serving the Ukrainians warmed-over Chicken Kiev -- the name given by columnist William Safire to Bush I's August 1991 speech urging the Ukrainians to go slow on independence.
After rereading that speech in light of the present day, though, I'd welcome more chicken, less steak. Fans of Safire's coinage (and there is no bigger one than its author, who dined out on it in his columns) chide George H.W. Bush for saying that "[Americans] will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism..." They conveniently elide that line's critical last words, "...based upon ethnic hatred," a real concern given tensions throughout the USSR and the war that started in the Balkans that summer. Whacking Bush I for his fixation on stability is easy, especially with hindsight. But more than $1 trillion and tens of thousands of lives into our current misadventure, his much-derided prudence seems like a long-lost virtue. It's also refreshing to hear a president talk about freedom without arguing that the United States, as freedom's agent, is fulfilling God's will.
There's a strong case for eventually admitting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. In that quest, a little less zeal (as a Frenchman, sniff, once observed), might go a long way. More problematic, though, is the nagging suspicion that in the Decider's mind, strategy yet again took a back seat to Daddy-dearest payback. Or am I the only one weirded out by the psychology behind Bush II's decision to give Safire (who has repeatedly boasted that the elder Bush stopped speaking to him after "Chicken Kiev") the Medal of Freedom?
Why expand?Stephen Green says that NATO isn't a defense alliance anymore. It's a club without a plan for defending itself. |
Bush's bad ideaWilliam Pfaff argues that including Ukraine in NATO pushes the alliance too close to Russia's borders. |
Is NATO sick?The International Herald Tribune editorializes that "the greatest military alliance in history has begun the 21st century fractured and without a consensus about the threats it faces and how to meet them." |
On the recordA transcript of remarks by President Bush and Ukranian President Viktor Yushchenko. |
Stray hawkJeffrey Goldberg on "what turned Brent Scowcroft against the Bush Administration." |
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NATO should have been disbanded in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, it's an example of a budget and a political vehicle searching for a mission. Russia moved its forces out of eastern Europe and away from its western areas, there is no Russian threat to the west. Afghanistan is not a mission for this fossil organization, the US can negotiate troop contributions from individual nations threatened by Taliban terrorism.
To argue that NATO be disbanded while its forces are fighting in Afghanistan is patently laughable.
Why do isolationists and nationalists incessantly prescribe policies which are injurious to our national security and economic prosperity?
Luis: As I wrote, any forces fighting alongside US forces in Afghanistan should be there via bilateral arrangement with the other countries. NATO had a purpose during the cold war, which is over. Despite Bush's fumbling attempts to re-ignite it on some level. This isn't "isolationism," it's common sense.
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Charles Schuyler a character found in Gore Vidal's "Burr," was political operative masquerading as a journalist. Every time Schuyler wrote an article, he was not motivated by the pursuit of truth, but by political patronage.
James Gibney's life imitates Gore Vidal's art.
Posted by Luis A. del Valle | April 2, 2008 7:24 PM