Meeting Medvedev Halfway
by Patrick J. Buchanan
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The morning after Barack Obama’s election, the congratulatory message from Moscow was in the chilliest tradition of the Cold War.
“I hope for constructive dialogue with you,” said Russia’s president, “based on trust and considering each other’s interests.”
Dmitry Medvedev went on that day, in his first State of the Union, to charge America with fomenting the Russia-Georgia war and said he has been “forced” to put Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad to counter the U.S. missile shield President Bush pledged to Poland.
Medvedev had painted Obama into a corner. No new American president can be seen as backing down from a Russian challenge.
Three days later, Polish President Lech Kaczynski tried to box Barack in. His office declared that, during a phone conversation with Kaczynski, Obama had promised to deploy the anti-missile missiles.
Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough denied it.
One week later, however, Medvedev wisely walked the cat back.
During the G-20 summit in Washington, he told the Council on Foreign Relations the issue of Russian missiles in Kaliningrad “is not closed. I am personally ready to discuss it, and I hope that the new president and the new administration will have the will to discuss it.”
President-elect Obama should not let this opportunity slip by, for a second signal came last week that Russia does not want the Cold War II that the departing neocons wish to leave on his plate.
Moscow offered Spain and Germany use of Russian territory to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan. As our supply line from the Pakistani port of Karachi through the Khyber Pass to Kabul grows perilous, this has to be seen as a gesture of friendship by a Russia that shares, as a fellow victim of Islamic terror, the U.S. detestation of al-Qaida.
Opportunity also presents itself with the official report of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on the August war. According to The New York Times, the OSCE found, consistent with Moscow’s claims, that Georgia “attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.”
Russia’s response—running the Georgian Army out of South Ossetia, occupying Abkhazia and recognizing both as independent nations—may seem disproportionate and excessive. But, contrary to John (”We are all Georgians now!”) McCain, Moscow has a compelling case that Georgia’s Mikhail Saakashvili started the fire.
Medvedev is now on a four-nation Latin tour with stops in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Fidel Castro’s Cuba. But this seems more like diplomatic tit-for-tat for high-profile U.S. visits to Tbilisi and other ex-Soviet republics than laying the groundwork for some anti-American alliance.
For, just as for Washington the relationship with Moscow is far more crucial than any tie to Tbilisi, so Moscow’s tie to Washington is surely far more crucial to Russia than any tie to Caracas or Havana.
With these opening moves, how might Obama test the water for a better relationship with the Russia of Medvedev and Vladimir Putin?
First, Obama should restate his campaign position that no anti-missile system will be deployed in Poland until fully tested.
Second, he should declare that, as this system is designed to defend against an Iranian ICBM with a nuclear warhead, it will not be deployed until Iran has tested an ICBM and an atomic device.
So long as the Iranian threat remains potential, not actual, there is no need to deploy a U.S. missile defense in Poland against it.
Third, he should invite Medvedev to Camp David to discuss what more they might do together to ensure that no such Iranian threat, to either nation, ever materializes. For if Iran does not test an ICBM or atomic device, what is the need for a missile defense in East Europe?
Fourth, invoking the principle of self-determination, Obama might propose a plebiscite in Georgia and Abkhazia to determine if these people wish to return to Tbilisi’s rule.
The second bone of contention between us is prospective NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine.
As NATO is a military alliance, at the heart of which is Article V, which obligates every ally to come to the defense of a member who is attacked, to bring Georgia in would be madness.
To cede to Saakashvili power to bring us into confrontation with Russia would be to rival British stupidity in giving Polish colonels power to drag the empire into war with Germany over Danzig, which is exactly what the Polish colonels proceeded to do in 1939.
Before the NATO summit next week, Obama should signal to NATO, and the Bush administration, that nothing irreversible should be done to put Ukraine or Georgia on a path to membership.
First, because the president-elect will decide himself about new war guarantees in Eastern Europe or the Caucasus. Second, because these are matters to be taken up at a Medvedev-Obama summit, not foreclosed for him by neocons now trooping home to their think tanks.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by D Simmons on 26 November 2008:
Who has the shortest supply lines? Washington D. C. might have problems controlling El Paso, Texas in a few years never mind some far off country. A Russian so and so “expert” has made some news with his predictions of our breakup, nothing new, but our lamestream media as stupid as they are might broadcast this as proof of the hostility of Russia’s elite.
2 Comment by robert m. peters on 26 November 2008:
D. Simmons @ 1
I read, in English, the Russian professor’s article. He actually asserts nothing more than has been foretold by some of us here on the Chronicles’ website. As you say, however, the American media will likely assert that the article “proves” the hostility of the Russian elite.
3 Comment by george on 26 November 2008:
How exactly are we going to finance a pointless missile shield?
It will take millions if not billions to maintain its operation.
Are the Czechs and Poles going to pay the bill?
As far as South Ossetia is concerned Georgia has pretty much ruined any chance of a peaceful settlement with its blitz on the region turning 70% of it to rubble and attempting to ethnically cleanse the region of its native inhabitants.
The media is playing a huge role in gearing up confrontation with Russia spinning the narrative that Putin has a master plan to subjugate the West even when it contradicts reality in the case of the recent Georgia conflict.
If it was truly independent and unbiased then there wouldn’t be any conflict with Russia.
Instead as usually on other topics as well like the Iraq war in most part take a largely uncritical lead following the government’s line.
In fact looking through articles and news sites on the web I would say western news media is the worst and Asian news and media analysis is probably the best.
4 Comment by Homophobic Horse on 27 November 2008:
“A Russian so and so “expert” has made some news with his predictions of our breakup, nothing new, but our lamestream media as stupid as they are might broadcast this as proof of the hostility of Russia’s elite.”
The Russian mediocrity said that America may fragment on ethnic lines. Obama may be able to present Russia as a primitive Nazi beast engaging in race war or something, and contrast this with himself as the post-racial, post-national, post-cultural, post-religion personification of nothingness (”Unity”) ready to free poor oppressed Georgians just like America freed the Bosnian Handschar SS Division and Albanian racist jihadis.
Nice article from Buchanan, except for his demented reference to World War 2. The comparison is extremely poor because objectively speaking NATO resembles and behaves like the Third Reich more than any other power on Earth at this moment.
5 Comment by george on 27 November 2008:
@4Homophobic Horse
I don’t think anyone takes this guys prediction seriously.
Here’s his interview on RT.
http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/1839
You got that right about NATO it directly copied Hitler’s Operation Blue plan to seize control of the Caspian oil reserves training Islamic militants in Bosnia and wiping out the Serb resistance.
The amazing fact revealed during the Milosevic trial was that American army units were actual members of the KLA fighting with them in the Kosovo war coordinating attacks with NATO air force even transporting them via helicopter which the US State Department themselves listed as a terrorist organisation.
6 Comment by george on 27 November 2008:
Also a good interview with Dennis Kucinich
http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/1823
7 Comment by Chris on 28 November 2008:
George,
>The amazing fact revealed during the Milosevic trial was that
>American army units were actual members of the KLA fighting with
>them in the Kosovo war coordinating attacks with NATO air force
>even transporting them via helicopter which the US State
>Department themselves listed as a terrorist organisation.
Links please!
8 Comment by george on 28 November 2008:
Here you go Chris
NATO Transported KLA Terrorists By Helicopter During Kosovo War
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org – October 27, 2005
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg102705.htm
I also recommend you read Paul Murphy’s book Wolves of Islam about Chechen terrorism what the “international terrorist organisation” really is , what the camps in Afghanistan were set-up for, the connection to 9/11 and other events and what a fruad the war on terror is.
9 Comment by george on 28 November 2008:
Captured KLA Documents Show that NATO Airlifted Weapons to the KLA During the War
October 3, 2005
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg100305.htm
References Ameriucan Mercenries rather than US army units but are employed by Pentagon sub-contractors probably MPRI.
Interesting to note that MPRI wre training Georgian forces in sbotage techniques and US and Ukrainian Merceneries wewre used in the recent Georgia conflict.
10 Comment by george on 28 November 2008:
KLA ties to Al-Qaeda and drug mafia
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/KLA-binladen.htm
Mentions in the article that the State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organisation in 98.