On Russia And America



"One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their . . . paths [are] diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.”--Alexis de Tocqueville, 1935.


It is not inconceivable that when all is said and done and the confetti is cleared and the last stanza of Hail to the Chief is played in January 2009, George Walker Bush, 43, will be regarded, universally, in the realm of international relations as a President even more astonishingly radical than Woodrow Wilson. And we don't, by invoking Presidential history, mean that, in any way, shape or form, by way of a compliment (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment).

Wilson, unlike Bush, had a deep, long-term vision of the future of the world backed, mightily, by a lifelong interest in the subject buttressed by an iron intellect. Wilson's Tragedy was that his body was not a strong enough vehicle for his will and knowledge to bring to Reality his vision of a League of Nations. It took another World War and The Bomb to shock the planet into action.

Is it the influence of alcoholism added to his unnatural lack of self-reflection that makes the President appear so almost comically stubborn about issues that seem so obvious to everyone else? Never, we've learned, underestimate the stubbornness of George Walker Bush, 43.

Even in the dark, Hobbesian arena of International Relations, where anyone who is anyone -- including his father's former loyalists -- believe that Bush has fucked the whole shit up, Bush echoes Rumsfeldian on the subject diplomacy with Europe. And nowhere, with the exception of Israeli-Iraq-Iran does The President's stubbornness make itself known as in his quixotic dealings with Putin's Russia.

Bush's present obsession with ram-rodding NATO membership for the Ukraine and Georgia, against the wishes of Sarkozy, Merkel and Vladimir Putin verges on the geopolitically motherfucking insane. And Sarkozy, by the way, is a strong ally of the United States! On subjects ranging from Kosovo, to the Czech missile deal, it seems that Bush's geopolitical maneuvers are calculated to rasp the Kremlin, home of great social change and an even greater supply of nuclear weopons. Who says Republicans are mature, "Daddy" stewards of national security? From The New York Times:

"President Bush threw the NATO summit meeting here off-script on Wednesday with his firm public disagreement with two key allies, Germany and France, over how close a relationship the organization should have with Ukraine and Georgia, who aspire to membership.

Mr. Bush’s position — that Ukraine and Georgia should be welcomed into a Membership Action Plan, or MAP, that prepares nations for NATO membership — directly contradicted German and French government positions stated earlier this week.

But Mr. Bush was described by one senior American official as wanting to 'lay down a marker' for his legacy as his presidency winds down, and as not wanting to 'lose faith' with the Ukrainian and Georgian peoples and the other former republics of the Soviet Union."

How curious that Bush uses the language of the cowboy ('marker'), and the Christian ('faith').

Russia has seen seven members of their former buffer zone join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- a military alliance -- and, according to the psychology of nations, is pushing back. Not too long ago NATO existed to thwart the former Soviet Union; NATO, in the fullness of time, defeated communist Russia. But the present freakish rapidity in which NATO enlarges -- to Brobdingnagian proportions -- is, even to The Corsair, absurd. Is Bush, we'd love to ask, supposed to even be a Conservative? Does he even pretend to be one anymore? His actions on the international front approach the radically revolutionary, reeking in the stink of social scientists with itchy metabolism and not, as they should, steeped in the Wisdom of History.

Even Kissinger -- hero of the despots -- won't be able to carry America's water in the Central European theater if we continue to push The Russian Bear into the arms of China's Dragon, who, incidentally, is a most unnatural ally.