Billmon on Georgia
.I’m glad to see that billmon is blogging again, after a long hiatus. I recommend his most recent article, Anatomy of A(nother) Fiasco, an overview of recent American responses to the strife between Russia and Georgia.
He comes up with better background on the situation than I’ve seen anywhere else, and provides this uplifting note:
Even after the fiasco in Iraq, the bloody failure in Lebanon, the downward spiral in Afghanistan and, now, the futile posturing in Georgia, there’s absolutely no evidence the US foreign policy elite is inclined to moderate its ambition to re-organize the world along American lines. Nor is there any sign the political class (including, unfortunately, Barack Obama) is rethinking its lockstep support for that agenda.
As far as I can tell, he’s completely right. I haven’t seen any evidence along those lines whatsoever. It doesn’t seem to matter what the problems are (of course the US President doesn’t think there are any), or how considerable the obstacles, the assumption seems to be that the US can simply make whatever it wants to happen, happen. If that were mere posturing for the press and masses, that would be bad enough, but it seems that it’s actually what passes for thinking at the highest levels of US governance.
I suppose it’s a lot easier to be overconfident about these things when really you’re playing with other people’s money/lives/futures. When the elites overreach, odds are they won’t suffer much as a result.
The Anatol Lievin article billmon refers to is also worth reading.