It’s kind of sad to watch our foreign policy elite flail around impotently, lecturing Russia about international rules, international institutions, and respect for sovereignty. Russia, as you might remember, refused to vote for any authorization to use military force in Iraq. Now they get treated to gems like this from Condi ‘Mushroom Cloud’ Rice:
However, as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at Bush’s ranch at 5:30 a.m. Saturday to brief the president on negotiations in Tbilisi, Georgia, she told reporters Russia faces a choice “to act in a 21st-century way, [to] fully integrate into the international institutions.
“I think it’s very much worthwhile to have given Russia that chance,” Rice said. “Now I think the behavior recently suggests that perhaps Russia has not taken that route … or that they would like to have it both ways — that is, that you behave in a 1968 way toward your neighbors by invading them and, at the same time, you continue to integrate into the political and diplomatic and economic and security structures of the international community. And I think the fact is you can’t have it both ways.”
One wonders whether Rice is truly deaf to irony.
“[The Russians] have a kind of imperial hangover,” said Fred Starr, a professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “They haven’t adjusted to post-Soviet reality.”
I don’t think Fred Starr has adjusted to post-Iraq War reality. But at least he is on-message, unlike this envoy:
In Georgia, popular anger against Russia remains high, and Saakashvili has yet to be called to account for the decision to assault Tskhinvali, a small city in which thousands of civilians were forced into their cellars by shelling.
Russian officials say 2,000 people died in Tskhinvali. That figure has been described as inflated by human rights groups. But there unquestionably was a large toll of civilian deaths and injuries, which has outraged Russia and shocked Georgia’s Western allies.
“It’s deplorable, simply deplorable, to fire on civilians like that, and illegal,” said Matthew Bryza, the U.S. special envoy to the region, in an interview. “It’s horrible.”
