NOVAE MILITIAE

From the 11/3/08 issue of The American Conservative, p. 5

The fiendish Russian prime minister has struck again! According to neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, Vladimir Putin dreams of subjugating the world. Indeed, he has already begun - with his household pet. Putin recently had his totalitarian techs whip up a satellite-tracked dog collar for his black labrador, Koni. "She looks sad," Reuters reported Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying. "Her free life is over." Nyet, said Putin. "She is wagging her tail. That means she likes it." Expect some future Republican presidential contender, high on anti-Russian hysteria, to announce we are all black labs now. (Link to the Dreher article added by Caedmon.)

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska."

Who Lost Russia?

Hear, hear!

A senior official of the Russian Orthodox Church has made a scathing attack on Western countries and has said they should not impose their standards on other nations. "We should have a strong State and a strong military, for we would then have the will and ability to repel any invasion against our way of life and interests, and our ability to influence events developing in the world," said the Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations.

In an interview broadcast on Russia's Soyuz television channel, the church official urged his country to defend "its free, original political choice" and reject Western models, "setting its laws and rules the way which is natural for our nation, its destiny, mentality and historical ways".

Speaking of Western countries, Chaplin said, "In spite of all their talk of adhering to international law and respecting self-determination, these countries have always acted solely in their own interests and applied quite contrary principles. . . ."

Defending the Russian army action (in Georgia), Chaplin said the United States and NATO had sent troops to countries where "the people have never asked for it, and neither referendums nor votes were held on the question".

He added, "Why does the West believe, as [U.S. President George W.] Bush has clearly stated, that only one form of democracy and of people's participation in decisions, the Western form, is compulsory and should be set out for all nations and countries?"

Chaplin asserted, "Survival is impossible for a society deprived of faith as a foundation of public life and of any purpose except consumption, and which embraces the ideal of imposing a particular form of democracy around the globe simply because it is expedient for American banks, Western governments, and the world economic and media elite."

Which is why we can only hope this is true. 

Death to neoconservatism and the American empire; long live the restored American republic(s).

The Moron Who Would Be President, Talking To The Morons Who Would Elect Him.

But I digress.  Tonight I want to address the Georgia-Israel connection:

NATO guarantees that an attack against one member country is an attack against all are no longer what they used to be. Had Georgia been inside NATO, a number of European countries would no longer be willing to consider it an attack against their own soil.

For Russia , the geopolitical stars were in perfect alignment. The U.S. was badly overstretched and had no plausible way to talk tough without coming across as empty rhetoric. American resources have been drained by the Iraq and Afghan wars, and the war on terror. The European Union is still a military dwarf that swings no weight in the Kremlin. And the ineptitude of Georgia's leadership gave Russian leaders a huge new window of opportunity.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili evidently thought the U.S. would come to his side militarily if Russian troops pushed him back into Georgia after ordering an attack last Aug. 8 on the breakaway province of South Ossetia. And when his forces were mauled by Russia's counterattack, bitter disappointment turned to anger. Along with Abkhazia, Georgia lost two provinces.

Georgia also had a special relationship with Israel that was mostly under the radar. Georgia's Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili is a former Israeli who moved things along by facilitating Israeli arms sales with U.S. aid. "We are now in a fight against the great Russia," he was quoted as saying, "and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House because Georgia cannot survive on its own. . . ."

The Jerusalem Post on Aug. 12 reported, "Georgian Prime Minister Vladimir Gurgenidze made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community's most important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aaron Leib Steinman. "I want him to pray for us and our state," he was quoted.

Israel began selling arms to Georgia seven years ago. U.S. grants facilitated these purchases. From Israel came former minister and former mayor of Tel Aviv Roni Milo, representing Elbit Systems, and his brother Shlomo, former director-general of Military Industries. Israeli UAV spy drones, made by Elbit Maarahot Systems, conducted recon flights over southern Russia, as well as into nearby Iran .

In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of Israeli fighter bombers in the event of preemptive attacks against Iranian nuclear installations. This would sharply reduce the distance Israeli fighter bombers would have to fly to hit targets in Iran. And to reach Georgian airstrips, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) would fly over Turkey.

What else can we do, I wonder, to feed historic Russian anti-Semitism?

No need to say more.  Read the rest of the article, linked above.

Take heed, America.  Take heed, NATO.  Take heed, Western Europe.

Victor Davis Hanson, one of the least impressive of all the neocons talking heads, has chimed in regarding Russian's actions against Georgia . Here's Hanson's insuperable wisdom on the matter:

Meanwhile who can figure out the politics here at home? Bush—who inherited (and continued a policy) from Clinton of expanding NATO to the east, integrating the former Soviet republics into the West, and isolating Serbia—is to be criticized both for doing too much in poking the Russian Bear while, being mesmerized by Putin's eyes, not doing enough to help Georgia?

Once again for the Left, if it is a question of supporting Democratic states and those in them from tyrants—or finding new creative ways of blaming the United States first—well, the answer is a no-brainer.

And from paleos one expected a sort of ' Georgia 's bigmouth stuck his neck in a noose, so let him hang' , but the near gleeful admiration for the way 'ole Putin 'took care of business' in his backyard was over the top even for them.

That last sentence is a model of clarity, is it not? The paleos' gleeful admiration for the way Putin took care of business was over the top even for them? Huh?

My reading of paleo commentary leads me to conclude that they are still in pretty much a "told-you-so" mode, accompanied by a lot of shoulder shrugging over the strikes into Georgia itself. If anything marks paleoconservatism, it is an undying sense of realism, and most of us here on the hard right are therefore not surprised that Russia would go the brutal extra mile in pressing its long overdue point. It's what Russians do, in the first place. And in the second place, Our Imperial Handlers are largely responsible for it.

As for the possible sudden halt to NATO's program to expand Eastward, well, that looks to be a clear instance of the chickens coming home to roost.

Let the pseudocons rant and rave about it all. The Bear is back.  They can just get used to it.