Zakaria notes “with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain” that this is a stupid neoconservative idea. It’s all posturing and very little common sense. (Russia’s president concurs.)
In a Los Angeles Times opinion titled “McCain’s bad G-8 judgment call”, Madeline Albright and William Perry acknowledge that Russia has been been undemocratic, but they point out “[McCain] does not say what this would accomplish other than dramatizing, for a moment, our disappointment with Russia’s domestic policies.” They go on to note that the United States does not control G-8 membership and again emphasize:
The truth is that we still have an abundant amount of diplomatic business to do with Russia. We have a common interest in fighting terrorism, preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons, securing nuclear materials everywhere, reducing nuclear stockpiles, maintaining stability in Afghanistan and Central Asia, developing new security arrangements in East Asia and improving prospects for peace in the Middle East. Russia must also be included in any comprehensive discussion of global energy and environmental issues.
Now John McCain himself seems to think that this is a dumb idea too! Thus, we learn from a senior McCain adviser that “McCain’s comment last October on Russia and the G-8 as ‘a holdover from an earlier period,’ adding: ‘It doesn’t reflect where he is right now.'”
What could be going on here? One explanation is that there appears to be some odd kind of disagreement within the McCain camp betweeen the noe-conservatives and the realists. So perhaps we will hear a back and forth as the McCain camp asserts he does and does not and does and does not think Russia should be removed from the G-8.
Another explanation is that John McCain has spent so much time on television (86 appearances as a solo guest between 1997 and 2005) that he thinks his role is to make provocative, exciting proposals.
Perhaps he is not qualified to be President so much as to occupy a round table seat at Fox News.
John McCain for pundit!
and we won it, so why not a reprise?
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p>I mean, it isn’t like the G8 needs Russia or anything to deal with the problems facing the world. I mean, if Russia played any role in the oil markets, or was a crucial supplier of energy to Western Europe, or shared a border with China, or had knowledge of, experience with, or shared borders with that portion of central Asia threatened by Islamic extremism. And it isn’t like kicking Russia out would deepen the chasm between Western Europe and Washington, further isolating us in the world at a time that we have amply demonstrated that we lack the resources to confront these problems alone. (Heck, we lacked the capacity to confront the USSR alone during the cold war.)
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p>If that were true, this idea would be madness.
The missiles will be protecting the Iranian nuclear research and development program, according to news reports, which may be very destabilizing for the region.
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p>What is it that makes Russia support these countries? Is it just business? Does anyone know if McCain or Obama have made statements about the S-300 purchase?
See here.
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p>It will be nice to have a new administration that has an understanding of the threats that face our country and how to confront them, rather than conjuring threats that they wish confronted us, and confronting those instead.
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p>I will be nice to have an administration whose policy is not to weaken the United States while strengthening our enemies.
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p>It will be nice to have an administration that is capable of avoiding being led around by the nose by those enemies.
The Russians deny plans for this. I can find no substantiation in the press other than a few articles from the Jerusalem Post and a few other Israeli newspapers.
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p>For example, The New York Times has a smattering of Dec 27, 2007 articles saying it did happen, followed by a smattering of Russian denials on December 29, 2007. Then silence.
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p>Can you find further confirmation or am I missing something?
These are anti-aircraft missiles.
Iran has developed their own medium range missiles.
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p>Good thing our policy for the last 5 years has been to make Iran THE regional power in the Gulf. That’s bound to pay dividends for years.
It is relevant for figuring out just how much Russia is arming Iran.
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p>On the other other hand, it does surprise me that the Iraq Invasion cheerleading squad, of which McCain is a founding member, have not had to “pay” yet for their empowering Iran.
Nobody has ever made any attempt to make them pay that price. I’m not sure who could do it.
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p>To the extent that Democrats sound even slightly hawkish on Iran (which, by the way, is a pretty scary place to have nukes, even if Immanuttajob isn’t the real power) they catch all kinds of flak from the dovish left. Not so much because a hard line on Iran is just wrong, but because it might give Bush the cover to something crazy and destructive.
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p>So, there isn’t anyone to credibly launch a sustained “Who lost China?” tirade, which is what it would take. Sheesh, even a hard line is at present hard to maintain credibly because any potential threat of force has been pissed away.
I posted last week that we seem to impart such credibility to suspects statements (“I didn’t have a gun”), while we assume the Police are lying.
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p>In this story we think the Israelis are lying the the Russians are telling the truth. Is there some reason we wouldn’t want to “believe” the Israelis and maybe assume the Russians are lying? What history do we have of Israel often lying? How “up front” has Russian been on issues like this?
I have no reason to believe the Russian government. I would want to get corroboration for what they say. As for “the Israelis”, it’s not a big Israeli lump. I was specifically dubious of the Jerusalem Post because they are a right wing Israeli newspaper. The Post is not Israel’s newspaper of record. If Haaretz had reported this, it would be another matter. I would also have expected to have heard that this had happened from the New York Times. The chronology I gave (Dec 27: it happened. Dec 29: it didn’t) suggests that there was more to the story and maybe we might want to know the answer one way or the other before we race to conclusions about Russian intentions. That’s just me, though: I have a fondness for evidence. There are enough questions here that I’d like to see more of it.
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p>An alarm should go off in your head when you write “In this story we think”. You couldn’t write “In this story KBusch thinks” because it wasn’t even implicit in what I said.
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p>So who was the “we” that’s doing the “thinking”?
Especially when you are right.
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p>
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p>You are right that I should have specificaly said “KBusch”. However, when I read remarks like yours
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p>
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p>It sounds to me like you believe the Russians and do not believe the Israelis. Now, I know your answer may simply be that you are “reporting the facts” and have no conclusion either way, but my visceral feeling when I read your remarks are, “You don’t believe the story about the missile sale”. Am I wrong?
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p>
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p>The “we” was me and the other readers here. I should have used the first-person, singular personal pronoun “I”.
I wrote:
You see, I care about evidence. I was open to the possibility you found something. However, there was substantial evidence that you found nothing. What I saw from my search indicated that we don’t know what happened.
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p>As I keep insisting, you write in haste. Your last paragraph confirms it. Read you literally, you’re saying that
should be changed to
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p>I hope I’m not keeping you! đŸ™‚