Thought this clip of David Brooks talking about what it might take to stop Putin in Ukraine — since the usual stuff (sanctions, etc.) isn’t working — rather interesting:
DAVID BROOKS: I’m also thinking, sometimes you just have to do something a little crazy. Putin did something a little crazy. And we’re all, ooh, let’s not get in front of that guy.
Obama is like the least likely person you’re ever going to meet to do something crazy. He’s prudent, thinks thing through? But sometimes you just got to strike a little fear…
JUDY WOODRUFF: Like what? I mean, what would be…
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I’m beginning to think we’re going to get to a spot, if this continues to escalate, and it’s clear — well, it seems clear that Putin is — just wants to — if Ukraine wants to go West, he will dismember Ukraine.
And it seems to me that arming, not getting involved, us, in Ukraine, but arming Ukraine for some deterrent effect to keep the Russians out of there is a useful thing to start to think about. And I think we’re probably going to end up having a serious debate about that…
Yeah… You’ve got that right. Barack Obama just doesn’t do crazy.
Now, George Bush, he would do crazy. And as you know, I thought it one of his virtues. (I didn’t think he had many, but I granted him that one.) The invasion of Iraq would have been a wonderful deterrent to rogue, or merely problematic, regimes — if Bush could have maintained the impression that he would be willing and able to do something like that again.
The invasion of Iraq scared the stuffing out of Moammar Qaddafi, who immediately gave up his attempt to get nukes. There were signs of nervousness across the region, as oligarchs and dictators thought, “If he’ll take out Saddam, just like that, he could come after me next. He’s crazy…”
But then Bush lost public support over Iraq, and it became clear he didn’t have the capital to do anything like that again, and everybody calmed down…
No chance of that happening with President Obama. Even when the other kids — France, Britain — volunteer to go first, he’s not going to get crazy. He was elected pretty much on an anti-crazy platform.
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And how would we pay for a new war, since we haven’t yet paid for Iraq and Afghanistan? And the ‘pro-war’ party screaming for more tax cuts?
A couple (or three) points, Karen:
1. I don’t think Brooks is talking about a new war. More like a proxy war — in the sense of helping the Ukrainians defend themselves.
2. How come people always ask how we’re going to pay for a war, when we do everything ELSE on credit? Seriously, I think we should pay as we go on everything — war, health care, you name it — as much as possible. I thought Bush should have called for a big increase in the gasoline tax on Sept. 12, 2001, to pay for the war, as well as for alternative energy research, mass transit, etc. But there’s no particular reason why war should be more pay-as-you-go than anything else. In fact, when you’re faced with a Pearl Harbor (or a 9/11), you mobilize no matter how much you have in the bank.
3. I don’t think it’s accurate to say the “pro-war” party is “screaming for tax cuts.” It’s different people. The closest you have to a pro-war party, as I think you mean it, is the McCain/Graham faction of the GOP. Any vehement calls for tax cuts tend to come from the economic libertarians, who are also often isolationists. Yeah, I suppose there’s some overlap sometimes, but I see those as separate impulses coming from different quarters.
I do not believe anyone with the code to the nuclear football should ever do “crazy.”
See, that’s the beauty of it. NOBODY want to see the guy with the nuclear football do “crazy.” So they all tiptoe around and are careful not to do anything to set him off. And our lives are much more peaceful…
I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
Our lives in America are great, but tell that to the folks in Iraq and Afghanistan
I’m often discouraged when politicians and pundits use sanitized terms for killing and being killed. The list of euphemisms ranges from “hitting back” to “intervene to “collateral damage.” It involves killing. Not just those with weapons in their hands. Killing. Maybe we have gone crazy.
The invasion of Iraq would have been a wonderful deterrent to rogue, or merely problematic, regimes — if Bush could have maintained the impression that he would be willing and able to do something like that again.
-Brad
And why exactly could he not maintain that impression? It’s not like fairy dust suddenly cleansed the whole “deterrent” paradigm that Bush so “adroitly” built up. That kind of statement lacks any sort of historical perspective. Don’t you think there just might be some teeny, tiny, itty-bitty possibility that the crazy Iraq invasion was just a bad idea that was doomed from the beginning to the cruel fate that ultimately transpired?
So here’s the lesson that once again must be learned. And Putin will learn it soon enough. Military adventurism that is largely unpopular from the perspective of the international community will ultimately fail. Examples abound: Britain in Iraq (1920s), Japan in China (1937), Germany in Poland (1939), France in Vietnam (1950s), US in Vietnam (1960s), Vietnam in Cambodia (1970s), Israel in Lebanon (1980s), Russia in Afghanistan (1980s), Iraq v Iran (1980s. No real winner in this one). And of course the Coup-de-gras US in Iraq (2000s). If Putin is foolish enough to go into Ukraine any further we can add another fools errand to the list. Just check out the US stockmarket compared to the Russian counterpart over the past few days to see how the money is weighing in on this. That should be warning enough to Mr. Putin.
U.S. in Texas, U.S. in New Mexico, U.S. in Arizona, U.S. in California… Europeans taking America from the Indians, for that matter. The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe in 1945, which everybody went along with…
The boundaries of pretty much every major nation were originally taken by force or threat of force. Or intermarriage between royalty, which was the civilized way…
And no… the Iraq invasion was a great idea if Bush could have kept the political support that he had at the start of it. And if Rumsfeld hadn’t been in charge of it, which really got us off on the wrong foot.
What was the expected outcome for Iraq that would have been achieved had everything gone exactly as you wanted it to go? What there be peace and harmony there? How many more lives were you willing to sacrifice to achieve that objective?
Brad you completely missed my point. The US imperialism that was so successful was NOT condemned by the international community. Not that that makes it right. Furthermore, the 19th century new world was a pretty fluid situation with borders that were still being established. Texas, for example, was occupied by folks from the eastern US therefore nullifying any claim the Mexicans may have had. Much the same could be said of Crimea. The Russians WILL lose if they invade Ukraine and it WILL NOT affect American security or prosperity. Isn’t this obvious?
Crazy isn’t the right word, and I’m a little surprised that Brooks, who writes for a living, used this word. But Brooks is also the same guy who thought Obama would be a great President because of his wonderful trouser crease.
The correct word is “serious”. The President needs to show that he is serious. The first sanctions were not serious. It elicited amusement from Russia. The second level of sanctions from the President were stronger and probably stifled some of the laughter coming out of the Kremlin. It showed Putin that the President is might be serious about this. It was the right thing to do.
(I would like it noted for the record that I said something nice about the President.)
The question is now one of resolve. This second round of sanctions needs to be followed up with another step, and another step…until Putin backs down.
You don’t need to be crazy to be seriously resolved.
And then we kicked him out of the cool kids’ club.
He coulda had a G-8!
“Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.” -President Obama
See, I go and say something nice about him, and then he goes and makes a petulant statement like this. Russia is a “regional power”? Are you kidding me?
First, any country with as many ICBMs as Russia has — they qualify as more than a “regional power” on that alone. Also, I’m assuming that our President hasn’t looked at a globe in awhile, or he would have noticed that Russia stretches across many…um…regions…Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Pacific.
Is Russia a super-power like us? Nah, probably not anymore. But they’re definitely capable of causing problems for the USA in almost any part of the entire world.
Bitchy, passive-aggressive comments are not a substitute for actually having a foreign policy. This kind of statement indicates that he’s NOT taking this situation seriously — which is what I had hoped he was doing.
“I’m assuming that our President hasn’t looked at a globe in awhile, ”
He has. He’s still searching for the states #51,52,53,54,55,56, and 57
He’s dissing ’em. First, he kicks them out of the club. Then he trash-talks them.
It’s a strategy…
Ok, cool. For a second I was just taking his words at face value, and thinking that he sounded like a petulant child. I wasn’t using my secret decoder ring. This is part of that 10- dimensional chess game Obama’s always playing, right?
You know, this “trash-talking” got me thinking. In a comment you made some time ago, you compared Obama to Michael Corleone, in how he didn’t talk much about how he used drone attacks to kill Al Queada leaders — he just did it. No bluster, no fuss, just death. Obama actually used drones more than Bush, but he did it quietly, without bluster or rhetoric.
In this instance, Obama’s doing exactly the opposite. There’s lots of rhetoric, but not really much to back it up in terms of willpower and/or action. And the rhetoric isn’t just empty, it seems predictably empty here.
I would prefer that Obama say little and do more. Putin isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to be impressed by speeches or scared by “trash talk”. Putin took Crimea without having to fire a single shot or lose a single soldier. That’s not something that is typically reflective of “weakness”. I bet Putin heard the “regional power” comment and laughed.
At the end of the first round, the score Is:
Russia 1
EU/USA: 0
Round Two will be coming up soon. I hope the President has something to back up the trash-talk.
Obama = Chauncey Gardiner? He is what everyone who supports him wants him to be.
I think POTUS does more than just watch, though.
POTUS statement was absolutely correct. Russia is a regional power, nothing more. They can’t project power any distance from their borders the way they used to in the USSR days. This is a not so subtle reminder that the Russians are not ready to be a big time player in the economic affairs of the world. Unless Putin wants his people to revert back to a third world level of prosperity he should heed Obama’s remarks. Otherwise financial ruin will be in Russia’s future.
We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock and roll… while we conduct missile drills.
You mean, “theirrr rrrock and rrrollll…”
Poor Medvedev. He would like to have seen Montana…
You know, Obama saying that Russia is a “regional power” reminds me reminds me of the old story about the Nazi general telling his mistress the night before the invasion that Germany would attack Russia.
The Nazi General drags out an atlas to show her the plan, pointing out Germany and Russia, respectively. She asks only one question — “Honey, has the Fuehrer seen this map?”