Saturday, September 19, 2009

Oops!

The Obama Administration just stumbled. No, I don't mean stumbled in the sense of those normal cock-ups that occur in every Administration. The modern American Presidency is just too complex an institution to be handled by mere mortals without committing the occasional dumb mistake.

When an Administration really stumbles, however, there are significant and lasting historical consequences. To name just a few, Neville Chamberlain's appeasement strategy in the 30's, John Kennedy's disastrous first meeting with Khrushchev, Lyndon Johnson's ineptness in waging the Vietnam War, and Jimmy Carter's studied blindness to Soviet intentions in the 70's, are all good examples of the kind of thing I am talking about when I say the Obama Administration has just stumbled.

I am referring to the current Administration's decision to cancel deployment of the missile defense systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia. This singular decision, made apparently unilaterally without any concessions of note from Putin's Russia, decisively violates almost all of the major foreign policy initiatives developed since World War II to maintain the peace of the world in perilous circumstances, initiatives that have been consistently (if often ineptly) promoted by every Administration since that of Harry Truman. The result, despite the edge of disaster that seemed to loom time and again over the years, has been almost 60 years of peace and prosperity for all.

This continuity of purpose is now broken. Reneging on our agreements with Poland and Czechoslovakia to install missile defense systems - agreements they courageously signed in the face of Russian saber rattling - is and can only be understood as bald capitulation to the Russian bully, and signals clearly that our unwavering commitment to our European allies is at an end. Our clear resolve to defend Europe against aggression has been a paramount deterrence to Soviet expansionism over the years, and the weakening of our resolve in this respect will only embolden Putin's Russia to ever greater delusions of grandeur.

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Perhaps even to imagine that it can formally annex its old Eastern European slave-states back into the fold? Perhaps, but at the very least, Putin will assuredly seek a Balkanization of those countries.

But the repercussions are wider than just Europe. America's resolve these last number of decades to keep the peace in a turbulent world has contained all sorts of madness. An emboldened and careless Russia will in turn embolden it's ally, Iran, into ever greater destabilization efforts in the Middle East, with the probable result that there will one day be a mass scramble for nuclear weapons by the Arab countries most affected by Iran's provocations. Venezuela is already negotiating with Russia for nuclear technology; the Taliban is as close as zealots have ever been to taking over Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal; and North Korea has explicitly threatened to lob nuclear bombs at Japan. The Obama Administration's stumble has tossed fuel onto these fires, and others as well.

The world has been kept from boiling up into war by such tensions as these by the tight-lid of American and its Allies resolve. Now, the lid is off, and the turbulent waters will begin boiling in earnest.

If adults can get back into the White House, can all of this be reversed? Perhaps, but probably not. The genie can sometimes be talked into going back into the bottle, but if the metaphor is eggs, then once broken they cannot be put back into the shell.

As in all historically important matters, only time will tell. But it is clear that the Obama Administration has set history on a course of grave uncertainty, and the number of possible bleak outcomes have increased exponentially.

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