Empty Idealism and the Crushing of a Democracy

Christopher Hitchens has on more than one ocassion denounced foreign policy realists such as Brent Scowcroft, for their unabashed support for the status quo in places like Iraq and Darfur. He is absolutely right to do so, when the end result of these realist policies is the slow and torturous death of a people held under the genocidal rule of a gangster tyrant.

However, If the Russian-Georgia fighting has demonstrated anything, its that an empty and thoughtless idealism can be just as damaging as a cold and calculating realism.

Gregory Djerejian outlines this, comparing the rhetoric of John McCain in his reflection of the current US regime's (and Barack Obama's) desperate rush to have Georgia join NATO, to the cautious advice given by George Kennan:

"(E)xpanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."

McCain, Obama and Bush all hold rather idealistic positions regarding Georgia, wishing to expand the NATO alliance, foster democracy in the caucuses and eventually bring to it the prosperity of the EU, all very laudable stuff. But when this idealism is empty, when words are used that implicate a form of action that is not forthcoming and when Georgian leaders are goaded into belligerent self-confidence by Dick Cheney, then America (and NATO) forfeits it's already slender credibility, with both the Russians and the Georgians, and a fledgling democracy is crushed by a Russian response.