As Callimachus noted in the comments of one of his own posts recently, there are some Europeans and even some Americans who take every world event and turn it over and over, examining every facet, until they can find a way to blame it on the United States. That seems to be the case with Seumas Milne’s post in The Guardian:
By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression, but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia by a potentially hostile power. That a stronger Russia has now used the South Ossetian imbroglio to put a check on that expansion should hardly come as a surprise. What is harder to work out is why Saakashvili launched last week’s attack and whether he was given any encouragement by his friends in Washington.
There’s no mention of the close relationship between the government of France and that of Georgia or Germany and Georgia or the United Kingdom and Georgia. There’s no mention of the foreign direct investment of British, Italian, German, and French investers in Georgia. There’s no mention of the provocative comments of the German foreign minister about Georgia in 2007.
In this view Russia, Georgia, Britain, France, Germany, and all of the European nations are merely puppets dancing on Washington’s strings without interests or wills of their own. Everything is just a response to American imperialism.
It’s not even vaguely possible that we were aiding Georgia out of altruism, that American companies (not to mention British, Italian, German, etc. companies) invest in Georgia because they think they might make a buck, or that we might be interested in rewarding and cultivating closer ties with Georgia in the hopes of continued liberalization in Georgia. Nope, it’s all American imperialism.
Let’s assume that Mr. Milne is right. After all the wolf and the shepherd are both exploiting the sheep. The difference is that in the case of the shepherd the sheep stand to benefit, too. To tell which is which, look around you.
Actually, the Guardian had an earlier article that sensibly blamed the Georgian aggression on the true culprit, the Soviet Union, and that because the silly EU-nuchs had dithered about putting Georgia & the Ukraine on the short-list plan for NATO membership. Putin sensed weakness and like a feral brute, pounced at the opening of the Olympics, when everyone would be pre-occupied.
Remember that the Guardian has a large quotient of mindless leftover Stalinist/Marxist automatons among their readership and the sensible article had to be balanced with nonsense.
No mention is made by the Marxist Mr. Milne of the BTC pipeline threatened by the Soviet [oops] invasion which serves as the only outlet of Central Asian oil & gas—otherwise, the EU-nuchs are perfect energy hostages of the laughably-named Friendship Pipeline from Czar Putin.
Milne is a perfect example of the UK’s descent into mindless Londonistan vassal status.
The Prime Mover fallacy lives on. It’s certainly a simpler view of the world.
I also noticed the fun that Milne had with the Westphalian breakdown. Since Georgia entered “an area it has never controlled since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Georgia was guilty of an invasion. Invading whom? Russia?
When will you wake up to the lies of the Western Media?
USA/Israel Zionists Fund & Train Georgia. Georgia attacks, murdering innocents. Russia responds. You’re the one who is spinning. It is amazing how brainwashed Americans are by their Govt., Media, Education, Law, etc.
Read forums from every nation other than the USA … They say one thing, and you’re the only one to say the opposite. So either the entire world is wrong and lying or you are. Which one is it?
How could the entire world possibly agree that the USA is in the wrong on this? Of course, you’d never know this if you listen to the lying Western Media.
Whatever. Live a lie, so be it.
Why, oh why, is the entire world privy to the World Plan of the Zionists, but Americans aren’t?
“Zionists” is one of those words that tells you all you need to know, particularly when coupled to phrases like “World Plan.” After that, Robert, you might as well go away: the rest of us have tuned you out.
Satire?
I suspect the Western European governments also have a much greater interest in another region where it’s our neck that is stuck out, deiplomatically — Kosovo. Which does have a connection, in the Russian view, to what is happening now in the Caucasus (even if some odious people also are saying that).
The current state of the wotld seems to be that there is one great superpower, which has a sort of national ADHD condition, and it is prone to taking up idealistic causes, or what it thinks are self-interests, without examining them too closely or even being able to think through them. Many of our allies seem to have figured this out and figured out how to play it. Whether this is a George W. Bush problem or an America problem we’ll probably have to wait a year to discover.
Must be satire as nobody could be serious & write something as stupid as “Robert” the Robo put up just now. Hmmm….. just where did those Protocols of the E of Z originate? The previous czarist secret police?
Or am I wrong?
Meet the new czar, same as the old czar?
Altruism, Dave?
One thing we can be sure of. No actors on the international stage act out of altruism.
Milne is somewhat over the top and onesided, but his basic thesis is sound. The Abkazians and Ossetians have never consented to rule by the Georgians – Georgia has never controlled their territory, and the Georgian military move was very much a violent invasion, causing death and destruction to lots of innocents. That the Russians took that move as an excuse to launch an over the top response and to basically destroy the Georgian Army, does not change the fact that it was the Georgians fault that all this started.
Callimachus, Do you think Russia has fully thought through the implications of championing the cause of ethnic determination in the Caucuses?
I think the Rusian leadership is not in the least concerned with consistency. Who is there to hold their feet to the fire over it?
Milne is an unrepentant Bolshevik whose puerile musings read like old Pravda articles (or new ones, for that matter). I recall reading an article by him last year in which he bemoaned the fall of the Soviet Union, pining for a new Stalin to come along and lead the world’s workers to a collectivist utopia. Taking Milne to task for writing an obviously unbalanced article is like taking to task a puppy for piddling on the carpet.