April 23, 2007
TO A REALIST...:
Bush Flunks Diplomacy 101: How to infuriate Russia and the European Union and waste $10 billion a year. (Fred Kaplan, April 23, 2007, Slate)
As Casey Stengel once screamed, "Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?"It's one thing to waste $10 billion a year quixotically developing a missile-defense system; President Bush clearly announced from the get-go that he was determined to do that, and Congress has been complicit in his quest.
But to spark a diplomatic crisis with Russia and the European Union while doing so—that takes bungling of an unusually intense quality.
...good diplomacy is when your enemies are pleased with your actions. And then they wonder why Americans aren't Realists? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 23, 2007 10:20 PM
Should we care what aggressors and appeasers think about us?
Like the Dems, whatever Bush does is wrong. In Europe, whatever America does is wrong. It's not diplomacy, or lack there of. The Euros want to appease the Russians. The Russians want to be the big brother. New Europe is with us. Don't forget Old Europe staged million men marches against Reagan's deployment of Pershings missiles, and ridiculed Reagan's "Star War". We should please Old Europe and Russia as much as we should please Pelosi and Reid. The only time that these people were pleased was on Sept 11, 2001. Even then they believed we deserved it. No diplomacy would do you any good if your "allies" and "friends" wish you ill.
Posted by: ic at April 23, 2007 11:39 PMThis is like a major-league manager saying, "We were a little late in putting a first baseman on the field."
No I think it's more like, "Hey, we're putting this here, you gotta problem with it?" and the other side thinking it's not a rhetorical question.
Posted by: KRS at April 24, 2007 12:45 AMSpeaking of Democratic Presidential hopefuls...
Regardless of your political alignments, I think I found something amusing, to say the least, featuring the Democrats vs. the Republicans in old-school, knockdown drag-out superhero glory, based on the age-old Superfriends cartoon...
The Challenge Of The Super-Duper Friends!
Pretty okay Flash animation, and Karl Rove as the Joker really takes the cake.
Check it out. :p
So how many rubles (that the Russians don't have) is Russia going to pour into countering this missile defense program?
It sounds to me that Bush is getting the Russians to do what Reagan did - spend themselves into bankruptcy and irrelevance. That will keep them out of trouble.
Now, to get China to do the same thing as opposed to modernizing their fleet, army, and air force...
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at April 24, 2007 7:17 AM
Fred Kaplan strikes again.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel for Orrin to post his columns and make fun of them. :)
Posted by: kevin whited at April 24, 2007 9:13 AMAnother example where the self-proclaimed Realists sound like highschoolers who spend all their time worrying about what the "cool kids" think about them, never realizing that nobody really cares to think about them.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at April 24, 2007 9:50 AMIt seems fairly obvious that the Russians are squawking about the European missile-defense so they can use it as a negotiating leverage on other issues, not because they truly object to it. They're concerned about our influence in the Central Asian 'Stans, or more likely Georgia and the Ukraine. If we give them what they want there, they'd drop it fast. If we weren't setting up missile defense, they'd just find something else to complain about.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at April 24, 2007 10:42 AM