278. Update on the Great Game

If you don't remember how Prof. John J. Mearshimer deplored our move to expand NATO eastward (Foreign Affairs 93:5, 2014, my Post 262) maybe you remember diplomat George Kennan's warning at the time, "I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely."  I placed the move as part of "The Great Game" played by Britain and Russia in the nineteenth century and joined enthusiastically by the U. S. in the twentieth (Post 262).

Even if you have been too busy to pay close attention you probably know that the game hasn't been going too well for us.  We looked either weak or stupid after Putin did what he wanted to the country of the good man we supported [Saakashvili, of Georgia] and we looked like a mere noisemaker when he went into Crimea. 

Now it looks like our opponent is going to put some serious points on the board.  As the leaders of Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia sat down in Minsk he still, as the NYT analysis (Andrew Higgins, 2-12-15) made clear, "held the decisive cards."  The leaders "confronted the reality that Mr. Putin held the upper hand precisely because he is prepared to use military force to get what he wants in diplomacy."

Why couldn't we see that moving NATO so close to Russia was a bad move, that it was even what Kennan called it at the time, "a tragic mistake"?  Why couldn't we listen to Kennan?  Because, I think, we were deafened by our own sounds.  Democrats wanted to make good sounds and Republicans wanted to make tough sounds.  And now here we are, reduced to a squeak.   We weren't willing to go to war.  We never were.  Putin is.  Squeak, squeak while his points go up.

The game is played in front of American voters.  An administration can't retreat in front of Republicans because that would be soft.  An administration has to go forward because of Democrats, who can't leave good people to their fate (the first moves east were made under the Carter and Clinton administrations). 

Part of the problem is that we keep getting the wrong people into the game.  Generals and Defense department types (think Rumsfeld) are not the people to play diplomacy.  Not even, if they are in the administration, to comment on it.  Their job (as in the administrative reform I dreamed of in Post 271) is to carry out what the policy-makers decide on, and give advice on capabilities. 

 But just a week ago Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges' view of  "NATO's Russian Front" appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion pages (7-8 Feb, 15).  He "won't weigh in directly in the Washington policy debate" but Russia, he says, "has set out to redraw the boundaries of Europe."  And he won't worry about our provoking dangerous responses.  "You know, frankly, you hear this often from people in the West, 'Oh, we don't want to provoke the Russians.'  I think concern about provoking the Russians is probably misplaced.  You can't provoke them.  They're already on a path to do what they want to do."

Once again I find myself wishing that American leaders, and behind them the American people, would ask themselves the question asked in tough bars, and the sooner the better: "Are you willing to fight?"  If the answer is no you sit back and keep your mouth shut.