One day, we are looking forward to the start of the Olympic Games. Then, out of nowhere, we are looking at war between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the sovereign State of Georgia. This is a hard dose of medicinal reality that the free world must swallow, and deal with.
The suddenness of Russia’s air attacks and tank incursions against Georgia should be the wake-up call to the world that Russia is back to its old self. One could argue whether they had ever really changed, given their turning away from the concept of freedom and democracy under Putin’s first administration. Now in his second administration (under a different name), their idea of diplomacy between countries is military force, not the United Nations.
Russia uses the United Nations when it suits them, and blows them off when it doesn’t. Fact is, the U.N. is not capable of doing anything to solve this conflict. They have no experience in standing up to Russia in any fashion. If there is anything that I can agree with Putin about, it is the ineffectiveness of the United Nations to the point of their irrelevance in world affairs beyond serving as a global meals-on-wheels. The fact that he hasn’t taken whatever his gripe is with Georgia to the United Nations first, is proof of that. There hasn’t been any U.N. resolutions on the matter. Not eighteen, as in Iraq. Not even one.
This episode also makes the case for a new outlook on global security in some geopolitical organization of States other than the United Nations. Not to mention how our own presidential candidates and political parties view our role in the world and how do deal with people like Putin and countries like Russia that seem hell bent on shooting first.
And speaking of our candidates for president, all those who think that there will be unanimity in how to proceed please raise your hand. Peace through strength has been tried and worked. This is a time, if there ever was one, where the United States needs to be speaking with one voice, not just for the sake of Georgia and States like them, but for the world.
