Bolton and Putin, Sitting in a Tree

On some level, this is entirely to be expected, but it’s interesting how on some level America’s hawks seem to have a deep admiration for the kind of global bad actors they nominally despise. Thus John Bolton:

Fear was one reaction Russia wanted to provoke, and fear it has achieved, not just in the “Near Abroad” but in the capitals of Western Europe as well. But its main objective was hegemony, a hegemony it demonstrated by pledging to reconstruct Tskhinvali, the capital of its once and no-longer-future possession, South Ossetia. The contrast is stark: a real demonstration of using sticks and carrots, the kind that American and European diplomats only talk about.

I think this is really wrong. Throughout this conflict, Vladimir Putin has appeared to be at his most impressive when he’s been most restrained. He didn’t launch a preemptive attack on Georgia. Instead, he waited until Georgia launched a preemptive attack on South Ossetia, then seized the opportunity to teach the Georgians a lesson. And for a while, it looked like he had a glorious little war on his hands that would result in a clear Russian victory with few negative consequences. But in recent days, he seems to be overreaching in a variety of respects — squeezing Georgia harder even though there are few valuable prizes to be won there and prompting counter-pressures from a variety of states. There are no real signs of anyone being intimidating into bandwagoning with Russia, and lots of evidence of hardening anti-Russian sentiment in various quarters.

What we’ve seen play out here is a tragedy of aggression nationalism, with Georgia shooting itself in the foot and then with Russia going too far in response and to some extent squandering its opportunity. The same patterns of thought that failed in Washington, DC in 2003-2005 don’t work in Tbilisi or Moscow either.