The Great Enabler
Of course, Putin considers Bush to be an idiot who blundered into a hopeless Iraq quagmire while trying to check Russian interests in the Middle East and Central Asia.
But Bush is a useful idiot.
There are three states that have unequivocally adopted a draconian, militarized, and unilateral security regime to deal with Islam-tinged terrorism: Israel, Russia, and the United States.
Of the three, Russia is struggling with the most intractable problem: the chronic, bloody conflict with incensed Chechen separatists that culminated in the horror of the Beslan school massacre.
If Russia is defeated in Chechnya, that conflict could serve as a template for the dissolution of Russia’s non-European holdings.
The stakes for Putin could not be higher.
Bush’s key role in this War on Terror troika is as The Great Enabler.
Bush’s defiant go-it-alone strategy, pushing aside the UN and spurning outside participation in decision-making or administration that might compromise America’s undiluted ownership of the Iraq mess, validates similar approaches by Sharon and Putin.
Freedom-loving America’s adoption of a militarily aggressive national solution outside the framework of international law and institutions gives the stamp of approval to equally defiant stands by Russia in Chechnya and Israel on the West Bank.
The key U.S. electoral factor concerning Putin and Sharon is Kerry’s call to internationalize and coordinate our strikes on terrorism.
This position is absolute anathema to Putin and Sharon, who have been violently and consistently loath to internationalize their dealings with the Palestinians and the Chechens.
Internationalizing conflicts legitimizes the opposition and confirms its right to resist; lays brutal and often incompetently executed anti-insurgency operations open to accountability, second-guessing and censure; and undermines the international standing of the state power.
So there’s not much for Putin and Bush to look forward to in a Kerry victory, unless they want to see the Bill Clinton as ambassador to the U.N. commiserating with the Chechens and Palestinians as they yammer about the horrors that escalating counterinsurgency is visiting upon their lands.
But the Bush-Putin-Sharon unilateral military approach seems to offer little more than an increasingly bloody cul-de-sac.
And their foreign policy — an ad hoc alliance of states with vastly different interests and capabilities that disregards national and international opinion — doesn’t offer them a way out either.
Their cooperation is a genuine throwback to the old days when states with a temporary identity of views clubbed together to achieve greater political and military space to advance their discrete national interests.
Instead of an international effort within the framework of supra-national treaties and institutions, Putin, Sharon, and Bush prefer the traditional web of secret realpolitik alliances that characterized the European powers in the 19th century — and led to the collective jump off the cliff into the horror of World War I.
Axis of Oblivion, anyone?
Peter Lee is the creator of the antiwar satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
