Well the American political machine's response to this war has more or less finished drafting the partisan arguments of who's to blame. As usual, conservatives get to yell the loudest about the least relevant factors at play here. (And of course, at every turn, it is obviously the Liberals fault that Russia did what it did)
So lets review the loudest and least accurate of these opinions.
1. We need to stand up to this aggression! Liberals are feckless and don't care about Russian aggression!
Read the NYTimes, or Obama's statement on the conflict for a quick debunking of this. The political tastemakers on both sides of the isle are essentially united in condemning Russia for their aggression, calling for a cease fire, Georgian territorial integrity, and a genuine peacekeeping force that is free from Russian influence.
More importantly, conservatives consistently fail to explain what is substantially different about their preferred choice of response than Liberals. As usual (see Iran), they simply say that Liberals just aren't being strong enough, and eliminate all options other than war as being too high-minded - without ever mentioning war, of course.
2. Liberals are just blaming Bush for this!
Partially, but not in the way conservatives would like to think they are blaming him. I haven't seen any liberal mouthpiece express the opinion that we should not have any interest in helping Georgia, a democracy, succeed. (This, BTW, is the holy grail of conservative arguements right now).
The argument against Bush is that he bungled this. We will probably never know what went through Saakashvili's head before he decided to take on Russia via Ossetia, but if Bush was trying to make Georgia a stable toehold against Russia (and he was, rightly so) then he clearly did not exert enough control over his surrogate there to keep the whole plan from blowing up in his face.
Less important than the fact that this does represent Putin winning a tactical proxy war over Bush is the fact that, despite conservative shouts to the contrary, the "liberal media" and "ivory tower" and "leftist blogosphere" just isn't blaming Bush for this as much as they would like them to be.
3. See? Soft Power doesn't work!
What soft power? You mean the guns, training, and military backing we have been supplying Georgia with? We have girded their military as well as we have been able to. The only thing "harder" than that is going to war ourselves.
Furthermore, the spark that touched this off was Georgia utilizing their own hard power against Russia, by trying to eliminate the pro-Russian seperatist forces in Ossetia. They took a hard shot at Russian influence in their borders, and are now getting their asses handed to them. Guess they just didn't fight "hard" enough, eh?
If anything, this situation is notable for the absence of any soft power. No major diplomatic negotiations over Ossetia in the run-up to this, no major discussions of Georgia between Russia and the US. No attempt at a negotiated solution before the shooting started. Soft power didn't have the chance to fail here.
4. mumble mumble oil mumble natural gas
What was that? Did you say that these two-bit dictators in Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Burma are getting away with murder, literally, because their energy resources are too vast? Well now, looks like you might almost be agreeing with we liberals here!
Oh, but you want to drill for oil here domestically as the solution... well, we've had this argument before. But this time we're not talking about our energy security, we are talking about the energy security of other nations, who are allied with us, and are dependent on Russian natural gas and Iranian oil. Their dependence\fear is the biggest factor that is getting in the way of the firm response that we need to be giving to Russia and others when they pull crap like this.
So lets set aside the fact that drilling-as-the-only-solution conservatives have not been able to prove how we will be able to significantly quench our own energy demand with any new oil available... now you would have to argue that we can both meet our own needs while simultaniously surpassing the influence of the middle east and Russia as an energy exporter.
So, yet another reminder that a global energy economy in debted to oil is a global economy indebted to the worst nations we've got. But alternative energy is just a hippie pipe-dream right? An environmentalist screed against our patriotic oil-based economy? Oh, and global warming is a myth too.
You might think that Russia is happy to hear a disorganized response to the west. But I'm sure they are far more emboldened by the fact that western nations will be continually eating out of their hand so long as patriotic conservatives keep "winning" the argument against energy security.
