Meanwhile, Barack Obama stated that the military escalation resulted from the "lack of a neutral and effective peacekeeping force operating under an appropriate U.N. mandate." This naive and legalistic assertion completely misses the point of international relations. Peacekeepers are not intended to fight Russian tanks. There is no peace to be kept. Russia invaded because it could, and the Russians saw it in their interest to do so. This wasn't a mismanaged peacekeeping effort. This was a mismanaged foreign policy from Washington because it attempted to gain American influence against Russia without provisioning sufficient American power -- military, economic and energy-based -- to sustain our policy when challenged by Russia, as surely we would be eventually, as in fact we now have been.
Three successive presidents (Bush, Clinton and Bush) have followed Henry Kissinger's early post-Soviet advice to push the line between the West and Russia as far east as possible. It is a sensible policy, as long as it is supported by adequate material means and executed with some diplomatic deftness. But each of those presidents has overseen -- at the same time that they asserted our influence farther east -- the reduction in our fighting land, sea and air forces. And both Clinton and the current Bush have been anything but deft. Clinton, after all, went to war, bombing civilian Serbian cities for two months against Russia's little Slavic brother. And the current President Bush overplayed his weak hand in Bucharest when he called for Georgia's and Ukraine's admissions into NATO (and got turned down even by our NATO allies).
None of this excuses Russia's rude assertion of military power against little Georgia. But here in America, our condemnatory words will have little effect on Moscow. We can influence Moscow (and other restless aggressors) only by building our own nation's strength back to the point that our words alone mean something internationally. And our words alone then will mean something because they will not be completely alone; they will be backed by our real, usable strength. In large part, that is what our presidential election ought to be about: how to strengthen our blessed land -- with overawing military strength, a bountiful and independent energy supply, and a strong and prosperous free market.
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
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