The Bush administration faced Putin’s Russia with the same mixture of sticks and carrots that the Obama administration has – although, quite clearly, Putin saw in Cheney a man with identical instincts and beliefs about the wielding of military power. But the invasion of Iraq makes the US’s current position in defense of Ukraine’s inviolable sovereignty fraught with historical parallels. Only Dick Cheney would fail to hear the irony in John Kerry’s words yesterday:
You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests.
Jack Matlock, in a shrewd analysis, notes further:
So far as violating sovereignty is concerned, Russia would point out that the U.S. invaded Panama to arrest Noriega, invaded Grenada to prevent American citizens from being taken hostage (even though they had not been taken hostage), invaded Iraq on spurious grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, targets people in other countries with drones, etc., etc. In other words, for the U.S. to preach about respect for sovereignty and preservation of territorial integrity to a Russian president can seem a claim to special rights not allowed others.
It gives me absolutely no pleasure to note this. But Iraq is a lot further away from the US than Ukraine is from Russia, and while WMDs did not exist in Iraq, pro-Russian populations sure do exist in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
What interests me most about this is whether China will be consistent, and isolate Russia still further.
(Photo from Getty)
