The conventional wisdom has it that this month's eruption of violence between Russia and Georgia played squarely into the hands of John McCain. With pundits and hacks fulminating about a return to the Cold War, McCain has ratcheted up the rhetoric, supposedly sending a muscular to the Kremlin. He demanded that "Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory." McCain, who has in the past called Vladimir Putin a "totalitarian dictator", went on to belittle the more cautious tone struck by the Obama campaign as "bizarrely in sync with Moscow." Such claims amount to preposterous misrepresentations of Obama's position and are calculated to appeal to the cruder, blustering passions of the American people. It's not just the benighted of the developing world, after all, that seek solace in their strongmen.
One of the many misfortunes of the flare up in the Caucasus is that an opportunity to probe more deeply into the roots of the conflict is being lost amidst the rhetoric of overheated Cold War nostalgists. For cooler, informed insight on the Russia-Georgia crisis, there are few better places to turn than to openDemocracy, which has long reported on Georgia's internal problems and the failures of Georgian nationalism on their own terms. Get up to speed with oD's Caucasus archive here.
Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder seems to be paying attention. In a candid interview with Der Spiegel he finds it difficult to veil his contempt for the McCain position. When reminded that McCain recently told a townhall audience in Pennsylvania that "today, we are all Georgians", Schröder replies curtly "I am not." He goes on to dismantle the neoconservative, "Kaganesque" perception of the crisis "as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell" and spars with the interviewer about his own ties to Russia.
Washington's western European allies were opposed and remain opposed to expanding NATO to include Georgia for essentially cold, practical reasons. McCain's recent performances suggest that the grizzled Cold Warrior will let ideology sway reason were he president. In Obama, global pragmatists have a more likely partner. It's a grim measure of US politics and society that many Americans have it backwards.