An open letter to CNN: Stop letting Republicans play you like fools

By Michael J.W. Stickings

CNN: "Biden stands by Obama on 'hot mic' controversy."

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Dear CNN,

Please excuse the language, but there is no fucking controversy. All Obama told President Medvedev was that he'd have more flexibility to work on a nuclear arms deal after the election.

And so Biden was completely right: "The idea that in this election year we're going to be able to deal with an agreement with the Russians on further reducing our nuclear arsenals... is difficult.

Actually, I'd say that's an understatement. It's next to impossible.

Republicans are trying to score political points off the president's remark -- including Romney, who used it, pathetically, to try to deflect attention away from releasing his tax returns.

They're trying to turn this into a controversy. Do you not see that?

And you, like so many in the mainstream media, are playing right along. Or, rather, right into their hands, making something out of nothing and being the mouthpiece for their anti-Obama narratives.

And it really is nothing. All the president was acknowledging was a pretty obvious political reality. In any election season, you just can't get things done, particularly important things like an arms agreement.

I explained all this in a post I wrote in response to how Republicans were making a big deal of it, using it to smear the president as anti-American, as prepared to sell America out after the election:

Winning an election means pandering, at least to some degree, to the electorate, and on national security issues, particularly complicated international ones, Americans are, by and large, deeply ignorant and prone to prolonged spasms of jingoism. Particularly on the national state, you need to be "tough," or at least to appear to be, and for the jingoistically ignorant that means saber-rattling. Republicans have been successful on the national state in large part by playing directly to this jingoistic ignorance and so by appearing to be tough (e.g., torture detainees! bomb Iran! flaunt America's nukes like a massive national hard-on!). All President Obama is doing is recognizing this unfortunate political reality...

President Obama, far more than pretty much every Republican, understands the complexity of international relations. What he is saying is not that he will capitulate, that he will give Russia whatever it wants, but that he will work with Russia on long-term solutions to these challenging problems, that he will treat Russia as a partner for peace.

Republicans are just vomiting up their usual partisan outrage. If they don't believe it, they're cynical. If they do, they're just plain stupid.

As for you and the rest of the media, you'd do well to stop letting them play you for fools.

Enough already.

Somewhat less than best regards,

Michael Stickings

A desperate, pathetic Romney smears Obama for supposedly selling out America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In response to the Obama campaign's call for Romney to release his tax returns going back to the 1980s, the Romney campaign has made a counter-proposal of its own:

"The Obama campaign is playing politics, just as he's doing in his conduct of foreign policy," Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul wrote. "Obama should release the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders so the American people can be satisfied that he's not promising to sell out the country's interests after the election is over."

This is, of course, ridiculous. As Politico's Alexander Burns notes:

Releasing tax returns is a standard thing for a presidential candidate to have to do, which is not so much the case for releasing the transcripts of every conversation an incumbent president has had with a foreign leader. But of course the Romney campaign knows that, and the decision to answer with a non sequitur is a deliberate one. And the effectiveness of the tactic will hinge on voters are as prepared to believe that Barack Obama is bargaining away the country as they are willing to buy the idea that Mitt Romney is a secretive rich guy.

That's right. Basically, Romney is hoping that his completely baseless accusation that Obama is trying to sell out America, as if the president is basically a traitor, will stick. With the economy improving and his own approval ratings tanking, it's pretty much all he's got, this and his various other anti-Obama smears.

The selling out argument, such as it is an argument at all, has picked up speed after Obama was caught telling Russian President Medvedev that he'll have more flexibility after the election. Of course, he didn't mean that he'd sell out to Russia, just that politics limits one's viable options, particularly in the middle of an election season, but Republicans, as stupid and opportunistic as ever, jumped all over the remark as if it were the smoking gun they'd been waiting for.

The Romney campaign's "non sequitur," comparing apples to oranges, reflects just how pathetic it is, how desperate it is to smear Obama as a way to deflect from its own candidate's massive weakness.

And suggsting that "the notes and transcripts of all his meetings with world leaders" is fair game for public consumption isn't just ridiculous but reflective of a dangerously ignorant understanding of how the world works and of how diplomacy must be conducted. Simply put, the president, like any world leader, must be able to have private conversations, out of the public eye, with his fellow leaders. If it were all to be made public, no world leader would say anything of substance to the president, and the president would have to make every statement with an eye to how it would play, unfiltered, in the public arena. In other words, it would severely handcuff America's ability to communicate with, and make deals with, other countries. What the Romney campaign is suggesting, simply, is that the U.S. should willingly weaken itself on the international stage. If anyone is willing to sell out America, then, it's Romney. He would effectively disempower his own country.

It's unlikely, of course, that Romney and his people actually think this should be done. In addition to smearing Obama with the "selling out" charge, they're just using it for immediate political purposes as a self-defensive way to deflect attention away from Romney's tax returns, which should certainly be released for public consumption.

But the Romney campaign's ridiculous response can nonetheless be seen as an indication of how it intends to wage its battle with Obama -- that is, by lying and smearing and doing everying possible to keep the real Mitt Romney, whatever there is left now that he's a soul-less political automaton, from public view. That's really his only hope.

Obama to Medvedev: "After my election I have more flexibility." (Cue ignorant, jingoistic conservative outrage!)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Conservatives are outraged -- outraged!!! -- by President Obama's comment to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin should give him "space" on controversial issues like missile defence because... and I quote... "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." (Watch it below.)

Oh no! Obama was caught by an open microphone admitting that... well, what?

That he'll capitulate once the election is over... that he'll sell out America... that he's got some traitorous secret plan for his second term... that he's lying to the American people?

Here's a quiz. Conservatives are:

a) faux outraged;

b) politically ignorant;

c) dumb-ass jingoists;

d) fucking stupid; or

e) all of the above.

Allowing for an exception or two, I'm going with (e).

First, of course Obama would have more flexibility in a second term. Every politician has more flexibility when he or she doesn't face re-election. It was certainly true of Bush after 2004.

Second, winning an election means pandering, at least to some degree, to the electorate, and on national security issues, particularly complicated international ones, Americans are, by and large, deeply ignorant and prone to prolonged spasms of jingoism. Particularly on the national state, you need to be "tough," or at least to appear to be, and for the jingoistically ignorant that means saber-rattling. Republicans have been successful on the national state in large part by playing directly to this jingoistic ignorance and so by appearing to be tough (e.g., torture detainees! bomb Iran! flaunt America's nukes like a massive national hard-on!). All President Obama is doing is recognizing this unfortunate political reality. It's a reality realists like Medvedev, like most sensible political figures, understand all too well. ("I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir." This is how diplomacy works.)

Third, President Obama, far more than pretty much every Republican, understands the complexity of international relations. What he is saying is not that he will capitulate, that he will give Russia whatever it wants, but that he will work with Russia on long-term solutions to these challenging problems, that he will treat Russia as a partner for peace, not, as Romney would have it, as America's #1 enemy (not just a counter-productive but completely reckless position to take, though I suspect Romney is just flopping around like usual).

Fourth, the White House clarified the issue: "[T]his is a political year in which the Russians just had an election, we're about to have a presidential and congressional elections — this is not the kind of year in which we're going to resolve incredibly complicated issue like this. So there's an advantage to pulling back and letting the technical experts work on this as the president has been saying." Makes sense, no? I mean, we all know this, don't we? It's politics versus policy, the latter of which is often sacrificed by the former. Alas, conservatives are so blinded by their relentless partisan outrage that they can't -- and won't -- make sense of anything.

Fifth, did I mention that conservatives are, by and large, fucking stupid?

Russia's position on Libya: Trying to have it both ways

Guest post by Dmitry Gorenburg

Dmitry Gorenburg is a senior analyst at CNA's Center for Strategic Studies, the editor of the journal Russian Politics & Law, and an associate at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. From 2005 to 2010, he served as Executive Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). He has taught in the Department of Government at Harvard University and has served as a consultant on Russian military and security issues for various agencies of the U.S. government and on ethnic and minority issues for the European Center for Minority Issues. In addition, he writes the blog Russian Military Reform.

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The Russian Government surprised many observers by going along with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized international enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya. Russia was initially expected to veto the resolution. Instead, Russia chose to abstain in order to ensure the protection of civilians, while its ambassador to the United Nations made statements expressing concern about how the resolution would be implemented.

In recent years, Russia has had close trade relations with the Libyan Government. In particular, it has signed billions of dollars worth of arms contracts with the regime of Muammar Qaddafi. This is the context that partially explains the removal of Vladimir Chamov, Russia's ambassador to Libya, after he sent a telegram to Moscow arguing that allowing the U.N. resolution to pass would represent a betrayal of Russia's state interests. Chamov has since returned to Moscow, where he has publicly spoken out against the implementation of the no-fly zone.

Soon after the vote, Russia's attitude toward the no-fly zone unexpectedly became a factor in Russian domestic politics. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's statement on March 21 criticized the U.N. for getting involved in an internal conflict. In the most controversial part of his remarks, Putin argued that the resolution allowed international forces to take virtually any measures against a sovereign state, and in this he said it resembled medieval calls to crusades, "when someone called on others to go to a certain place and liberate it."

The response from President Dmitry Medvedev was almost immediate. He argued that Russia's abstention on the resolution vote was the proper position. Furthermore, he dressed down Putin (though not by name) by saying, "[u]nder no circumstances is it acceptable to use expressions that essentially lead to a clash of civilizations, such as 'crusades' and so on. It is unacceptable. Otherwise, everything may end up much worse than what is going on now. Everyone should remember that." And he removed Chamov from his position, essentially for public insubordination. Putin came out the next day with a statement indicating that the president is responsible for foreign policy in Russia and that he backed his president's policies. A spokesman indicated that Putin's previous statement was simply an indication of his own personal views rather than an official policy statement.

It may be that this conflict was yet another example of the good cop-bad cop show that the Russian leadership tandem has been putting on for the last three years. Or it may be that this is the first serious indication that Medvedev and Putin are engaged in a serious behind-the-scenes tussle for the right to run for president in 2012.

Why do Russian politicians see this conflict the way they do? Their inconsistent positions on Libya are essentially a case of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Russian leaders decided not to veto Resolution 1973 for two reasons. First, they did not want to alienate Western leaders who were pushing for the intervention. While the rapprochement with the United States is important to them and certainly played a role here, we should also remember the importance of Russian political and economic ties with European states, and especially France and Italy, both of whom were strongly in favor of a no-fly zone because of the potential for a humanitarian and refugee disaster in the event of an attack by Qaddafi's forces on Benghazi. Second, Russian leaders did not want to be blamed for blocking the intervention if the result was a large-scale massacre of civilians.

On the other hand, Russian leaders also did not want to create a new norm of international intervention in internal conflicts, particularly when these conflicts were the result of a popular uprising against an authoritarian ruler. They genuinely dislike what they see as a Western predilection for imposing their values and forms of government on other parts of the world. They remember the color revolutions in Serbia, the Ukraine, and Georgia, in which friendly regimes were replaced by ones that were to a greater or lesser extent anti-Russian.

Furthermore, they believe that these popular protest movements were organized and funded by Western governments, particularly the United States. This creates a certain amount of suspicion of similar protests leading to the removal of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, even when the deposed rulers do not have particularly close ties to Russia.

So Russian leaders are understandably nervous about the coalition's rather expansive interpretation of Resolution 1973. They were willing to allow for the establishment of a no-fly zone in order to avert a likely massacre of civilians and to help their European partners avoid a flood of refugees on their soil. They are much less willing to see NATO forces provide military assistance to a popular uprising against an authoritarian ruler that it has traditionally supported.

If this conflict drags on, Russian leaders will increasingly begin to speak out against the military campaign. They will be especially concerned if it becomes increasingly clear that NATO air strikes are targeting Qaddafi's ground forces rather than limiting themselves to preventing Libyan air forces from targeting civilian areas.

And now for something completely different...

By Jim Arkedis

Hi everyone -

For the past several weeks, Michael has been kind enough to cross-post a few pieces I've written for my own national security/foreign policy blog -- AllOurMight. A few days ago, Michael asked me to join The Reaction as a co-blogger, and I readily accepted. I aim to do several posts here per week, though my primary home on the internets will remain AllOurMight.

By day, I run the National Security Project at the Progressive Policy Institute -- a Washington, DC think-tank that pushes a centrist-progressive message. I'm also a member of the Truman National Security Project, which is a kind of cabal of center-left security/foreign policy practitioners. And prior to all this, I slaved away in the bowels of the Washington Navy Yard as a counter-terrorism analyst for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS. ("Wait!" I can hear you giggle, "Isn't that a TV show on CBS with Mark Harmon?" Indeed.)

My areas of interest are quite diverse in the security/IR sphere, but generally stick to terrorism, defense spending, intelligence, Russia, European politics, Israel/Palestine, and the obligatory Iraq and Afghanistan.

And with that, here's my first post:

Mr. Medvedev Misses the Point

What’s missing in the first paragraph of Russian President Medvedev’s Washington Post op-ed?

It is hard to dispute the pessimistic assessments of the Russian-American relationship that prevailed at the end of last year. Unfortunately, relations soured because of the previous U.S. administration’s plans — specifically, deployment of the U.S. global missile defense system in Eastern Europe, efforts to push NATO’s borders eastward and refusal to ratify the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. All of these positions undermined Russia’s interests and, if implemented, would inevitably require a response on our part.

Now I’ve read that paragraph a good three times, and I still can’t find the words “invaded Georgia” or “keep shutting the gas off to Europe” anywhere.

In one sense, it would be easy to move past such omissions by chalking them up as a sunk cost towards greater diplomatic progress. “Sigh…” says the wistful American diplomat, “Oh well, that’s how the Russians will always be. But we’ve got bigger fish to fry - on to the next item!”

This is a tough pill to swallow - the Obama administration obviously wants to move forward with Russia, and that is an unambiguously good thing. But if Medvedev’s government is going to retain the Soviet-era mindset that eschews any notion of accountability, Russo-American relations will remain difficult. Without a sense of national responsibility for the strained relations, Russia simply won’t feel like it should make the big compromises necessary. If you haven't done anything wrong, why give some thing away?

What to do? I’d suggest a dual-track: Begin with areas of known mutual interest, like the need for a new START. Pun intended. Simultaneously, soften them up to admitting (publicly) their fair share of the blame. This approach builds basic confidence while impressing the need for accountability. Diplomacy with Russia needs both.

(Cross-posted to AllOurMight.)