Pushing Russia Into the Cold

Pushing Russia Into the Cold
By Patrick J. Buchanan
August 26, 2008

A year after taking power, in June 1934, Adolf Hitler made his
first visit abroad -- to his idol Benito Mussolini in Venice.

Babbling on incessantly about "Mein Kampf "and the Negroid strain
in Mediterranean peoples, the Fuhrer made a dismal impression.

"What a clown this Hitler is," Mussolini told an aide.

Two weeks later, Hitler executed the Roehm purge and murdered
scores
of old Stormtrooper comrades. In late July, Austrian Nazis,
attempting a coup, assassinated Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, a
friend of Mussolini whose wife and child were then his guests.

Il Duce ordered four divisions to the Brenner Pass and flew to
Vienna to vent his rage and disgust with Hitler. He called a summit
at Stresa with Britain and France to agree on military action
should Hitler make any new move in violation of Versailles.

At the time, however, Il Duce was also plotting revenge on
Abyssinia for a bloody border clash with Italian Somaliland.

Mussolini thought his Allies would understand if he invaded the
Ogaden to add an African colony to his new Roman Empire, just as
the British and French had so often done in previous decades.

Mussolini miscalculated. Morally outraged, Britain and France went
before the League of Nations and had sanctions imposed on Italy
that were too weak to
defeat her but punitive enough to insult her.

Friendless, isolated and condemned as an aggressor by Europe, Italy
and Mussolini had nowhere to turn now but Hitler's Germany.

Thus, over the fate of an Abyssinian slave empire, Britain drove
her faithful World War I ally into the arms of a Nazi dictator
Mussolini loathed and had wished to confront beside Britain. And
Abyssinia was overrun.

Are we making the same mistake in the Caucasus?

Mikheil Saakashvili started this war with his barrage attack and
occupation of South Ossetia. Russia's war of retribution was far
less violent or excessive than the U.S. bombing of Serbia for 78
days over Kosovo, or our unprovoked war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
which has brought death to scores of thousands, or Israel's 35 days
of bombing of Lebanon for a border skirmish with Hezbollah.

Yet, declared John McCain of Russia, "In the 21st century, nations
don't
invade other nations." Even Dick Cheney must have guffawed.

Russia must get out now, adds Bush, for South Ossetia and Abkhazia
belong to a sovereign Georgia. But when did Bush demand that Israel
get off the Golan Heights or withdraw from the birthplace of Jesus,
which Israelis have occupied for 41 years, as he demands that
Russia get out of the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, which Russia has
occupied for two weeks?

As Israel was provoked in 1967, so, too, was Russia provoked.

Russians died in Saakashvili's attack, as American died in Pancho
Villa's raid on New Mexico in 1916. We sent "Black Jack"
Pershing,
future Gen. George Patton and a U.S. army 300 miles into Mexico to
kill Villa. Was this proportionate?

If we proceed on a course of isolating Russia from the West,
keeping her out of the World Trade Organization, throwing her out
of the G-8 and ending cooperation with NATO, where do we
think
Russia will go? Where did Il Duce go, when he was excommunicated
from the West?

Condi Rice compares Vladimir Putin's action in Georgia to Leonid
Brezhnev's crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. She raced to
Warsaw to ink a deal to put 10 anti-missile missiles and U.S.
Patriot missiles manned by Americans into Poland.

Does the Stanford provost have any idea where the end of this road
lies, upon which she and Bush have started the United States?

What do we do if Russia responds to our Patriots in Poland with the
Russian S-300 anti-aircraft system in Iran and Syria?

If the United States intends to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO
and arm them to fight Russia, why should Russia not dissolve the
Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe and move her tank armies
into Belarus and up to the borders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?

Would we send U.S. troops into the Baltic republics to
signal that
we will fight Russia to honor our NATO war guarantees? Which NATO
allies would fight alongside us against a nuclear-armed Russia?

If we bring Ukraine into NATO, what do we do if Russified east
Ukraine secedes and Russia sends troops to back the rebels? Do we
send warships into Russia's bathtub, the Black Sea, and commit to
fight as long as it takes to restore Ukraine's territorial integrity?

In March 1939, Britain pledged to declare war and fight Germany to
the death to guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of
Poland. How did that one turn out for Britain and Poland?

Before we start down the road of isolating and encircling Russia
with weak NATO allies, let us think through Gen. Petraeus' question
in 2003 about Iraq, "Tell me, how does this thing end?"

But, then, these folks never seem to think anything through.

SOURCE:
http://www.buchanan.org


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