You and what army: continued

The loss of the West's ability to slow down Russia's assault into Georgia is the topic of a pair of articles in the National Review Online.

In this article, Claudia Rosett writes about the fact that with the U.S. out as global policeman, the "outlaw" nations are likely to start taking more liberties. She echoed my comments of yesterday regarding the effectiveness of the U.S. "response":

"Bush, upon his return from Beijing to Washington, having failed to stop the Russian invasion of Georgia by declaring himself “deeply concerned,” issued a tougher statement in the Rose Garden: That by invading a neighboring state and threatening to overthrow its elected government, Russia has committed an action that is “unacceptable in the 21st century.”
Oh really? While declaring this invasion “unacceptable,” the global community of the 21st century seems prepared to accept it in spades."

In his article, Victor Davis Hanson, has a similar point. He discusses the limits of "soft power". His assessment included the following:

"The Russians rightly expect Westerners to turn on themselves, rather than Moscow — and they won’t be disappointed. Imagine the morally equivalent fodder for liberal lament: We were unilateral in Iraq, so we can’t say Russia can’t do the same to Georgia. (As if removing a genocidal dictator is the same as attacking a democracy). We accepted Kosovo’s independence, so why not Ossetia’s? (As if the recent history of Serbia is analogous to Georgia’s.) We are still captive to neo-con fantasies about democracy, and so encouraged Georgia’s efforts that provoked the otherwise reasonable Russians (As if the problem in Ossetia is our principled support for democracy rather than appeasement of Russian dictatorship).

From what the Russians learned of the Western reaction to Iraq, they expect their best apologists will be American politicians, pundits, professors, and essayists — and once more they will not be disappointed. We are a culture, after all, that after damning Iraqi democracy as too violent, broke, and disorganized, is now damning Iraqi democracy as too conniving, rich, and self-interested — the only common denominator being whatever we do, and whomever we help, cannot be good."

These articles deeply question the resort to soft power that is so in vogue among "progressives". The American left loves to talk, most of our European "allies" love to talk; the Russians would apparently rather act.

Let's not kid ourselves, Barak Obama is in the soft power camp. If he becomes President, we can expect more "action" by our enemies while we talk ourselves silly.