But as McCain backs "freedom loving" little Georgia (and his neocon/lobbyist senior advisor Randy Scheunemann, who until march was working for gGeorgia) and accuses Russia of trampling all over its sovereignty, he's neglecting a couple of major factors. For one, Russia is in South Ossetia with a CIS mandate for peacekeeping. For a second, tiny freedom-loving South Ossetia has voted several times for independence from it's bigger neighbour, which won't let it go.
James Joyner discusses the notion of small-state sovereignty today in relation to South Ossetia and quotes Daniel Larison writing for American Conservative magazine.
To understand the Russian response, imagine how Americans would respond if Serbia launched an attack into Kosovo while our KFOR troops were still there, and then imagine how much stronger the U.S. response would be if, in the course of the attack to retake the province, our troops took casualties because of that attack. These are the unfortunate, ruinous things that happen when state sovereignty is reduced to a meaningless phrase by past interventions and partitions, and the governments that attacked Yugoslavia over its internal affairs and partitioned Kosovo have no authority to find fault with what Russia is doing now.
McCain doesn't want to understand the Russian response. If he was the one taking those 3am phone cals on this conflict, there would be American armed might on its way to Georgia to confront Russia right now and the world would be listening to the ticking clock of holocaust. That's far too dangerous a man to allow into the Oval Office
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