Did you see the snappy photograph of French President Nicolas Sarkozy with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev the other day? You know the one that appeared on front pages around the world as Sarkozy successfully negotiated a cease fire in the dust up between Russia and Georgia.
My initial reaction was "What???"
My adult life and study of international relations has always had the United States as the principal negotiator with the former Soviet Union when these flare ups happen. The person in that photograph should have been Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, or Vice President Dick Cheney. But it wasn't.
In fact, we heard that President George W. Bush conversed with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin while at the opening sessions of the Olympics in China. Well, Putin left China to return to Russia and hurried to the war zone to cheer on his troops. A fat lot of good Bush's conversation had. I guess he was looking deep into Putin's eyes again. The image of Bush as this tragedy continued to unfold was of him batting balls or something a round with some of the athletes. It wasn't until the situation in Georgia looked to be spiraling totally out of control that Bush returned to Washington. I guess this was another of those Katrina moments.
I don't remember a time in my life when the United States failed to move decisively in an international crisis. Now, our movements might have been more inclined to diplomacy than to militarism, but at least we were doing something. And you can bet that Henry Kissinger would have been standing before the cameras mumbling something about the "Vorld" and "Var" before he hopped onto an airplane to head to the world's capitals to negotiate a settlement. In fact, even during the Iranian crisis in the late '70s our diplomats were working the world to negotiate a settlement. This time, it seems we were content to let the French carry the load of peace.
Shame on us.
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