Bush and Cheney: Putin's war enablers

Op-ed by Juan Cole.
consequences of Bush administration's assault on international rule of law

Quote:

In a unipolar world, the Bush doctrine of preemptive war allowed Washington to assert itself without fear of contradiction. The Bush doctrine, however, was never meant to be emulated by others and was therefore implicitly predicated on the notion that all challengers would be weaker than the United States throughout the 21st century. Bush and Cheney are now getting a glimpse of a multipolar world in which other powers can adopt their modus operandi with impunity. Bush's rhetoric may have sounded like that of President Woodrow Wilson, but his policy has often been to support the overthrow or hobbling of elected governments that he does not like -- and that has not gone unnoticed by countries that also count themselves great powers and would not mind following suit. The problem with international law for a superpower is that it is a constraint on overweening ambition. Its virtue is that it constrains the aggressive ambitions of others. Bush gutted it because he thought the United States would not need it anytime soon. But Russia is now demonstrating that the Bush doctrine can just as easily be the Putin doctrine. And that leaves America less secure in a world of vigilante powers that spout rhetoric about high ideals to justify their unchecked military interventions. It is the world that Bush has helped build.

What did Putin say...
..What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander....

I completely agree. the idea of pre-emptive strikes is entirely at odds with the post war/un position that aggression against a sovereign state is unacceptable......unless say with un security council approval for humanitarian reasons.

Pre-emptive strikes do not make this a safer world....they give all states including rogue states the ability to claim a moral equivalence to attack anyone they claim might be thinking about or have a plan to attack them or that they might have weapons that could be used against them.

This whole Iraq thing is a Pandoras box.

One point about this article though....it quite rightly says that Georgia has been looking for membership of Nato......and quite rightly it says that Russia isn't exactly keen on the idea; but , and although the US support the idea of Georgia being in Nato neither France nor Germany were receptive to their membership. It is worth considering that if Georgia had been admitted to Nato, all Nato forces would now be required to defend them against this Russian incursion into their territory. Scary thought.