Some early reviews of Quantum of Solace are not promising (via Clive Davis), but should we really trust the judgement of someone who liked the horrid theme song?  Judging from the criticism and the trailer, I strongly suspect that your response to this new Bond film will be very similar to your response to the Greengrass-directed parts of the Bourne trilogy.  Either you will think that this is what spy flicks are supposed to be like, or you will find it chaotic and abhorrent.  It may also be the case that as the novelty of the Daniel Craig Bond wears off there will not be as much interest in the future sequels.  Despite Casino Royale‘s success at the box office, it is probably just a matter of time before nostalgia for the formulaic Bond films sets in and there will be demands to boot the rebooted Bond. 

Nor will we ever have the luxury of withdrawing from the world. If we tried, the world would simply come to us – as it did on 9/11. ~Ralph Peters

Because prior to 9/11, we had been withdrawing from the world so much.  This is the sort of idiocy that is normally reserved to such masters as Karl Rove, who offered this bit of insight earlier this year:

Well, we were not involved in the world before 9/11, and look what happened.

After all, we had only bombed, invaded or deployed forces to a measly six other countries in the previous twelve years, which does not begin to count the mere scores of countries where we have had bases.  Clearly, we were slacking off when it came to international meddling.  I mean, at that point we hadn’t funded a guerrilla insurgency on the other side of the planet for years!  Yes, the lesson of the last twenty years must be that withdrawing from our positions overseas is the luxury we cannot afford. 

Perpetual pursuit of hegemony is the only option that interventionists want to permit Americans to have, which is why there is no meaningful alternative on offer from either of the major parties on the ballot tomorrow.   

P.S.  As part of his dedicated effort to pen his third horrible foreign policy column in as many tries, Peters throws in an “Islamic fascist” reference, taking us back to the good old days of 2006-07 when this nonsensical description seemed to be everywhere.

Ralph Peters was so close to painting a realistic future scenario of an Obama foreign policy, but his shameless bias in favor of the Democratic candidate kept him from facing up to the inevitable appeasement that is bound to follow Evo Morales’ annexation of Texas.  His refusal to acknowledge the rise of the Bolivian menace is just what you’d expect from such a blatant Obama apologist.   

P.S.  Didn’t Peters already discredit himself on foreign policy enough this year?

But the August war in Georgia and the ongoing economic and financial collapse mark a tipping point. For the first time in generations, a mood of patriotism, jingoism and staunch Russian nationalism have become pervasive among even educated Russians who once considered themselves pro-Western liberals. Yes, most Russians have been reflexively patriotic all along. But Russia has seldom in living memory been more nationalistic—and seldom have Russia’s brightest and best found themselves more in agreement with the people—as well as the Kremlin—on their country’s greatness. In the spring of 2008, 65 percent of Russians felt “generally positive” about the United States, according to the Yuri Levada opinion polls center in Moscow. But after the war in Georgia, that indicator dropped to just 7 percent. At the same time, Putin’s approval ratings have climbed eight points between July and September to 88 percent; Dmitry Medvedev‘s increased 13 points, to 83 percent. ~Newsweek

That surge in hostility towards the United States is remarkable, but not at all surprising.  We cannot as a matter of official policy and establishment consensus opinion vilify Russia for years and then treat Russia as the villain in what is at best a very murky, complicated conflict and expect there to be no consequences.  Throughout Russian history, when Russia has faced an external challenge it has worked to the advantage of the state, as memories of past conflicts are mapped onto new ones and there is a strong nationalist impulse to solidarity with the state in response to the challenge.  This is a common theme in nationalist politics, but it is strongest among nations that have both old and recent memories of foreign invasions.  What I have continued to find so frustrating and perplexing about Western expressions of antipathy for Russia’s legitimate interests is the complete lack of comprehension of the political reaction this real and perceived hostility would cause inside Russia.  After each provocation, Russian nationalism grows stronger, Putinism becomes more entrenched and U.S.-Russian relations keep deteriorating, and then Westerners complain about Russia “turning away from the West”–how can Westerners not see their own part in this dynamic? 

If Russia is becoming increasingly nationalistic, and is now more so than at any time since the end of the Cold War, it is no small part because Westerners have spent the better part of the last twenty years making demands, acting provocatively and ignoring Russian interests.  If liberal forces have been completely routed and authoritarianism advances, it is at least in part because Putin and Medvedev offer the Russian public a means for political expression of their frustrations and interests and these figures can plausibly portray liberals as excessively pro-Western and their Western sympathizers as pretty clearly anti-Russian.  If the interests of Russians and their ability to live in a freer society are the concer, why continue to play into the hands of authoritarian populists and the forces of nationalism by adopting ever-more confrontational and anti-Russian positions?  When a foreign government berates and vilifies America, or even just criticizes our government, most Americans take a dim view of that foreign government regardless of whether the criticism has merit and regardless of their own political views.  Why would we expect Russians to be any different?  When the founder of Yabloko and other members of the liberal opposition are siding with the modern Kremlin, Western sympathizers with Russian liberalism–who are also typically advocates of democracy promotion and NATO expansion–have done something wrong.  Even though this may ultimately be for the best in weakening the association between Russian liberals and the West, clearly any “freedom agenda” Washington wants to promote has gone badly awry when the last Russian liberals want nothing to do with the West.  For my part, I think that internal Russian affairs are the business of Russians, and America’s concern should be to pursue as much cooperation with the Russians as our just interests allow, but it seems inescapable that if you are interested in promoting liberalization inside Russia there could not be a more counterproductive approach than the current method of threaten-and-insult.  

Attending a Russian church, I know many Russians and Russian-Americans, and there is complete unanimity from everything I have heard from my friends that Russia is the aggrieved party in this conflict, Saakashvili is a war criminal and the American politicians who have paid court to him are appalling.  Electorally, this means opposition to McCain, who is rightly considered the worst of the lot.  There seems to be universal disgust with the news coverage of the war in Georgia.  As the results from the survey cited in the article show, clearly this is not simply a function of members of the diaspora taking a harder line than people in the home country as is sometimes the case with diasporan communities.

He [Thaksin] remains the most influential politician in Thailand, where he is adored by the rural poor who benefited from his populist policies. But the educated urban elite largely revile him, judging him corrupt and power-hungry.

The anti-government protesters have demanded a change to Thailand’s Western-style electoral system, which they say Thaksin exploited to buy votes. They instead favor a system in which some representatives are chosen by certain professions and social groups. ~AP

Of course Thaksin exploited this system to buy votes, and it is because he bought votes that he is enormously popular among the people whose votes he bought.  That sounds vaguely familiar.  The opposition’s alternative electoral system is not something that is proposed very often these days.  I don’t think I have heard of middle-class professionals arguing for a quasi-corporatist voting system in a modern democratic state.  It is usually the case in democratizing states that urban middle-class voters want to dismantle the institutional privileges granted to established estates and corporations, but the goal of weighting votes and providing votes to representatives of professions is plainly to prevent another demagogue such as Thaksin from prevailing in elections.  It remains unclear whether the liberals or the democrats will prevail in Thailand, but for Thailand’s sake we can hope that Thaksin and his party lose.

There are some important new findings by a BBC investigation into the beginning of the war in Georgia in early August of this year.  Seumas Milne has the details:

Not only does the report by Tim Whewell – aired this week on Newsnight and on Radio 4’s File on Four – find strong evidence confirming western-backed Georgia as the aggressor on the night of August 7. It also assembles powerful testimony of wide-ranging war crimes carried out by the Georgian army in its attack on the contested region of South Ossetia.

They include the targeting of apartment block basements – where civilians were taking refuge – with tank shells and Grad rockets, the indiscriminate bombardment of residential districts and the deliberate killing of civilians, including those fleeing the South Ossetian capital of Tskinvali.

The carefully balanced report – which also details evidence of ethnic cleansing by South Ossetian paramilitaries – cuts the ground from beneath later Georgian claims that its attack on South Ossetia followed the start of a Russian invasion the previous night.

Obviously, this does not excuse any crimes committed by Ossetian or Russian forces in the days that followed, but it makes very clear that Western politicians and pundits who have referred repeatedly to Russian “aggression” have been quite simply wrong.  If early Russian reports of Ossetian civilian casualties in the thousands may have been exaggerated, there is apparently good reason to believe that there were at least 300 or 400 such casualties.  These were civilian casualties inflicted in an absolutely unnecessary war escalated by an ally of the United States.

With just three days until the election (can it be true–it’s really almost over?), here are some not terribly surprising predictions.  Obama will win 54-46% with 364 votes in the Electoral College (Missouri will vote for Obama).  Republicans will lose Senate seats in AK, NM, CO, VA, NH, NC, OR and MN, but narrowly retain the GA, MS and KY seats.  In the House, Democrats will lose TX-22 and FL-16, as these are normally heavily Republican districts that were lost due to past scandals, as well as PA-11 (Kanjorski’s seat) and LA-06 (Cazayoux will not prevail in the general), but Nancy Boyda in Kansas and Shea-Porter in New Hampshire will be re-elected.  The Democrats will win 33 other seats: IL-11, AK-AL, FL-08, FL-21, FL-24, FL-25, CO-04, OH-16, NY-29, MI-09, CA-04, ID-01, IL-10, MD-01, LA-04, NJ-07, NJ-03, MI-07, MN-03, NC-08, NV-03, NM-02, OH-01, OH-15, PA-03, WA-08, IN-03, NY-26, OH-02, NY-13, NY-25, VA-11 and VA-05.  Baffling outsiders, Bachmann will survive the fallout from her Hardball interview.  So, in some relatively good news for the GOP, the majority will have a net gain of just 29. 

Darren White will win in NM-01, continuing the inexplicable tradition of metro Albuquerque always electing a Republican representative.  This last prediction is the one most likely to be proved false, because I voted for White and there is another time-honored tradition that says that every candidate I vote for must lose.

In the “pre-criminations” for the likely McCain defeat, there seem to be four targets of criticism: 1) McCain; 2) McCain’s campaign staff; 3) Palin; 4) Impossible external conditions.  Of course, it is possible to argue that #4 makes all of the others irrelevant, but it shouldn’t absolve them of responsibility for their respective failures.  Of the four, Palin has the smallest share of blame, as she was involved in the campaign for the shortest time and the selection of her was an expression of more fundamental problems with McCain and his campaign.  That doesn’t mean that she wasn’t a liability, and it doesn’t mean that she has done a terribly good job, and it definitely doesn’t mean that she is the future of the party, but if the GOP decides to make her the primary individual scapegoat they will be missing far more important lessons from this election. 

The candidate and the staff are hard to extricate from one another: McCain chose the staffers and agreed to heed their advice, and they crafted a message-free campaign that they thought suited a candidate defined by his biography.  To accuse Palin, as some McCain insiders have done anonymously, of having gone “off message” is meaningless–there has been no message from which she could have departed.  For that matter, to credit Schmidt with having enforced some kind of discipline on a rudderless, message-free campaign is not much of a compliment.  All that this means is that he effectively organized an aimless campaign as it zigged and zagged efficiently from one incoherent line of attack to the next.  McCain bears the bulk of the responsibility for a poor campaign, as the nominee always does, and the poor campaign was practically foreordained once McCain decided that characteristically moralistic harping on two or three of his favorite issues, which had been his primary election approach, would be the path to victory in November.  The campaign was message-free because of McCain’s weakness on policy, particularly domestic policy, which ensured that his response to the financial crisis could not have been very effective.  It did not have to be as absurd as it was, but it was never going to inspire much confidence. 

External conditions brought the McCain campaign crumbling to the ground, but that was a result of its unsound foundations and poor construction.

Obama is running out of states if you follow out a traditional model. Today, he expanded his buy into North Dakota, Georgia and Arizona in an attempt to widen the playing field and find his 270 Electoral Votes. This is a very tall order and trying to expand into new states in the final hours shows he doesn’t have the votes to win. ~Rick Davis

Via Andrew

When your campaign has hung all of its hopes on the crazy gamble of flipping Pennsylvania, a state that Bush couldn’t win in his re-election campaign in relatively good times, it is strange to have your staffers talk about traditional models.  According to the traditional model, McCain is already finished and has been for weeks.  Then again, what else are you going to say when Arizona and Georgia are now rated as toss-up states?  I’m not sure how much of this is put out for public consumption to prevent stories titled, “McCain staffers lose all hope,” and how much of it is an expression of the real views of McCain insiders.  Presumably the insiders know that they’re going to lose and are keeping up appearances, but how shocked will McCain’s voters be when the comeback that they are being vaguely promised does not happen? 

There does seem to be a real problem emerging here: if McCain supporters, encouraged by the talk radio echo chamber, believe that they are on the verge of an upset win and also believe in claims of widespread voter fraud, what are the odds that they are going to accept the results on Tuesday?  It seems to me that Obama needs to win by a significant margin in the popular vote and Electoral College to quash “stolen election” theories.

But by the late 1990s, during America’s post-cold-war triumphalist moment, Senator McCain gradually but decisively moved away from his realist roots and became an enthusiastic champion of an ideological interventionist agenda. To be fair, many in the political center, including key Republican realists, came to believe that, as the only superpower, the United States was both able and entitled to reshape the world without paying a prohibitive price. ~The National Interest

McCain’s move from hawkish realism, which prompted him to criticize deployments to Lebanon and Somalia, to super-hawkish interventionism can be overstated, but it is clear that during the Balkan Wars McCain abandoned any hint of realism.  Complicating matters, McCain was correct in his arguments against intervening in Lebanon and Somalia, which sounded eerily similar to many conservative arguments against invading Iraq.  At one time, he was wary of intervention because of the intractability of local conflicts, our lack of understanding of the divisions in a very different foreign society, and the lack of clear objectives and direct connection to the national interest, but cast all of that aside to support intervention in the Balkans of all places.  Since then, there has never been a major deployment or use of force that he has opposed.  No one denies that there has been a shift in his views, but as far as I know what no one seems to be able to account for is why, aside from opportunism or perceived political advantage, he came to side with the very kinds of people who would not only have wanted to go into Lebanon and Somalia but who also regularly decry the subsequent withdrawals from those places as invitations to attack.