Thread by @lymanstoneky

The story of the international order after the fall of communism goes like this:

Bush Sr. and Clinton attempted to lead the charge of a new international rules-based order friendly to the extension of democracy and liberalism. They succeeded to a shocking extent...

.... thanks to the surprising extent to which Russia turned inwards and had weak and compliant leaders, and China attempted to make amends post-1989 alongside an extremely amicable role played by capital....

Several early crises tested this symptom, such as Gulf I and the breakup of Yugoslavia. Overall, the nascent political order performed its intended function passably well, and it appeared that many regimes with motives to oppose this order might be induced to cooperate.

Then 9/11 happened. This was another major challenge to this system. Bush Jr. successfully assembled another coalition governed by a rules-based order to retaliate against the Taliban. At first, the system was working well.

But then.... Iraq and the Axis of Evil.

Specifically, the invasion of Iraq signaled to many countries that this new order wasn't just passively friendly to liberal democracy, but that the US would break the rules to effect regime change even in regimes that probably didn't break the rules.

Aside from the humanitarian catastrophe of the Iraq War, as well as the regional strategic balance problem it created, it also created a global problem. North Korea and Iran in particular had newfound motivation to secure nuclear deterrents.

Moreover, major players like Russia and China had reason to take a pause and re-evaluate the US' role and whether they would really passively accept this system.

The next major test of the system, and an event I think is one of the single most important political events of the last 30 years, was the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.

Georgia, a relatively liberal and democratic state, sought to continue its longstanding campaign to re-establish its territorial unity after the post-SOviet breakups. Doing this required sending troops into breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

These areas had tacit Russian support much as Georgia had tacit American support, but it seemed kinda-sorta reasonable to the Georgians that Russia would stay out of it.

But Russia had different ideas.

Putin had come to power fighting the conflicts of Russian reunification, saw the anger Russians felt about the 1990s, and specifically saw the "color revolutions" as an extension of the US revisionist program revealed in spades in Iraq.

In general, the Color Revolutions probably did *not* have a lot of very important US involvement or instigation, but authoritarian regimes were nevertheless spooked by how willing the global system was to acknowledge these and give them tacit support.

Regardless, when the Color Revolutionaries of Georgia then showed a willingness to revise the hard power status quo around South Ossetia, Putin intervened. The Georgians were absolutely thrashed.

Now, had the US *not* been embroiled in Iraq, I think the odds of Russian intervention are lower.... and the odds of a more vociferous US support for Georgia are higher.

Regardless, Georgia had every right to forcibly reincorporate South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The failure of the system to protect that right was a second MAJOR crack in the armor.

US intervention in Libya, the chaos of ISIS, the Syrian refugee crisis... it all kept adding up to "the US will take every opportunity to screw with non-liberal regimes even at massive humanitarian cost."

Bush Sr.'s withdrawl from Iraq had convinced many that the liberal order would weigh regime change and casualties. But the 2000s and 2010s challenged that assumption, and indeed absolutely wrecked it.

Bush Jr. started this, but it's key to recognize that Libya and the Arab Spring are almost as scary to regimes like China and Russia.

Then we get to the true death rattle of the rules-based order:

Crimea and the Donbas.

Russia openly invaded another sovereign country and seized a huge swathe of territory, while also fairly openly supporting a civil war in another chunk of land.

And the US did squat.

And Europe did even less and sometimes seemed to prefer the Russian side of things.

What this all adds up to is that nobody believes the US is committed to any particular rules-based regime. Even under Obama, there was no sense that the US was interested in such a thing.

Americans think of foreign policy as "intervention" or "nontervention," but for many foreign players it's "rules or no rules." From the fall of communism until Iraq, it seemed like "rules" were going to rule.

But both through sins of commission (Iraq, Libya) and omission (Georgia, Ukraine), the rules-based arrangement collapsed. It no longer exists. Nobody believes in it.

Another major problem in this whole thing is Taiwan. While China was liberalizing, handling Taiwan in a rules-based framework consistent with inching-towards-unification seemed viable.

But as China's commitment to meeting the de minimis standards for global citizenship have evaporated and it has responded to the collapse of this rules-based system by advancing its own, authoritarian, alternative system abroad, handling Taiwan that way gets tricky.

Under *any* system, all countries have a "no catastrophic adverse events for us are permissible" rule. The destruction of a large liberal democracy and seizure of a major strategic asset by an increasingly hostile foreign power would be a catastrophic adverse event for the US.

So my argument here is that Iraq was a major problem for the rules-based order, but that it was the long series of events from Iraq to Crimea to the constant probing by Russia and China that really did the job.

Had the US not invaded Iraq and then coordinated with Georgia in advance to have a better plan for reincorporation of South Ossetia, I think there's a stronger argument that Russia and China don't take quite as aggressive of turns in their diplomacy.

Of course, losing South Osssetia would mean when the Ukraine situation came around Russia may have reacted even more aggressively.... but maybe not! Had the US not invaded Iraq or bombed Libya, the threat *to Russia* would seem lower.

And the key here is these countries genuinely believe the US would attempt regime change on them, and they believe that because we have kinda repeatedly done it on other countries.

This is also why we should absolutely not attempt regime change on Iran. And why we should be extremely clear that regime change in the PRC is not our goal. That's a misstep on Pompeo's part.

We can say "communism is evil" and also "we respect the rights of states to be communist if they want to be."

But public statements indicating that the US looks forward to the overthrow of a specific regime are extremely ill-advised and almost certainly deleterious to actual US strategic interests.

Also, a quick reminder:

The 2008 Russo-Georgian war began because South Ossetian separatists were shelling towns on the Georgian side of the line under the supervision of Russian "peacekeepers."

Russian forces crossed the border into South Ossetia on AUgust 7 *before* Georgian forces entered South Ossetia to root out the artillery attacks.

As Russian, Abkhazian, and South Ossetian forces advanced, they seized territory in ABkhazia and South Ossetia formerly de facto controlled by Georgia because the towns in those areas were majority-Georgian.

In those areas, the Russian/Abkhazian/Ossetian forces systematically evicted ethnic Georgians, burned their homes to the ground, and then denied any right of return post-war. They ethnically cleansed something like 90-95% of the Georgian population of the breakaway regions.

It's difficult to overstate the extent to which this war was a violation of international law because folks it violated like ***every*** international law.

It was aggression, intervention, had indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilian areas, ethnic cleansing, torture of POWs.... it's ***absolutely insane*** that we didn't do more about it.

There's also evidence that the plan to attack Georgia was formulated sometime before April of 2008 when Georgia requested NATO membership, and after April 2008 included a plan to go all the way to Tbilisi and install a more pro-Russian government.

The war was widely anticipated by June, with public figures associated with Putin commonly remarking that it was coming, and suggesting it would involve the removal of Georgians from South Ossetia to ease the recognition of an Ossetian state.

Especially dumb is the fact that the US had 1,000 troops in Georgia in July for a military exercise aimed at counter-insurgency training (to prep Georgian troops to help the US in Iraq). Simulatenously, Russia did a military exercise practicing a large deployment into S. Ossetia.

They did a practice run of the invasion in broad daylight with US troops practically on the site, with ethnic cleansing intentions broadcast in advance....

.... and we did nothing.

So what COULD we have done?

Simple: when we ran the military exercise in July, we could have kept the troops on the ground and marched into South Ossetia with the Georgians.

Would Russia have attacked US troops?

Maybe!

And we could have deployed a crapload of troops from bases in Europe and Iraq in a matter of hours and knocked their teeth out.

ON THE OTHER HAND.... our non-defense of Georgia definitely indicated the importance of NATO membership.... if you believe that had Georgia been a NATO member we would have supported them.

But, is thaat really what happened? Did our NATO allies go, "gee, sure glad I'm a member of NATO, the US would help me in a similar situation!"

Answer: no. By 2011 the eastern NATO states had formed their own separate defense coordination systems (e.g. the Visegrad Battlegroup).

So my flippant but serious remark is the similarity between Kosovo and South Ossetia is in both cases the Russians were on the pro-genocide side of things.

https://twitter.com/aaron_renn/status/1402651398148395011

The difference is in Kosovo it was the genocide victims declaring independence whereas in South Ossetia it's the people doing the ethnic cleansing declaring independence.

While all the Western folks yelled "no precedent!" about Kosovo, I disagree. I think from the foundation of the State of Israel onwards we've shown that when you get genocided, you acquire a right to statehood.

This is an alternative argument I'll have to think about. Basically it argues that Russia and China were switching their view well prior to Iraq, which if true would wreck my thesis.

https://twitter.com/sabrdance/status/1402654124789825537

FWIW, @aaron_renn also argues that the US bombing campaign on behalf of Kosovo in the 1990s was the real turning point. If true, I think we just have to say there never was a rules-based system with broad buy-in.

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1402703953804988416

I think that the real issue with Kosovo came in 2008 not 1998, and that pretty clearly shows that the break came post-2001: Russia was upset in 1998, but it was in 2008 that suddenly they were absolutely totally freaked out by it.

I think this is because the Russian assessment of "How likely is it the US would support a separatist movement within Russia?" changed between 1998 and 2008. I think that by the mid-1990s, there was a sense Russia's breakup was done and the US wouldn't support more splits from it

But I think the Iraq War reopened that wound and suggested that maybe people didn't really realize what the US was willing to do. Plus the Color Revolutions which Putin is SO CONVINCED were CIA ops, by 2008 Russia was determined not to be next.