"Know when to hold them"

In the old Kenny Rodgers song he sang about the gambler who cautioned that, "you got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them," sound advice.

If you look at life in a grand perspective, we make bets all the time. We bet on our futures when we chose whether to get an education, what sort of sports to play, choosing our diet, marrying for money or looks, etc. Most of us do not look at these natural choices as a bet but in the long run they can be seen to be just that. How boring it would be if we all were trained, or programmed by genes, to weigh every action in life to pick the best odds for each decision. It is also impossible because, as we all know, the set of facts for yesterday may be radically different today. Today’s bet may be a sure shot by next week, as the world turns, or it could cloud future actions going forward.

While it would be boring to rule our individual lives by statistical likelihood and seasoned logic, not so for international affairs. Too many administrations have made bets that effect all of the American people and because of our country’s dominant position, millions of others in the world. Early isolationism let Hitler inflict world wide horror and pain on millions. His intentions were known, his mass murders were apparent long before the spine of the "free" world stiffened. Churchill’s foresight and determination to avoid what was coming, his ability to convince and gain support of Roosevelt was all part of a calculated, hard decision, a big bet, that won the jackpot of relative world peace since 1945.

Today, I am concerned that recent bets by individuals, corporations, world leaders and especially those that are ideologically driven, has stacked the deck against a continuance of our always fragile peaceful existence.

The situation with Russia and Georgia, in the Caucasus is a prime example of laying down a bet that seemed a no - brainer and unfortunately turned out to truly be a no - brainer on the stupid side. Thomas Friedman, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning author and op - ed columnist for the New York Times discussed the expansion of NATO into what Russia calls the "near abroad", (meaning "in my back yard" ). I find Friedman world class when he sticks to the Middle east and international affairs and an unrealistic gadfly when he preaches on environmental issues. However, on the expansion of NATO and the encroachment on traditional Russian spheres of influence he pegged the Clint administration and the Bush administration for leading us down a risky, no win, path for 16 years.

Friedman, to his credit, does take chances by going on record early. He has written extensively on Lebanon and the on going turmoil surrounding Israel and the entire Middle East. A strong, traditional voice for people to get along he also displays his biases as when he supported the Bush reasoning on Iraq , hung in there as things went askew and then tried to slip a fair share of accountability on the subject as things soured.


However, now when it comes to Georgia and the poorly evaluated decision to have NATO creep up on Russia he is sticking to his early analysis that warned against the strategy. Good for him.
In hindsight one can see how the initial Clinton "bet" was wrong. But it seemed so logical. The USSR was dead, new Russia was on it’s knees, what could seem simpler then urging the non core Russian appendages to declare their independence and for us to jump in and to push western enterprises to lock up the gas oil and other plentiful natural resources while we looked for military bases giving us a leg up if the USSR tried to rebuild itself. To the East all the "stans" broke loose, though none has taken on the glow of Democracy predicted for them. Autocrats and sons of autocrats still hold power and use it to maintain strict internal control. In the West we jumped to have all the Baltic states, all of whom were not unhappy with Hitler, to peel out and they are now in NATO. Russia who had loaded up those countries with Russians during the Cold War, seethed. In the Balkans we were happy to see Yugoslavia explode into it’s previous ungovernable pieces. We used NATO to stop the ethnic cleansing, genetically wired into the citizens of that area as well as the Caucasus and then supported a sanitized ethnic cleansing letting the Albanian majority in Kosovo kill or chase out the significant number of Serbs who called it home.

Again and still, Russia seethed.

Now, our administration and NATO has reacted with alarm after their pet model Georgia, a fractured democracy at best aroused the Russian bear who effectively and swiftly made jam out of the Georgian peach. Now, Russia has announced it recognizes the independence of the two breakaway Georgian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia that were not historically part of Georgia. The US and the European Union or at least NATO is mouthing off.
We dealt ourselves a bad hand.

It was an ill considered bet. It is time to "fold" and to try and cuddle up to the bear with dignity.