The Conservative Take on Russia

by Richard Holcomb

Rick Lowry, editor of the National Review, provides his assessment of the U.S. response to Russia and its invasion of Georgia in today's New York Post. Here's his basic view:

"McCain's proposal from a few months ago to boot Russia from the G-8 has gone from seeming needlessly provocative to practically prescient. Together with the surge in Iraq, the Georgian crisis is the second strategic matter on which everyone else has followed the senator's lead.

McCain warned of Russian designs on its "near-abroad" when Boris Yeltsin was still in power, and advocated the enlargement of NATO into Eastern Europe -- as a way to cement those countries into the West and check Russian adventurism -- years before the Clinton administration adopted it as policy.

McCain's judgment benefits from years of marinating in national-security issues and traveling and getting to know the key players; from a hatred of tinpot dictators and bloody thugs that guides his moral compass; and from a flinty realism (verging at times on fatalism) that is resistant to illusions about personalities, or the inevitable direction of History, or the nature of the world."

If you want to understand the post-Bush GOP perspective on our relationship with Russia, Lowry is an articulate advocate for it. Our own foreign policy contributor, Ballard Burgher, provides ongoing coverage of these issues.