Restraint

Should Russia actually end up honoring the cease-fire agreement arranged over the weekend, we can say she acted with restraint. Restraint sounds like some very noble quality, but it is anything but. Rather, it goes along with a keen sense of self-limitations and an acute devotion to self-interest. One who practices restraint is conscious of the consequences of certain actions and realistic about being able to handle them. On the other hand, failure to show restraint indicates that one is pursuing a higher - or at least different - goal than pure self-interest and is willing to take a real risk in this pursuit.

Take for example the guy just convicted in New Jersey of murder who stabbed his sister's boyfriend after the girl complained of abuse. He did not show restraint - and he certainly wasn't acting in his own self-interest nor did he carefully consider the consequences when he stormed over to the other fellow's apartment with a knife in his hand. Had he been more concerned about his own well being, he'd have told his sister to either take her lumps or find a new boyfriend. But he didn't and is now facing at least a couple decades behind bars.

What this reckless young man did is known as altruistic punishment, and is a bit of an evolutionary puzzle - why do people behave in ways that are against their self interest? In this case, the killer was defending his sister, who shares half his DNA, and so there's a greater motive than there would be with more distant relatives or just neighbors. But why would nations engage in this behavior? Whatever logic led the U.S. to bomb Serbs in Kosovo, self-interest was surely not paramount in the equation.

So by crediting Putin/Russia with restraint, I'm hardly slabbering them with praise. But it is an indication of self-interest at work, and this is a very important thing to know about a country. When you can be sure a country is merely acting in its self-interest, you've got something to work with and a basis for negotiation and diplomacy. One of the scary things about the old Soviet Union was that it appeared to have some very big goals in mind besides what was best for Mother Russia, such as International Socialism. It often over-reached internationally and in its devotion to socialism at home starved and enslaved its own people. We pretty much had to take it at its word that it sought world domination, and thus the Cold War.

But the Soviet Union is long gone. Russia no longer shows any interest in fomenting revolution abroad and imposing totalitarian rule on its neighbors. It does not threaten the United States or Western Europe or even the non-Soviet Iron-Curtain nations of Eastern Europe. It would clearly like to have less hostile countries on its immediate border. Imagine Chavez's Venezuela bordering the U.S. - I don't think we'd put up with that, quite frankly (as, for example, with Cuba). Yet both Ukraine and Georgia are openly hostile and pro-American, yet both remain independent. This is hardly the behavior of a reckless, dangerous, rogue state.

In its actions in Georgia, Russia is clearly making a statement about Western influence on its borders, and appears willing to back off provided this message is heard and respected. Thus the restraint. Putin doesn't want trouble with Europe or America, but he's not willing to be boxed in by an expansionist NATO, either. It is critical that the U.S. not escalate tensions with continued talk of NATO membership and anti-missile installations*. We have nothing to gain from an antagonistic relationship with Russia, and very little to gain from friendly relations with her neighbors. Self-interest and self-assessment suggest one thing is required on our part: restraint.

* Back in the Cold War, the weenie left used to talk this way all the time about the Soviet Union. But their assessment of the Soviets was naive. The Soviets were not all about narrow self interest - they were a powerful nation bent on world domination. The Soviets supported Marxist insurgencies all over the globe. The best evidence for this is the impotence of these supposed "indigenous movements" since the Soviet breakup. Also, not only did the U.S.S.R. control puppet governments in Eastern Europe, but ruthlessly enforced totalitarian socialist rule in these lands as well. We had much to fear in those days, and only through our persistence and dedication to this struggle were we able to prevail. Failing to appreciate our victory by continuing to behave like the Soviet threat still prevails is as delusional as the claims on the left that the Soviet threat was an illusion.