By Uche Onyebadi

ARIZONA’S Republican Senator, John McCain, is a rarity in politics. He speaks his mind, no matter who is being comforted or afflicted. With him, you do not have to fear being taken through a labyrinth of circumlocution and rhetoric on issues. So, when he castigated President Obama and called him the “most naïve president” in U.S. history on foreign policy, and more directly for not standing up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin on his annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, Senator McCain meant what he said and said it as he saw and understood it.

In a way, the maverick senator was leading the charge against President Obama on behalf of the Republican and Conservative wing of the U.S. elite group. He wrote an article where he said this about his president: “Crimea has exposed the disturbing lack of realism that has characterized our foreign policy under President Obama. It is this worldview, or lack of one, that must change.”

Left to the senator and his cohorts, the right thing to do is to arm Ukraine and inevitably engage President Putin and Russia in mortal combat. And the rationale might not really be helping the people of Ukraine as much as it is an opportunity to teach Putin a huge lesson and in the process restore what might be construed as the fledgling U.S. power and dominance in international politics.

Here is something to think about. Access to oil, masqueraded as looking for weapons of mass destruction, defined U.S. invasion of Iraq. Confronting Osama bin Laden and curbing international terrorism defined the unwinnable war in Afghanistan.

Economic and human cost

What, therefore, is it that defines the interest in going to war over a piece of peninsula called the Crimea? Just to flex the power of the U.S. and put in Putin in his rightful place?

The economic and human cost of the U.S. muscle-flexing in Iraq and Afghanistan has left a difficult-to-repair blow on the integrity of the U.S economy. Adding the Crimea to this steaming cauldron might just signal an irreversible economic decay on the part of the U.S. Historians tell us that one of the most telling symptoms of the decay and decline of an empire is when it begins to engage itself in too many wars.

Such an empire usually collapses under the weight of its self-imposed burden. The more wars you fight, the more you divert resources needed to strengthen the domestic economy, and when that economy can no longer sustain your pugilistic adventurism, things will fall apart and the empire will fall into history’s archive of once-upon-a-time powerful nation-state.

Besides, although the likes of Senator McCain may know more about wars and weapons of war more than the rest of us, at least we know that a war with Russia in the Crimea will not be like former U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” military attack against Saddam Hussein’s army in Iraq. Or will it look like the air strikes that eventually helped Libyans overthrow Muammar Gadaffi’s regime in Tripoli. It will be brutal, bloody and without outright victory.

Without a definite U.S. goal or gain in the Crimea, the White House has wisely taken to the path of diplomacy in resolving the crisis in Ukraine. Fortunately, Putin has now given Obama the green-light that he is open to discussions on how to resolve the crisis without going to war which neither the U.S. nor Russia will win. What is needed in the Crimea and Ukraine is diplomacy, not war.

Instead of beating the drums of war as the hawks-of-war in the U.S. are doing, perhaps they should focus more attention on China. Former Chinese leader, Chairman Mao Zedong, used to say that power flowed from the barrel of the gun. Modern Chinese leaders realize that more potent power flows from economic strength, which is why they are moving swiftly to make China become the world’s primary economic power.

If the likes of McCain are in the White House, by now the U.S. might have gone to war in Syria and Ukraine. And, by the time they wake up from their war weariness, they might discover that it would be necessary to go for economic-aid talks in Beijing!

Another point: if the situation was reversed and the U.S found itself  having a communist ally at its geographical doorstep, would  it not adopt a Putin-style approach to sort out the problem? If you think this is a farfetched proposition, then you might not have heard about the U.S. invasion of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989) where the president was abducted and imprisoned in the U.S.

How about the several attempts by the U.S to topple the communist/Sandinista government in Nicaragua led by Daniel Ortega?

A post-script: In April 2008, Vladimir Putin rolled Russian tanks into Georgia and effectively invaded the country. Who was in power then? George W. Bush. Did the “McCainian” hawks call Bush the most naïve U.S. president in history? No.