The Georgia Russia Case Study

This has been brought out in many news sources (I first heard in listening to Bob Lonsberry), but I thought it was interesting enough to re-hash. I haven't posted much about politics because although I don't like Obama, I can't get too excited about McCain either....and to be honest, I think most of the anti-Obama stuff floating around is pretty superficial (in most cases, examples of the same offense could be dug up on the McCain side of things). In saying all of this, I do think the recent criticisms of Obama's response to the Georgia conflict is valid. Allow me to explain.

In school, we were often evaluated using case studies. Case studies were basically 10-20 page documents that presented a business scenario, but withheld the outcome or solution that was implemented. As students, we came to class each day prepared to argue how the company should respond. Fast forward a few months to full-time employment. My company, before interviewing potential employees, presents similar case studies related to our industry and asks the applicant to submit a formal report about how they would respond. I believe case studies are a great way of evaluating students, potential employees, and in this case presidential candidates, because they show how the candidates might respond when actually presented with similar situations.

On August 8, Russia invaded the country of Georgia. As can be seen in this article, the candidates had two slightly different responses. On the day that the conflict broke out, McCain immediately said that Russia "should withdraw their forces." Obama had a slightly different take. He "urged the two sides to show restraint."

This highlights the stark differences in foreign policy of the two candidates. McCain doesn't put up with crap. He has experienced the negative consequences of corrupt governments and jumps to stop them before they get too far down the road. Obama takes more of a touchy-feely (diplomatic) approach. His solution is to repeatedly urge corrupt governments to act properly while hesitating to identify the governments as corrupt in the first place. In his words, we cannot "bully the world into submission". I recognize that there are pros and cons to both approaches (you don't want to be weak, but you don't want to be a warmonger), and I am not thrilled about McCain's stances on many things...but all things considered, I do like McCain's stance on foreign policy.