The potential for Jolie to screw this up was very high, and its to her great credit that the film she has written and directed is an excellent piece of work. The cinematic photography is professional and engaging; a few shots with digital backgrounds were too ‘enhanced’ (suggesting a video game) and didn’t look great next to the rest but the dark, ruined, decayed look brought a compelling aesthetic to the screen. Second, the acting is very very good, with the two main characters, and supporting actors, finding an emotional tenor and tone that brought depth to their characters. That can not have been easy. Third, the emotional relationships are also quite compelling and engaging. The war is not incidental but it is also not quite at the emotional heart of the film. The possibility of love and trust between two people who find themselves not only from opposing groups in a racist/ethnicist war but with radically different power positions is a brave subject to tackle. Writing that out required some emotional dexterity, maturity and insight into the dark corners of sexual relationships. Human relations of various kinds — mother-son, sister-sister, father-son, master-slave, lover-lover — are the universal dynamics it explores. Filling out the geopolitical context of the film without getting off kilter also is an achievement. Finally, the film does have what we expect from cinema, the ‘entertainment’ of kinetic action, suspense, sex, art as well as some twists and turns. Its ending is a bit dramatic, the scene before the UN soldiers, and perhaps unrealistic but its a film.

How true is it to the Bosnian war? Well those who know this history well will not recognize much in the characters just as those who know Bosnia will not recognize most of the locations. It travels from April 1992 to post-Srebrenica 1995 (interestingly mispronounced twice in a radio broadcast, perhaps deliberately in a nod to the butchering of local names that locals are all too familiar with). Its portrait of the Serbs is not deep but not inaccurate either in its voicing of myths of resistance against Turkish oppression, the real history of World War II massacres, and the proclivity of many to hold racist conceptions of Muslims. It is also not monolithic. Some Serb characters are given sympathetic backstories and many have depth. These are not cut-out evil characters. The portrait of the ARBiH is misleading in that it is cast as a resistance movement rather than a proper army. Easily the most interesting aspect of the film is its gendered perspective. This is a film that portrays the Bosnian war from the perspective of women and mothers. This is established early on with the two sisters and while the film moves beyond this at times, it comes back to the theme of patriarchal violence — not all of it men against women but also father against son — again in effective ways. Some aspects of the film, those concerning sexual violence against women, are shocking and deeply disturbing. Violence is always close to the surface, the VRS soldiers always capable of brutality and sadism. One doesn’t quite know how Daniele will behave at all times just as one doesn’t quite know if Anja really loves him or not. The scene suggesting a Srebrenica style massacre is hardly satisfactory but what could do justice to that horror?

In summary, this is a surprisingly strong film and I hope it garners a wide audience and some awards for the actors. Congratulations to those involved in the film for producing something of genuine artistic worth. That’s not common so its worth noting when it happens.

Its interesting how Bosnia has become a stock of references, metaphors and lessons in the rhetoric of Western policymakers and security intellectuals, not to mention an appealing locale for famous auteur film-making. Hearing officials in the Obama administration, and former Bush administration officials like Paul Wolfowitz, recently evoke the threat of ‘another Srebrenica’ in Libya was instructive about how Bosnia is now a sign system projected onto current conflicts. The implications of this have to be considered empirically in each case but it is interesting that many Euro-Atlantic figures reach for Bosnian analogies rather than regional ones to understand contemporary Syria. Bosnia seems to signify: intervention was the right choice, even though it was hard and did not look promising. Iraq signifies that intervention was the wrong choice, even though it looked easy.

The Lebanese born American academic Fouad Adjami was a terrible guide to Iraq for the US public and Bush administration in 2003. I distinctly remember him claiming that the US invaders would be met with flowers. Such irresponsible claims lead to a massive foreign policy blunder, and its a wonder such false prophets are ever listened to again. But they are. Last night he was on television once more (BBC America) telling us that Homs is like Sarajevo, and that the good people of Syria, like Bosnians in the past, deserve our help and intervention (unspecified). Too simple, too simple by far, an appeal purely to sentimentality rather than a considered argument that empathy for the suffering requires our responsibility to act, and that doing so with regional allies has a worthy normative rationale beyond geopolitical scenarios concerning Israel and Iran.

This evening the journalist John Burns was interviewed by BBC America and also evoked Sarajevo as an appropriate analogy to Homs. Somewhat astonishingly he cited the old figure of 250,000 dead before the West intervened, a figure that has long been demonstrated as inflated. Just over 100,000 died, way way too many of course, but the slip revealed a memory that was not empirically responsible.

Is Homs Sarajevo? Yes and most definitely no. It is, at base, a similar instance of an armed force firing indiscriminately into an urban area, a place of human habitation. It is a war crime, and should be prosecuted as such (I see the UN are now recommending prosecution of officials for ‘war crimes’). But the situation in Syria is one where a predatory regime is seeking to retain its hold on power by bloody and brutal means. This is not comparable to Bosnia at all, which was a nationalist war of aggression against a capital city that symbolized a multiethnic cosmopolitan alternative. Syria is often described as ethnically divided like Bosnia but this is also misleading. The degree to which the regime has successfully ethnicized certain segments of the population is an open question, and we will not know the answer to this until the crisis plays itself out.

There should be intervention to end the bloodshed in Syria but it should be undertaken by Turkey, with allies from the Middle East. NATO and the Euro-Atlantic powers should play a supportive human security focused role. There are no formulaic lessons from the Bosnian war. Spectres of Sarajevo, and righteous outrage over the deaths of these brave journalists, should not substitute for the task of thinking about Syria on its own terms.

The reasons for the ‘affective turn’ are numerous but some are manifestly the result of George W Bush’s ‘gut feeling’ presidency and its disasters. I’ve long been interested in the persuasive power of non-rational representation. As some know I began academic work studying Reagan’s hyperbolic geopolitics in Central America. How could rebel movements in a tiny place like El Salvador possibly threaten the United States? How could the Sandinistas possibly be this massive threat? I’m sure many of you remember the funny cartoon maps from this time — e.g. The World According to Ronald Reagan – that captured this phenomenon in popular culture.

If you read some of my early essays in critical geopolitics you will also know that I’ve had a longstanding interest in the unconscious and its role in political rhetoric. I have not, however, had the time or occasion to systematically develop what can be described as ‘affective geopolitics.’ I came out of my Bosnia work briefly to write about the Iraq war for a commissioned project for Antipode which hints at what a project would look like. I will get to this eventually.

For now, we have the current US presidential race. Michael Tomasky, probably my favorite political analyst, has today written a piece on Romney which touches upon the themes of affect and authenticity, namely that Romney doesn’t emote politics from the gut. He doesn’t ‘hate liberals’ according to Tomasky, and his pragmatism is considered inauthentic. Obama, another manifest pragmatist, also suffers from this but less so. He’s accused of being ‘aloof’ and ‘cerebral’ which is code for ‘cold and rational’ to many, the opposite of the affective. Yet, his candidacy for president was propelled by an incredibly affective tsunami that overwhelmed all other candidates. And, as I wrote in an essay about the campaign, his strategy was a brilliant re-appropriation of the mythos of American exceptionalism.

I met Drew Westen when he presented The Political Brain at Politics and Prose. He, like George Lakoff, is a little too into the idea of becoming a political consultant. The scientific work, as a consequence, is dumbed down and partisan political positionality is too much to the fore. I’ve used books by both for a module in my online Discourse Analysis course.

Add Tomasky’s piece to Jane Mayer’s recent essay in the New Yorker on Larry McCarthy, apparently living not that far from here, and its little wonder that there is an “affective turn” among contemporary academics. Figuring out how to study this in micro-political detail, with serious empirical measures, however, is really challenging.

I expect we’ll see a lot more visual displays like this in future years, and cumulative event movies too as presentations at conferences. The production of such information is a full time job in itself as I know all too well from producing videos for my Global Conflicts class.

• An in-depth report on France 24 on a rebel held city in the Iblid region of Syria near the border with Turkey

• An analytical article by Yezid Sayigh on the ‘hurting stalemate’ in Syria.

The media’s eye is trained on the Homs neighborhoods under fire still. This situation is terrible and it has come to symbolize the larger Syrian situation, and the Western media storyline of a people being brutalized by a repressive regime.

The bombing in Aleppo over the weekend is what the regime wishes to have at the center of international vision. Its narrative is that it is facing a rebellion by ‘terrorists’ and ‘enemies of the nation.’ Interestingly, it appears that US officials do believe that Al Qaeda in Iraq has crossed over the Syria and are seeking to exploit the situation there. The appearance of the Ayman Al Zawihiri video over the weekend was most interesting, and undoubtedly represents a bid by that organization to polarize the situation further and cast it within its sectarian, and hyperbolic ‘global jihad’ storylines. The Arab Spring, so far, has been bad for Al Qaeda, but its unfolding it still happening.

As the France 24 report reveals, the situation is terrifying on the ground for people trying to live through this. Patriarchal practices mark the behavior of all sides, and the complexities are thick on the ground, but these should not becloud discernment. This is a revolutionary versus counter-revolutionary situation, and there are many possible outcomes. The ‘humanitarian’ goals should be paramount for the Western powers but realistically framed: the potentiality and actuality of ‘civil war’ can not be discounted. Not another UNPROFOR. The tilt towards ‘regime change’ offers the possibility for the country creating a better condition of life for its citizens but also offers opportunities for local thugs, criminal gangs, and international jihadi forces. Time to think clearly about what is feasible, and help regional actors who can further conditions which allow some universal human rights a chance of realization.

I’ve read various op eds on the crisis and heard a variety of perspectives from that of Richard Haas on the BBC (its tragic but we can do little), to Anne Marie Slaughter (establish a humanitarian zone) (both former heads of the US State Department’s Planning Policy office) to Seumas Milne in the Guardian.

The arguments of Haas are standard ‘realist’ fare, which constructs the world in the tragic terms it uses to describe it. Realism can be analytically useful (see below) but its blind to its own ethnocentric assumptions too much of the time. I have always enjoyed listening to and reading Haas though I often disagree with the terms of his analysis. His War of Necessity, War of Choice is a good read that works well in the classroom.

Milne represents the European leftist position that is deeply critical and suspicious of international interventionism. His argument that intervention would cause more loss of life is the same he made in Libya. He is correct, in the short-term. But what would the loss of life had been, over the long term, if Gaddafi had succeeded in re-establishing his hold over all of Libya? Here we face an immediate direct violence versus long term structural violence tradeoff. That country currently has serious divisions and very disturbing practices — torture, disappearances and the cleansing of a town associated with Gaddafi loyalists — but it also has the chance to create structures which promise a better life for most of its people in the long term. Its struggle has entered phase two, though it is inevitably marked by the shadow of phase one.

What about Syria? Milne also condemns the hypocrisy of US and British ‘moral posturing’ on Syria given their track record in Iraq, Afghanistan and their support of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. Haas’s realism accepts that moral hypocrisy is a common feature of international relations (for example, consider Russia’s outrage against the Georgian shelling of Tskhinval(i) with GRAD missiles, the same practice they used against Grozny). Moral hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder, however. There is also the potential hypocrisy of not doing anything in Syria in comparison to Libya. Both of these arguments, however, seem more like posturing and venting. The realist displays his masculine unsentimentality while the skeptical leftist displays his resentments and suspicions. Neither help address the terms of this case.

Milne’s point is that the Syrian crisis needs to be understood on three levels: as a popular uprising against an authoritarian regime, as a grimly violent sectarian struggle, and as part of a Western proxy war against Iran which Russia and China are seeking to check. The explication of levels of analysis is helpful but his brief categorizations are not necessarily so. First, this does indeed appear to be a popular uprising. The critical question here is the following: do the terms of the positive and heroic ‘Arab Spring’ narrative blind us to important localized dimensions of the Syrian crisis? I think it does. Homs is a longstanding area of difficulty for the Alawite-based and Damascus centered regime. We have to be critically sensitive to the localized dimensions of this struggle. Localized geopolitics, localized geopolitics!!! This was vital, remember, in Libya.

The second critical question is: to what extend has the nature of the predatory state apparatus created by the Assad regime, and its merchant political economy, been built on ethnic foundation or on regime-based foundations? If it is the former, the prospect of civil war is very high. If it is the latter, there is a greater chance of regime fragmentation and defections which could lead to a relatively rapid end-game. This is an empirical question and pits regime versus ethnic versus place-based consciousness. Are there Alawite leaders opposed to the regime? Are the Sunni merchants in Damascus and Aleppo loyal to the regime? Are all Christians and Druze? How deep are their loyalties?

This raises a third critical question: to what extent are the military units defending the regime isolated from the general population and from the “collective effervescence” of the uprising? Recent indications suggest the pace of defection has quickened in recent months and weeks. (Certainly, the squabbling within the growing Syrian opposition is manifestly clear) If so, then modern media are penetrating the enveloping story about terrorists fed to the soldiers doing the shelling. Here I’d like to know more about the penetrative power of non-local Arab language media in Syria.

A fourth critical question follows: what type of actions, at this stage, can be the most helpful in immediately ending the shelling and more generally furthering the process of regime transformation in Syria? Obama and European NATO members have ruled out the use of airpower. But Turkey is a member of NATO and shares a border with Syria.

This is where Anne Marie Slaughter’s suggestion is worth considering. She had previously made this suggestion as part of an elaboration, in the Atlantic, of whether Syria meets the criteria for a R2P intervention. Here is the key paragraph:

An alternative, which in my view is still possible notwithstanding Saturday’s vote, is a military intervention by troops from various Arab League countries and Turkey to create safe zones for civilian protesters and all soldiers who wish to defect from the army. The sponsoring countries would have to make clear through every means possible within Syria itself that the goal of the intervention is to protect the population until a political settlement can be reached. That would not include arming the FSA. The point would be to stop the killing rather than to enable it on both sides. The choice between these scenarios (assuming political will exists among Syria’s neighbours for taking up arms rather than sending them to FSA) should depend on which strategy saves more lives and is least destabilising to the region.

I find this position more ‘realistic’ than sitting back and doing little. It also nudges forward the norm of ‘responsibility to protect’ and creates the possibility for transformational change in Syria. Turkey’s role is absolutely central. This needs to be a regional-led effort, with Euro-Atlantic institutions playing a supportive role, and getting civilians out of the area into proper medical facilities. Milne’s third level — the proxy game over Iran — is certainly there but it may also be over-reading this situation in the way that certain geopolitical narratives do. Do what one can to respond to manifest and immediate human security needs: that is a reasonable and legitimate foundation for any foreign policy actions in the region. Lets act.

This setback for Romney is part of a broader arc of good fortune for the President. Upon taking office, he was handed the worst economic outlook in decades. Remember the famous Onion headline: Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job. The ability of a President to arrest the business cycle and transform an economy in deep structural recession is marginal. There is no doubt that Obama’s series of economic stimulus measures have helped at the margin but he needed a conjuncture of positive structural factors for things to start picking up again. The latest unemployment numbers suggest he just might be getting that. Heading into an year’s election, this is a significant stroke of good fortune.

A richer fountain of good fortune is the Republican nomination process. Mitt Romney was the ‘next-in-line’ guy and had all the apparent assets required for the position: private sector success, leadership experience, good looks, deep pockets, and proven problem-solving intelligence. Sure he had changed his positions to pander to  GOP base voters but all Republican candidates followed Nixon’s rule: run hard to the right in the primaries and steer back to the center in the general election. Then the process began and a considerable segment of GOP voters began an earnest search for a ‘anybody but Romney’ candidate. The result was that a series of weird and wacky candidates got about 15 days of fame as ‘the leading choice of Republicans for President.’ Serious candidates, like Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty, Chris Christie were scared away. Santorum wins, Romney wins, Gingrich wins, Romney wins again and then again, but now Santorum has won (again). GOP voters seem determined to vote their vitriol not for someone who can lead them to victory in November. Romney is burning money while providing all the soundbites the White House needs to prove he really is Mister One Percent, the ideal moneybags candidate to run against in a moment of agitation over income inequality. Obama has got to be smiling.

Obama is a talented politician, with indeed a little more talent than most. He was fortunate that Osama Bin Laden was located on his watch but it was he who personally approved the risky nighttime operation to capture him. Here he got lucky again in that the operation found Bin Laden, had him killed, and all involved returned safely. Obama has shown no reluctance to exploit this. In his recent State of the Union, he began by declaring that for “the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.” He ended on a somewhat forced call for the nation to have the same unity as a SEAL unit: “This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.  And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard.” This is rhetoric that is trying too hard.

But, just as Obama’s re-election team struggles for the right structure of feeling for his campaign, out walks Dirty Harry from the shadows with the answer. Its not ‘morning in America,’ Reagan’s famous re-election ad from 2004, but ‘half-time in America.’ By now most Americans have seen Clint Eastwood’s turn as a pitch man for the revitalization of the US auto industry. “People are out of work and they’re hurting and they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback and we’re all scared because this isn’t a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this.” The acknowledgement of pain is then followed by a call to unity and determination.  “But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world’s going to hear the roar of our engines.”

Republicans have been howling about the ad helps Obama ever since it was broadcast. And, they’re right because Obama backed the rescue of the US auto industry and Romney did not. GM is now the leading car company in the world again. Obama made the right decision, and got lucky that it worked out so quickly. Of course, luck has a way of disappearing when you need it most. But, with green shoots of recovery appearing and his opponents flailing, Obama must be feeling that trip to Ireland last year did him a lot of good.

My students told me about the Clint Eastwood ad yesterday and I find it fascinating, and that it has provoked so much comment. Amy Davidson’s piece is good. I also found the piece last night by Chris Hayes on the Rachel Maddow Show incisive (9:00 minute mark for his best riff). His claim that Clint Eastwood has solved the central rhetorical problems faced by the Obama campaign may be overstating the matter but not by much. What the ad does is reinvigorate some longstanding tropes in American political life from the Fordist era, rhetorical (and iconic) raw material for the President to draw upon: “what is good for GM is good for America,” “Motor City,” “rebuild,” “America is back,” “hear the roar of our engines” (no acknowledgement of electric cars there!). The ad is powerful for its recognition decline and defeat, taking a blow and being down, but this is a set up for the ‘second half’ where all these are reversed. Its no ‘Morning in America’ but more a prequel. The structure of feeling is precisely the arc the Obama administration wants to articulate: “knocked but getting back on our feet” through the policies put in place by the President, and opposed by his opponent. Superficially it has the same general performative structure as declinist discourse: “they say we are in decline…but let me tell you…” but it is more powerful because it is wiser and more world weary than the bombast of declinist ripostes. Its grown up, something that resonates with Obama’s existing rhetoric (the ‘adult in the room’ rhetoric has serious pitfalls for him though on the campaign trail). The ‘gift’ of the ad to the Obama campaign is that it has injected into the popular culture a structure of feeling he seeks to make his own in the election campaign. No wonder Karl Rove is annoyed: all that corporate cash was supposed to help his man.

So, go ahead, President Obama, re-make this feeling.

1. Debate about American decline is not new. Those with reasonable memories will remember how George Herbert Walker Bush reacted to the popularity of Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by seeking to pin this thesis on his opponent, the ‘pledge of Allegiance’ voiding Michael Dukasis, as further evidence of his non-Americanism. America is not in decline declared Bush. Bush undoubtedly learnt about the power of projecting a positive mood from Reagan’s famous second term ad ‘Morning in America.’  Meanwhile the US budget deficit exploded under both presidents.
2. The debate is not about statistics or facts but about the affect-laden semiotics surrounding words and images of decline.
3. Decline discourse is easily experienced as embodied discourse. The working analogy is that states are persons. All people have life-cycles — youth, middle age and old age or decline — and it is, therefore, unsettling to think of states as in decline, as old and sclerotic.
4. Decline discourse is symbolic politics par excellence. It is a game wherein the goal is to pin the discourse of decline on one’s opponent and secure the discourse of optimism for oneself. Against decline and weakness, isolation and uncertainty, play renewal and strength, certainty and indispensability (America’s back!!!).
5. Decline discourse is often fueled by masculinity anxieties, about loosing grip, aging, not being able to be as vigorous as one once was, etc.
6. Decline discourse can become stuck to the Presidential body. A President that trips and falls in public, like Gerald Ford (perhaps the greatest athlete ever presidents as Mark Shields pointed out last week on PBS’s NewsHour) is seen as embodying the fall of the nation. George W. Bush projected himself as a physically fit president. But the shadow of doubt crept upon him as the Katrina mess became evident to the public and he lost his aura of fitness to most (he never had it to some). Some might argue that the ‘Surge’ campaign in Iraq, undertaken after heavy defeat in the 2006 Congressional elections, was a broader symbolic effort to revitalize his presidency. No state can be held to be in decline by its (masculine) leaders.
7. The irony of declinist discourse is that it can inhibit a state grasping its true position of power in the world. Happy talk can cover up and avoid confrontation with challenging transitions. The decline in the financial strength and position of the US state under George W. Bush was spectacular. Bush took Clinton’s surplus and reversed the financial health of the country, leaving the economy at the end of his presidency facing a Great Depression. Decline defiance, in other words, can deepen decline dynamics.
8. Geopolitics discourse on the relative power position of states, and civilizations, has always been captive to embodied metaphors at base, with those from physics on top of this: rise, fall, balance, equilibrium, unipolar, multipolar, etc etc. A more appropriate frame for this discourse is to speak of transition within the system as a whole and of the regions (not states but within and across states) within it. Instead of states as unproblematic units in relative competition with each other, we need to speak of an interconnected global system with crucial networks, regions and flowmations within it. We live in a twenty first century world but are stuck with archaic language games and conceptual categories. The reason is the nationalism that these debates are vehicles for.
9. Consider Obama’s State of the Union rhetoric on the decline question:
   The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe.  Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever.  Our ties to the Americas are deeper.  Our ironclad commitment — and I mean ironclad — to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.  (Applause.)We’ve made it clear that America is a Pacific power, and a new beginning in Burma has lit a new hope.  From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease; from the blows we’ve dealt to our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.  (Applause.)

   That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world who are eager to work with us.  That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin, from Cape Town to Rio, where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.  Yes, the world is changing.  No, we can’t control every event.  But America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs –- and as long as I’m President, I intend to keep it that way.  (Applause.)

This is the symbolic game of geopolitical discourse played well by the President. It is standard American nationalism as American exceptionalism fare. The ‘doesn’t know what they’re talking about’ line allows expression of the masculinity subtext of these debates.

10. The claim that Obama’s thinking, and the above passage was shaped by Kagan’s ‘thesis,’ is made in a Foreign Policy piece here. Luce sets this up nicely as a ‘puzzle’ and a ‘quandary’: Kagan, an adviser to Romney, has written a book against American declinists “yet America’s declinist-in-chief loves its thesis.” This last part only works if Obama allows the Right to define him as a declinist, to symbolically become associated with the negative numbers about the US’s economic performance in recent years.

11. All the evidence suggests that Obama’s team have figured out the symbolic game being played here, and are not about to concede any terms to the Right. Why should neocons be allowed to make the case against American decline when their very policies have accelerated the trends that are problematic in the first place? It was the neocon quest for preservation of the ‘unipolar moment’ and ‘national greatness’ (ironically sourced in self-doubt) that lead the US into the debacle of Iraq. This, and torture, trashed the US’s reputation internationally, and provoked legitimate concern that US leaders were loosing their ‘grip’ over international affairs. Obama’s election was a moment of national renewal. How can Kagan write a book bemoaning the decline in the US’s reputation from policies he advocated and supported (the ‘Mars’ fixation) and take credit for Obama’s rescue of the US’s reputation by a president he didn’t?

12. Luce ends: “Who knows, perhaps it is one of those instances of co-option at which presidents excel.” I think this is only partly the story. From the outset, Obama, it seems to me, deciphered the code of US presidential politics. He spoke positively about Reagan and his logo of a sun rising over a plowed field mimicked the ‘morning again in America’ sentiment. He knows on what side to be on in this debate; its not a matter of ‘co-option’ but of refusing to concede the terms to the Right. Look at the amazing graphic that accompanies the State of the Union page on the White House web page. If you wanted visual evidence that America is rising again, this is it. Hats off to the folks who produced that.

1. I’ve only seen Saakashvili speak a few times, and yet I heard the same speech he gave years ago. Its the story about the police which features the dramatic “We fired them” and the subsequent turnaround. Its a good story but its old, and its repetition may indicate that he and his government are stuck spinning their foundational mythologies. Alternatively, perhaps he knows from past experience that this story really works well in Washington DC (and better to stick to pre-Aug 2008 stories than remind folks about the circumstances of that war’s start). “My whole cabinet is younger than I” may be meant as demonstration of continuation of the libertarian Jacobin elan, but it too is a gesture that seems stuck in the past. Isn’t it good to have some mature minds around? The fascinating boy-man quality of Saakashvili’s personality — on full view in his response to Obama at the White House — deserves some scrutiny.
2. Saakashvili retains his fondness for GOP (i.e. US Republican Party) soundbites. Interestingly the subterranean sadomasochistic pleasure of the “we fired them all” story resonates with Romney’s recent “I like firing people.” What struck me, however, was his articulation of the current GOP storyline about how others (read Obama) are saying “America is finished” and American must “apologize” for its past behavior (read, the Iraq war and torture). [Obama, of course, says the opposite but this is an enduring self-construct; the SOTU deliberately countered this again but I expect the myth to remain]. This sets up a defiant ripost that doubles down on American exceptionalism and  pride. Here Senator Marco Rubio as a meritorious carrier of these transcendent truths was mentioned (significant I think because he’s widely seen as a possible Romney running mate). The trouble with this structure of feeling for Saakashvili is that (i) many political heads in DC will instantly see this as GOP code and this identifies him further in US partisan political terms in ways that do not help his country and (ii) simple stories reflect badly on their tellers. In his defense, he may be articulating what he really thinks or what he really thinks works.
3. It is probably expecting too much from such a forum for someone to actually ask a challenging question. Georgetown President described his remarks as “inspiring” and “tough minded” or words to that effect. Generous. The Dean buried the one question that needed to be asked — are you going to ‘pull a Putin’? — inside a soft question about the European Union, which allowed him to justify the new constitution as Georgia Europeanizing itself.
4. The question from the Russian language VOA broadcaster elicited Saakashvili’s most polemical geopolitical rhetoric. Again the default mode is a pleasurable ‘structure of feeling’ of righteous indignation. “Russia occupies 20 percent of our country.” This beclouds all complexity, acknowledgement of Georgia’s difficult past relations with these regions, and any fidelity to empirics on the ground. Thus, we get the line that in South Ossetia there are only 7,000 residents but 20,000 Russian troops. Abkhazia’s beaches are deserted except for tank crews sunning themselves. In a situation where virtually the whole world supports Georgia’s position on the separatist territories, this type of rhetoric (with empirical claims about South Ossetia and Abkhazia that are not credible) runs the risk of damaging not furthering one’s cause. It would seem to be an unnecessary ‘own goal.’
5. The story at the conclusion of Saakashvili defiantly taking off in his Cessna, piloting it himself, even though he knows that Russian radar (and presumably anti-aircraft missiles) have locked onto his plane, seemed to work well with the audience to judge by the intensity of applause at the end. Maybe President Saakashvili did indeed move the audience and do a good job for his country, leaving everyone with the favorite image of little Georgia courageously defying the bullying bear to the north (and within its own territory). But do heroic defiance stories really work, especially with hardheaded political analysts and security planners?
6. Georgia exploded as an issue in the last Presidential election in August 2008. I’ve little doubt that President Saakashvili would like it to retain power as a ‘symbolic test’ of US commitment to its expansive ideals (some in the GOP may think of it as a wedge issue). My sense, however, is that Saakashvili’s stories, or those of other leaders vying for attention, do not resonate in US geopolitical culture like before. Why? Because they are out of synch with the post-Iraq, indebted, and wanna be post-Afghanistan ethos of our day. This isn’t ‘declinism’ so much as a reversion to American skepticism and self-concern in turbulent uncertain times. ‘Enough with funding experiments/states/favorites abroad; lets re-focus at home’ is how one might summarize the mood. This isn’t necessarily a good thing — we need proactive US engagement on Syria, Iraq, Burma and Egypt now especially — but it is a fact of life all US politicians have to confront.