I have a question I'd like to put forth to the good folks here at JU, a question that can be reasonably asked now that we're in the twilight of the Bush Administration.

In your opinion, what was the biggest mistake the White House made in the last 8 years?

I'm not asking this to attack Bush or his administration. It's an honest question. Everyone makes mistakes. So, as usual before I go any further I have to roll out my disclaimer;

I don't give two rips about the democrat vs. republican pissing contest. I really don't think there's all that much difference between the two. Superficially, yes, they are different but at the core there's no real difference. They're both the pro-business party, with the democrats being a little more populist, which is mostly just show anyway. Anywho. I'm not going to state that a republican administration or democratic congress are entirely to blame for all of our problems while the other side is blameless. With that said, please allow me to tell you what I think Bush's biggest mistake was.

It wasn't the war on terror, or the economy, although I have serious issues and misgivings with both of those topics.

In my opinion, Bush's biggest mistake over the last 8 years has been U.S foreign policy toward Russia and it's former satellites.

Allow me to explain gentle reader...

Back at the end of the cold war, Bush 1 struck an agreement with Russia; the cold war was essentially over, Russia would play nice and give the whole capitalism concept a try and both countries would co-operate and become allies. There was one major caveat; in exchange for all the changes Russia was going to make, the U.S and NATO had to promise that they wouldn't expand their sphere of influence further east of Germany.

The Berlin wall fell, things changed rapidly and one fellow even pontificated that this was "the end of history", insinuating that now that the U.S and friends were sole superpowers life would be peachy from here on out.

Russia, for the most part stuck to their end of the bargain. Backfire bombers stopped making their routine harrassment flights near North American airspace, meaning NORAD no longer had to regularly scramble fighters to "escort" (chase) them away. Mcdonald's and Burger King set up shot next to red square and IBM started selling computers to Russians. Militarily, joint training exercises started between both countries.

So, what's the big deal? Having Russia as an ally can't be overstated in it's importance. If nothing else, having Russia in your camp means one less big, well armed country you don't have to worry about. This is good for economic reasons, political reasons, diplomatic, the list goes on. Militarily, they can even help you fight wars. The last time Russia and the U.S teamed up militarily they literally crushed their opposition. As much as I disagree with the conflicts ongoing in Afghanistan and Iraq, imagine the effects on U.S manpower and deployments if Russia contributed troops to both conflicts working alongside the U.S... they actually might be able to have met the troop requirements predicted by Shinseki (chief of the U.S army) before Rumsfeld fired him. If that would have happened, it's quite possible with adequate numbers of boots on the ground that the security vacuum would never have been created, meaning no major insurgency in Iraq. Today the geo-political situation around the world could be drastically different if we had embraced Russia as an ally.

But, that didn't happen. And to be fair, Clinton started it. During Clinton's time in office Russia was a hurting unit. Their army was in the toilet, their economy consisting of a very small cabal of super-rich while a massive number of people lived in poverty or near poverty. Things were so bad they even lost a war with a breakaway region called Chechnya. A comparable example would be if Michigan decided to secede from the union and kicked the crap out of the army units sent in to stop them, thereby forcing the U.S gov to sign a peace treaty and recognize them.

During this time, instead of helping, the Clinton administration basically said "you're on your own folks!" Yes, there was some economic aid but it came with strings attached, demanding that Russia sell off major assets at fire-sale prices and privatize pretty much everything. To add insult to injury, we also started playing in their backyard, going into Kosovo and bombing Serbia. Why is this a big deal?

The importance of backyards can't be overstated either. The last time Russia tried playing in the U.S' backyard we ended up with a naval blockade of Cuba and an air-force General (Lemay) who almost precipated a full-on nuclear war. The U.S backyard is pretty much all of north America. Mexico, Canada, nearby islands. Oh yeah, let's not forget Panama too. So, it's generally a good idea to stay out of a friends' backyard. Even if you disagree with what's going on there, the only time you should go in is if you're invited, or it's a dire emergency.

All throughout this, though, Putin genuinely was on-board with being a staunch ally of the U.S. He recognized the potential such an alliance would bring for both parties. There is no deception on this- if you research it, you'll find Putin was remarkably pro- U.S until a few years ago. What changed? Bush the 2nd, went hog-wild  on breaking the basic agreement that NATO wouldn't expand it's spere of influence eastward.

The turning point for Putin was during the "orange" revolution in the Ukraine which was heavily supported by the U.S- Putin has been quoted as stating that he felt utterly betrayed over this. And things only got worse. Bush has started the ball rolling on moving NATO into the Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, pretty much all of the eastern satellites. And has made no secret of intentions to arm, support, train, and even place military bases and the new missile shield in these countries, right on the border with Russia.

This mistake has several profound implications;

1) Strategically, this is a very stupid move. Placing lots of military equipment and personnel right on the border with a potential enemy, as well as a multi-billion dollar high tech system, means that all of those assets are within easy reach to be wiped out should war ever break out. The whole idea is to place high-value assets in depth, way in the rear where an enemy won't be able to hit them easily with any number of possible attacks. Should a war break out, Russia could quickly wipe out most of these systems and installations. The architect of the NATO air defense against the Russians during the cold war understood this. He lobbied to make sure that high value airbases and installations would be well out of range of any possible tank blitz or sudden attack. For some inexplicable reason, we seem to have forgotten this lesson!

2) By playing in Russia's backyard, the U.S has permanently lost any goodwill or chance for alliance with Russia. We see this now playing out with Iran. If we had been more willing to play the "give and take" game with Russia, they probably would have been more amenable to negotiating away their support for Iran if we left them alone in their backyard with their own satellite nations, and, admittedly, stayed out of the Kosovo affair to let them deal with it in their own way. Instead, Bush decided we'd have our cake and eat it too, deciding that he wanted to deal with Iran as well as scoop up eastern Europe as well as fight another war on multiple fronts.

3) The U.S has now locked itself into a multi-billion dollar commitment with these former satellites with uncertain future consequences... What this means is that now that the U.S has stepped up as the chief ally and supporter of these countries, they need to maintain and foster that relationship with lots of money and materiel. Ie, the 1 billion dollar infusion of foreign aid Cheney recently announced for Georgia. It's highly unlikely that the U.S support, especially military support, could ever truly leave as most of these nations are simply not capable of fielding an army with the proper size and equipment to deter the russkies. So, not only must the U.S spend a lot of resources on these countries, they also have to spend a lot of money just getting that support overseas. This is the whole "long supply lines" concept, whereas Russia doesn't have to worry about logistics expenses as these countries are literally in their backyard. So, more money the U.S taxpayer must shell out.

4) The most profound complication is all of the possible scenarios we will find ourselves in the future without having Russia as an ally. They will not support us militarily in any capacity. They will veto us in the U.N simply out of spite on any security council resolutions. Russia is re-arming, China is steadily building their military and has been for some time. The U.S needs as many allies as it can get, especially with all the foreign commitments it currently holds far from home. Should the U.S find itself in a major war, unless things are VERY bad you can pretty much count on Russia either sitting on the sidelines, or even working actively against us.

The Roman Empire collapsed for many reasons, but one of the chief reasons was that they had over-stretched their reach. They believed they could win every fight on every front and chose confrontation over compromise at every turn. The end result was an empire that had long-term commitments in far-flung locations with overextended supply lines on multiple fronts.

If you think the U.S isn't in the same boat, kindly re-evaluate the number of foreign countries which currently have major U.S military bases and personnel. The list is in the hundreds, and probably isn't going to shrink too much anytime soon!