> This is starting to feel a lot like a debate with a creationist.
>From my side, it's starting to feel like a debate with a
liberal imperialist -- a la Barnett Rubin, say.
> I'll side with Barnett Rubin and you
> side with "who knows, maybe God hid the dinosaur bones to make us
> *think* Russia never felt threatened by the Taliban?"
You're certainly welcome to Mr Rubin.
Even by Rubin standards, though, you're rather overstating the case. Rubin himself -- at least in the 2008 piece you referenced; I haven't read the man's entire oeuvre -- doesn't say that Russia felt "threatened" by the Taliban. He does note that Russia provided some support to the US in the early phase of its Afghan adventure. (We can safely assume there was a quid pro quo, or the expectation of one.)
The sage Mr Rubin goes on in the next paragraph to observe that more recently
> Since then, however, old alignments have re-emerged thanks in part to
> missteps in U.S. policy. The Bush Administration responded to Iranian
> cooperation by placing Iran in the Axis of Evil and naming Pakistan
> its most important non-NATO U.S. ally. Northern Alliance figures
> close to Iran and Russia have been eased out of power. In May 2005,
> Afghanistan and the United States signed a Declaration of Strategic
> Partnership, and, largely in response, in July 2005, the heads of
> state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China and all
> the Central Asian countries except Turkmenistan) asked the United
> States to set a date for closing its bases in Central Asia. They have
> charged that the United States is exploiting cooperation against
> terrorism to project power into oil-rich Central Asia.
Don't you love "missteps"? Mr Rubin would not want to say -- or perhaps even be able to think -- that the other powers might have made an *accurate* assessment of American intentions, and seen through American mendacity about those intentions. I only wish that all contributors to lbo-talk were equally perspicacious.
I don't doubt that the Russians have little use for the Taliban and would love to see it disappear. They'd prefer to have friendlies or at least bought clients in the region. But this picture of the US and Iran and China all united in horror at the Taliban "threat" is just way oversold.
--
Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org