This is a great piece, and I appreciate how balanced you are with it. I do have a tough question though - AOC is given a lot of credit in this for being savvy and possessing great clarity on complex foreign matters. I think you are giving her an excessive benefit of the doubt. Every time I hear her speak, it is sound bites, it is vague nuggets that are a knee-jerk reaction to what paper tiger she is arguing with. I remember when she first got elected, and how she had a foreign policy plan on her website...that got deleted a day later and was never replaced. She is charismatic, she is joyous and feisty and fun loving, but I do not believe she is a savvy foreign policy personality. You give her too much credit.
The only other thought I have is that, even as clumsy and backwards as this situation is - the fact that the US blinked and supported the people here (however messy that act is) it does mean "we matter" at the end of the day. If the act was dismissed, that would be a victory for GD. It could be argued that this is a hot air, smoke and mirrors victory for the future of Georgia.
Yeah, I think you're right in two senses. One, AOC and the left in general aren't known primarily for their foreign policy, and as the article I linked to in Dissent notes, the left as a whole tends to focus primarily on domestic policy and sometimes takes ideological shortcuts when evaluating foreign policy rather than view each issue on a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't say foreign policy is one of AOC's strengths, and even in the tweets I mentioned, her foreign policy was largely downstream of her (domestic) immigration policy.
Two, I think this is probably a low-salience issue for the Squad and the US Left. It's not like Ukraine, where it's constantly grabbing headlines and resulted in a Presidential impeachment. It got a total of 16 minutes of "debate" on the House floor and progressives were not involved in that debate. I think this is an issue where you'd expect the Left to default to their general views on issues such as sanctions, military aid, and USAID cuts - all of which, as I said, are strikes against the MEGOBARI Act - rather than to look deeply at the specific case and evaluate likelihoods and outcomes and get into the weeds of what this bill means to the various stakeholders.
So I get why Georgia watchers would be disappointed, but I also think it's a bit unreasonable to expect progressives to share their foreign policy priorities. Perhaps if AOC had looked deeply at this issue she would have come down in favor. Perhaps she wouldn't have - I think the case against the bill is quite strong. But I wouldn't bet she spent as much time looking at the bill before voting on it as I did before writing this post. She's dealing with an unprecedented series of crises in a country run by a maniac and his clown car of sycophants, and I don't blame her for falling back on general principles or just following the advice of whichever staffers looked into the issue.
As to the other - yeah, I agree that the MEGOBARI Act was a symbolic victory for Georgia's opposition. I'm just not very good at appreciating the impact of symbolism, as it tends to be lost on me personally. I would always prefer something concrete and effective over something symbolic, ineffective, and likely to backfire. But that's why I'm not in politics - I just observe it and do my best to understand.
I just keep thinking of the expression "a broken clock is right two times a day" describing the Washington DC "logic", if you try to analyze it. Good things only happen by accident, not intention in that cesspool.
This is good. I'd just say that the carrot in the form of a military aid is not something 2025 version of GD will view as a carrot. If they have ever.
This is a great piece, and I appreciate how balanced you are with it. I do have a tough question though - AOC is given a lot of credit in this for being savvy and possessing great clarity on complex foreign matters. I think you are giving her an excessive benefit of the doubt. Every time I hear her speak, it is sound bites, it is vague nuggets that are a knee-jerk reaction to what paper tiger she is arguing with. I remember when she first got elected, and how she had a foreign policy plan on her website...that got deleted a day later and was never replaced. She is charismatic, she is joyous and feisty and fun loving, but I do not believe she is a savvy foreign policy personality. You give her too much credit.
The only other thought I have is that, even as clumsy and backwards as this situation is - the fact that the US blinked and supported the people here (however messy that act is) it does mean "we matter" at the end of the day. If the act was dismissed, that would be a victory for GD. It could be argued that this is a hot air, smoke and mirrors victory for the future of Georgia.
Yeah, I think you're right in two senses. One, AOC and the left in general aren't known primarily for their foreign policy, and as the article I linked to in Dissent notes, the left as a whole tends to focus primarily on domestic policy and sometimes takes ideological shortcuts when evaluating foreign policy rather than view each issue on a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't say foreign policy is one of AOC's strengths, and even in the tweets I mentioned, her foreign policy was largely downstream of her (domestic) immigration policy.
Two, I think this is probably a low-salience issue for the Squad and the US Left. It's not like Ukraine, where it's constantly grabbing headlines and resulted in a Presidential impeachment. It got a total of 16 minutes of "debate" on the House floor and progressives were not involved in that debate. I think this is an issue where you'd expect the Left to default to their general views on issues such as sanctions, military aid, and USAID cuts - all of which, as I said, are strikes against the MEGOBARI Act - rather than to look deeply at the specific case and evaluate likelihoods and outcomes and get into the weeds of what this bill means to the various stakeholders.
So I get why Georgia watchers would be disappointed, but I also think it's a bit unreasonable to expect progressives to share their foreign policy priorities. Perhaps if AOC had looked deeply at this issue she would have come down in favor. Perhaps she wouldn't have - I think the case against the bill is quite strong. But I wouldn't bet she spent as much time looking at the bill before voting on it as I did before writing this post. She's dealing with an unprecedented series of crises in a country run by a maniac and his clown car of sycophants, and I don't blame her for falling back on general principles or just following the advice of whichever staffers looked into the issue.
As to the other - yeah, I agree that the MEGOBARI Act was a symbolic victory for Georgia's opposition. I'm just not very good at appreciating the impact of symbolism, as it tends to be lost on me personally. I would always prefer something concrete and effective over something symbolic, ineffective, and likely to backfire. But that's why I'm not in politics - I just observe it and do my best to understand.
I just keep thinking of the expression "a broken clock is right two times a day" describing the Washington DC "logic", if you try to analyze it. Good things only happen by accident, not intention in that cesspool.
well said.
Thanks Hans. I come from the "don't believe the hype" generation. It was literally our theme song.
thanks, that is an illuminating analysis!