Richard Danzig: How Obama Would Handle Putin

Should we continue military aid to Georgia?
I think the administration has taken the right position on this, which is that Georgia needs military assistance, but at the moment what it really needs is humanitarian assistance. We shouldn't back away from Georgia as a member of NATO.

Some Obama advisers have said we should work even with unsavory local partners to accomplish security goals. Where would Obama make compromises on human rights to advance U.S. interests?
He's very pragmatic and he recognizes that the world doesn't divide into good guys and bad guys so much as fall on a spectrum. There are nations that can be induced to do good things and are at risk of doing bad things. It's determined case by case, and it's defined by moral and security dimensions. Doing it pragmatically rather than ideologically produces better results.

You can work with a group that strays on human rights for the greater moral good?
The Sons of Iraq—now called the Sons and Daughters of Iraq—is an example of the desirability of working with people you may have reservations about. One of the things we press the Iraqi government to do is take 20 percent of those people into the Iraqi national forces. They say, "These people were fighting us!" But the question for them should be: how do you increase security and create a better world?

© 2008