January 10, 2009 I liked Anatol Lieven's article in the Nation on what Obama's policy towards Russia should be.  As I've written elsewhere, Barack Obama needs to change the Bush policy of encouraging NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Geogia, I believe, was really just a dress-rehearsal for the Crimea, in Ukraine. Offering NATO membership to Ukraine will horrify the Russian-majority population of the Crimea, just as the prospect of Georgia joining the alliance horrified the populations of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In my opinion, if the US really wants to substantially interlock Ukraine and Georgia into the western orbit, the smart way to do this would be through EU expansion. Even the most vociferously anti-western Russian living in Crimea could not help but acknowledge the economic benefits that EU membership would bring to Ukraine. But NATO would bring them nothing, and offering NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia would bring us nothing but unnecessary conflict with Russia. Unfortunately, it looks like business as usual with Russia as far as the Obama administration is concerned. Reports are that Stanford professor Michael McFaul will be Obama's lead man on Russia, which indicates to me that little change will be undertaken by an Obama administration vis-a-vis Russia. In McFaul's testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Relations last September, McFaul repeated talking points which were more reminiscent of the Bush administration's approach to the region than Obama's promise of bringing change to American foreign policy. McFaul, like the Bush administration, blames the conflict on "Russian aggression," and proposes that the United States "coordinate closely with our NATO allies to entertain positively a request from the Ukrainian government to begin a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for NATO." On the subject of Obama's foreign policy, I've also been really dismayed by the silence surrounding the "office of the president-elect" concerning Israel's wanton destruction of life and property in Gaza. While Obama likes to claim, with respect to this issue, that "there's only one president at a time," Israel's attack on Gaza is a humanitarian issue, not just a political one. Obama's pre-presidential status hasn't prevented him from speaking out (occasionally) on the economy, or creating a stimulus package that is already being debated informally in Washington. Is our economy really so much more important than what is happening in Gaza?