It should hardly be surprising that the conserative punditocracy is swooning at the prospect of reviving the Cold War.

The Cold War arguably made conservatism what it is today - or at least, what it was in 2000.

While the historical narrative is far more complicated, the broad public narrative is that Ronald Reagan - and thus his party, and thus the conservative movement which animated his party - “won” the Cold War by outspending the Soviets, forcing them to try and keep up and causing the USSR to fall apart at the seams when it couldn’t. There is, again, some truth to this assertion - but it’s hardly as if the Soviet state was in robust shape in 1980. The collapse was only a matter of time - but yes, we can say that Reagan’s approach might well have speeded it up.

This, for conservatism, was a legitimate accomplishment. A highlight, if you will. But conservatism had long defined itself in terms of its struggle against communism, and the Soviet Union in particular. Putin’s Russia is not communist; but that distinction, now, seems irrelevant to the neoconservatives in particular who see a return to the glory days of defining both themselves and this nation in opposition to the Soviet Union and everything it stood for.

But this is not 1980, or 1950. There is a tremendous difference between regional conflicts, whatever Russia’s aims, and the avowed communist aim of global expansionism.

But neonconservatives, and the presidential candidate who is carrying their flag, are consciously ignoring the distinction; beyond that, it’s curious to read something like this from Charles Krauthammer:

The Finlandization of Georgia would give Russia control of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which is the only significant European-bound route for Caspian Sea oil and gas that does not go through Russia. Pipelines are the economic lifelines of such former Soviet republics as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan that live off energy exports. Moscow would become master of the Caspian basin.

At the same time, of course, we’re supposed to believe that it’s a slander to say the war in Iraq had anything to do with energy at all.

To his credit, Krauthammer admits that there is nothing to be done militarily. Yet he ends by saying, “Much is at stake”; I simply do not see that as much is at stake as he thinks there is.

But beyond that, the hypocrisy alone of the neoconservative right should give us immense pause. Max Boot notes yesterday that Russian authorities are feeding their countrymen lies about the Georgians:

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov] claims “there is . . . clear evidence” that Georgia has committed”atrocities” that are “so serious and systematic that they constitute acts of genocide.” Who knew that Georgia had committed genocide? But if the Baltic states can be guilty of running “concentration and extermination camps,” there’s no reason why Georgia cannot be guilty of even more heinous offenses–at least in the vivid Russian imagination.

Dammit, why is there so little self-awareness amongst these people? One word, or rather an acroynm: WMD.

If Russia is propagandizing the county into war then we did the exact same thing in regards to Iraq - with Boot’s full approval, of course. Our claims of genocide may have been vastly more truthful, but the real truth is this: Either there is no distinction when it comes to which nation does these things or there is. Either bullsh*tting the poplation into thinking war is absolutely necessary is bad or it isn’t. It is not good when we do it, bad when someone else does it. Yet neoconservatives base their entire worldview on the notion that there is a distinction; and in the cold calculation of great power politics, there must be. It’s a nationalistic distinction; it has absolutely nothing to do with objective morality. But that can’t be spoken, of course. So we have to pretend - Russian propagandization bad; but Iran could have The Bomb within a few years, and we couldn’t let the Iraqi smoking gun be a mushroom cloud.

This is why neoconservatives cannot be trusted on the matter of Russia and Georgia, or any other foreign policy matter. Shall we now begin to hear that Russia again constitutes a threat to invade western Europe?

Make no mistake, John McCain would like nothing better than to believe this, and to have you believe it as well. Regardless of whether it’s the truth or not.