The Generals Dachas; Or, What's Going On, Really?

The chain of events are hard to follow: so "Misha," as his friends call him, sends troops to a part of South Osettia populated by a Russian-influenced ethnic minority and bombs a city >>> Russia, whose troops had massed on the border, cross into Georgian territory and responds in kind >>> the US, having been cultivated by Saakashvili, responds with harshly worded statements; US foreign policy types go nuts >>> Russia bombs outside of South Osettia >>> the Bush administration seems ineffectual >>> Can we do anything?

Are they fighting (physically) and we fighting (intellectually) over the self-determination of an ethnic minority? Over Georgian Nationalism? Beachfront Dachas? Or something much larger: NATO expansion? The end of American hegemony? The restoration of Russia? The United States's obligations to its allies?  There is no closed set.

This is one of those cases where our projection of strength and anger is inversely proportional to the size of the diplomatic and military toolset. We can't really do much. Maybe we can draw a red line. But if the red line is: one country should not unilaterally change the sovereign regime of another, we're in trouble.

The political elites in this country seem to have coalesced around a particular set of red lines, with conservatives sounding slightly more bellicose than the liberals, but really: saber-rattling all the same: Resurgent Russia attacking Pro-Western Democracy.  That sells well. Is it true? I wonder whether we're overestimating the Russian "threat" in the sense that of course Russian can bully its neighbors fairly easily, particularly nerdy neighbors who provoke them. 

And if we sell the Russian Bear to the American people and to the world, aren't Russia's actions more likely to appear to us to be belligerent, and if they appear to us to be belligerent (because of our own assumption of what Putin's doing), doesn't that make our response more aggressive? See where this is headed...in the absence of evidence, we're kind of creating our own threat here.

In any event, McCain's campaign hails his prescience, Obama tries to appear tough, Putin ponders his next move, and the Ukrainians wonder if they're next.