" if this proves to be only the first of more incursions into other neighboring states, there are relationships we have and meaningful levers we can use, whether over Russian membership in international institutions or Russian leaders' luxury apartments in Paris—if, of course, we are willing to use them." Okay, what neighboring states might be victims of Russian incursions and warrant such anemic responses as confiscating a handful of luxury apartments? Ukraine? The Baltic states? Poland? Armed Russian interference in Kosovo?Where exactly do we draw the line between symbolic responses that won't make the slightest impression in Moscow and real response, which consists of offering some or all of these nations the means and expertise to defend themselves, or even giving them our own military assistance? Since we really have no idea how far Russian ambition stretches or how much of a buffer zone of new satellite states would be sufficient to allay Russian paranoia, might it not be a lot saner and ultimate safer for world peace to make it clear to the Russians from the get-go that a.) that Russia cannot employ the fact that some of these nations Russian ethnic minorities that need "defending" as a pretext for incursions (a favorite Hitler rationalization, and b.) that the fact that a given nation was once under Soviet (or even Czarist) rule gives Russia no legitimate historic moral claim for reasserting its domination in the present, and therefore c.) these nations, acting together in concert with the United States and whatever other democratic nations choose to participate in this consortium, will be defended by whatever military means are necessary to make an incursion costly enough that it would imperil popular support for Russia's ruling class.

Oh please...Stalin drew the borders of Geogia for God's sake...how can those "borders" be sacred?

The only sanctity is in the actual people...and the South Ossetians etc. in 1989 or thereabouts decided they were oppressed by Georgians, and clearly, since Georgia went in there and slaughtered 2000 of them in their sleep August 18, that is certianly true.

The Cold War withdrawal symptoms are all from the West...to either provoke or allow what Georgia did in South Ossetia is beyond comprehension.

What mechanisms did Russia have except those it "chose"? NONE, because these little fascist Neocons have a wet dream of world empire and have been messing with Russia since Clinton...they apparently do not WANT and end to hostilities.

This is the result, and as long as these neofascist shits will not recognize that the world has changed, it will remain so and worse, explode.

The people of Georgia, Russia and the US certainly have no interest in war...it is only the military industrial complex that loves war.

Listen up, dolt. If Russia had a beef about real or alleged mistreatment of ethnic minorities by Georgia, it could have lodged a complaint, supported by concrete evidence, with the UN or the World Court, and relied on diplomacy and the conflict-resolution solutions that civilized nations rely on. If it had made a convincing case, it could probably have lined up the sympathy of the world community, including the US, and prevailed on us to exert our good offices to convince Georgia to stop whatever bad stuff it may have been doing. Nobody would have any complaint about Russia acting as the advocate of such ethnic minorities. We might very well have cheered it on. Instead, it chose to roll the tanks as the first resort rather than the last one. Anybody with anything remotely resembling a moral compass would see and appreciate this difference and not write the kind of apologetic twaddle you have in your posting. As I said, military intervention "to protect oppressed minorities" is precisely the kind of rationale that Hitler liked to use to rationalize his aggression, and it's just as hard to justify what Russia is doing now as it was to justify, say, Hitler's invasion of the Sudetenland.

Actually we do have an idea how far Russia's, (as you term it) ambition goes, dfs.

Secretary Rice and Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov had a strategic (note the word strategic?) declaration document in which Russia layed out their concerns over the region and our intentions, while the U.S. stated we would work to satisfy those concerns.

Your idea of nations acting together in concert with the United States is what our current president's father called the New World Order.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case, as personal interests, always take precedent over consortiums (?), especially when energy is on everyone's mind.

I liked your symbolic idea of denying luxury apartments to Russia's leaders (whomever they might be). Possibly we should start discussing Russia's hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympics as well? : - )

a.) Sure, we know what Russia's stated intentions are. But in history a nation's actual intentions have not always been identical to its stated ones (and that's the Understatement of the Month). b.) As for Bush 41's "New World Order," I am not sure whether what I propose would be a case of other nations acting in concert with the US or the US acting in concert with other nations. But in either case I hope you will agree with the that this would have been vastly better and more benign than an an immediate and unilateral resort to military force. That is simply not the way that civilized nations conduct business (and don't try drawing any rhetorical comparison with Iraq, our incursion there was neither immediate nor unilateral).