And why is Obama "in synch" with Moscow?

Because he's a secret Muslim, of course.

The U.S.'s support of Georgia getting into NATO has worked out about as well as the U.S. urging the Iraqis to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein back in the early '90s.

Josh, thanks for the excellent summary.  About :  "Yes, McCain's campaign is basically run by lobbyists (and, in many cases, lobbyists for foreign governments" I had only been aware of one such instance, and I thought the money had been returned. Can you elucidate?

Not quite, Woody. The Russians will have to kill a lot more Georgians than they appear likely to for this fiasco to equal Iraq in '91, with the added difference that we were sitting on the borders of Iraq with a huge military force, while in Georgia we have a few DEA guys and a mini-van.

Anyway, we should be grateful for small favors. This means Georgia won't be getting into NATO, saving us the trouble of having to dismantle that organization rather than risk going to war with Russia in the Caucasus as might otherwise have been likely.

Thanks for the great post, Josh, and for the informative links.

"Small favors," RP? Russia's "favor" here will be to make Germany an energy vassal. Putin's goal is to destroy the pipeline and thereby eliminate western Europe's last independent FSU energy source. When Georgia is crushed, Germany becomes part of the Russian oligarch*s' Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere.

This is why he's expropriated BP's holdings in Russia and effectively shut down the other oil majors, both foreign and Russian. He's re-nationalizing the Russian oil industry and using the pipelines as an instrument of bullying and blackmail against Russia's neighbors.

Only in the Obama and W-obsessed US blogosphere, which now, unfortunately, includes TNR, could an entire discussion thread fail to mention this obvious and most critical aspect of the crisis.

I disagree Bob, Georgia borders Turkey so there aren't any logistical handicaps, we would be simply extending NATO a few hundred miles. And what with the pipeline there there is something to protect. I think on condition of their joining NATO Georgia has to allow Abkhasia and Ossetia to have referendums on leaving Georgia. Let those places become Russia's headache. The greatest revenge is to help Georgia prosper then.

We all like to make fun of tep, but he's right on the mark here.  

Tep,

The link to the NYT piece does in fact acknowledge the obvious pipeline-based motivations for Putin's actions (even if it doesn't hone in on Germany as the specific target of Putin's control.) Maybe Josh doesn't make this the central focus of his short summary of the recent fighting precisely b/c it is, as you say, an obvious feature of the conflict's larger backdrop.

But, hey, why miss an opportunity to take a swipe at Obama-supporters?

"and is absurdly suggesting that Obama is "in sync with Moscow""

www.johnmccain.com/.../Read.aspx

"Reports already put the death toll in Georgia in the thousands and the fighting is only intensifying. In response to this crisis, the Obama campaign has chosen to play politics by casting cheap aspersions at advisers to Senator McCain which, coincidentally, echo the attacks of Russian PR firms."

I can't  figure out tnr bloggers. What motivate  them to write such bullshit

Why does he call  a factual McCain statement "absurdly",

Have he lost his mind? Is he is auditioning to hired a Obama PR hack?

Is he trying to help Obama campaign by writing such nonsense?

Is there some kind  marketing strategy in writing absurdly pro-Obama articles and posts?

Jacob has chosen the "rhetorical question" as a means of advancing his position.  I am not sure it works all the time, but let me try.

Is jacob stupid?

Hemlock: agree.  Even when Tep is making a sound point, he drowns it in Obama/TNR/Talkback attacks.  Don't know what the point is, other than to aggravate - or to demostrate that he can outsleepy Sleepy in being an insult-hurling contrarian.

RP: Woody's point is sound in principle, even if the number of the dead don't match.  There is a history of this sort of goading-to-rise without follow-through; it's that it works any more.  In any event, I agree with you on the NATO angle - I have never understood the drive to get all these little unstable countries into NATO.  If the object was to "encircle" Russia, make it feel unsafe and ready to pounce, we have succeeded beyond our dreams.  If, however, there was a strategic point, I have missed it.  The bigger point is that Europe is now completely encircled, energy-wise.  Will the US finally realise that cutting Iran out of the pipeline was strategically moronic?

Wow Jacob, your English skills are devolving even lower.

Have he lost his mind? Is he is auditioning to hired a Obama PR hack?

These are not even typos, these are things a non native speaker of English writes so please tell us you are from Lithuania or something.

And Hemlock, I agree, Tep was right on the first part (and acting as though he were the only person in the world who thought of it) but had to get his cheap shots in. I also notice Tep has absolutely no thoughts on what we should do about the crisis. In the end, so freaking what if we all know all the details and can bloviate about it since there isn't a damn thing that shall be done about it by the United States.

The Chinese take on the whole affair is kind of interesting. They are pissed at Putin for pissing on their parade, and pissed at him for violating Georgia's borders. But they are being circumspect about it, they are quoting George Bush at length about it. (and in China that means assent)

So many of the posters here are obviously not low information voters.  Most of us (I assume) are more aware of international matters than the average American is.  You guys are all posting about, pipelines, NATO, Putin and such, but I would bet that most low information voters fall into 1 of 2 camps:

Camp 1: Commie-Haters: You know the type.  They hate all things Russian, i.e. Vodka, Bears, the Kremlin, ah..circular furry hats....  So what they get is that Russian is once again up to it's old Commie tricks. We beat them once, let's beat them again.

Camp 2: War-Haters: They hate all wars, regardless of the circumstances.  They are just as likely to protest "The War of the Roses" as they are to protest Vietnam, Iraq, etc.  You know the type: "Give Peace A Chance".

I would hope that the average American is somewhere in the middle like myself.  I don't hate Putin (or Russia for that matter), but any man for whom W can gaze into his eyes and "see his soul" should not be trusted.  And let face it, Russia was once a world power, and the people who have had a taste of power and lost it, always seems to want it back.  And while I'm no war protester, it seems to me that we are already in the midst of 2 wars, Afghanistan & Iraq and we are stretched thin as it is.  Until we can at the least partially resolves  one of those 2 wars, while it's good for the President to be as "tough" and firm as possible with Russia, I would hope that the next President or the current one, does not intend to star a 2nd (or would it be 3rd) Cold War by taking some type of "action" against Russia.  It seems to me that of the 2 presidential contenders, one of them is more likely to be amenable(?) to starting some military action against Russia.

But I've never served in the military, so maybe I just don't understand as much as some.

The point is that it's TNR that's gone off the deep end, not those of us who think that Obama's nothing special and that there is a world outside the campaign that's worth paying lots of attention to (and not reducing to an Obama lens at every oppty).

ick - I only stated the blindingly obvious, which somehow managed to escape TNR's writers. The European press leaped on the pipeline aspect immediately. It's the story. TNR and the rest of the US press either buried it or ignored it.

As to blackie's snide little point-- as if it's up to us to tell anyone what to do-- it seems pretty obvious that at a minimum we need to a) start giving this matter the attention it deserves, b) create an intelligent energy security policy with the Europeans, one that does not tolerate Germany's acquiescence as a Russian vassal state, c) figure out how to balance the above with our need for Russia's help with Iran. A grand bargain that could be struck is that Russia leaves the pipeline alone, Georgia gets into NATO, Putin and his thieves get all the bzyatyi/baksheesh they can stuff into their private accounts from Iranian deals, and we and the RUssians build an anti-missile installation near Baku. From that position of strength we could negotiate with the Iranians.

Anyway, that's a start. Back to your scheduled programming. McCain's a lying LIAR who tells lies!!! Stop picking on Barack! [tearfully]

tep is dead-on with this one (and can we drop the Obama/McCain stuff?  Seriously.  Russia invaded a flawed, but decent and trying country.  Jacob, shut up with your nonsense).    The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceylon pipeline is something that can circumvent Russia.  Teppy, what kind of message does this send?  Also, what do you mean by Germeny becoming a vassal state?  I have some idea, but would like to hear you explain it.   You know a lot more about this than I do.  

Unlike the French, Germany refuses to even consider deriving any energy from nukes, which renders it almost totally dependent on natural gas and oil. Currently, more than 70% of the former comes from Russia; much of the latter does as well. This dependence means that German f-p is desperate not to antagonize Russia. Increasing it means that Germany can always be counted on by the Russian bully state to break ranks with the West on any issue of consequence to Russia.

There's also a longer discussion that I don't have time for now about how the German elite is increasingly bought and paid for by the Russian thieves. cf. the ex-Chancellor's notorious whoring for the most corrupt energy company on the planet, Gazprom. A lot of Germans think that Russia should be a close partner of Germany; they don't realize that if the vast majority of German energy comes from Russia, while only a small % of Russian exports go to Germany, they'll effectively be Russia's bitch.

1am - I hate Putin. I love Russia. I hate what Putin's done to that great and proud nation.

"...there is a world outside the campaign that's worth paying lots of attention to (and not reducing to an Obama lens at every oppty)." Agreed.

I admit that I'm not an expert on international affairs, but for those who seem to be more knowledgable(?) could ya'll tell me what exactly can the US, REALLY do in this situation without causing a "conflict" to become a war between NATO and Russia, or US and Russia.  I"m not snarking, I would really like someone opinion.

Also, what exactly has been the US's policy on Russian aggression since the ending of the Cold War?  And what would the new President (who ever it may be, as and Obama supporter, I of course hope it's Obama) have completely change or just tweak.  And please, I'm actually looking for serious answers here, not campaign talking points.

Thanks

Tep,

The grand bargain you outline rests on appealing to the personal greed of Putin and his cronies (unless I misread or misunderstand it.) Is it likely that this would be sufficient? Doesn't Putin's power within Russia rest in significant measure on his appeal to nationalist sentiment and, if so, wouldn't he need to be able to show Russians that he's getting something pretty big for their nation out of any grand bargain? (Or does the anti-missile station provide this?) Serious question (no snark intended; I know relatively little about the situation in Russia -- mainly what I read in the newspapers here.)

What I am waiting to see in this case is if these European "post-communist" countries (Poland, Ukraine and the like) are actually capable of doing with Russian bullying.  Are they capable of picking up that the US is basically useless in this particular situation, and if so how will they handle it?  The more time I've spent with this over this weekend the more I am concerned that there is very little constructive action the US can take.  I'm no expert, but I'm not seeing much of a window here.

Further, I wonder if this whole conflict is even registering with the American people.  Has anybody noticed, or are they obsessing on Michael Phelps's medals or John Edwards's stupidity?  

Here is some support for tep's (and others') contention that Putin's ambitions in Georgia extend beyond annexing South Ossetia.

www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Georgia-Russia-targets-key-oil-pipeline-with-over-50-missiles.html

www.nytimes.com/.../11georgia.html

From NY Times' second front page article on Georgia:

Gato Tkviavi lingered in Tirzini, a village of one-story houses where cows were wandering through the streets.

Asked where the border with South Ossetia was, he pointed at his feet. “The border is where the Russians say it is,” he said. “It could be here, or it could be Gori.”

Lamh: Liddel-Hart, in his book "On Strategy", notes that strategic thinking, and especially grand strategic thinking, in dealing with one's allies and enemies, requires not just long-term, but horizontal planning: across time and across a country's entire resource base.  This is one reason why W.'s adventurism and Rumsfeld's foreign policy were so completely wrong and how, in the long term, a serious shift in the way the US deals with the world needs to take place.

Tep's point is exactly right.  Russia has already threatened to shut down gas exports a couple of years ago, when Gazprom wanted to raise prices, and the result was a total capitulation.  And Tep is also right about the Germans' inability to deal with the issue because of the national choices the Germans made ten-fifteen years ago on energy policy, choices that in the long-term have made them utterly dependant on Russian natural gas exports.

What can the US do?  Well, for one thing, militarily, nothing.  South Ossetia, or indeed Georgia, is not worth fighting a nuclear war over, and the US has no military capality to speak of in terms of lending support to the Georgians in any event.  That option is out.  Trying to ge t the world riled about this is hardly possible either - after Iraq and Old Europe and the sabre-rattling on Iran, glass houses and stuff ... - so we are in the medium to long-term, and in the realm of strategy.

We know Russia principal source of income and power is energy, of the nonrenewable source.  So one way of dealing with the issue is simply to reduce their income and power, by weaning ourself off their gas and oil; you can try to do that by drilling, but that is not enough - you need to restructure your energy requirements - both on the demand (more fuel efficiency) and the supply side (nuclear energy, wind power, etc.).  In the meantime, there is a huge amount of gas trapped under Iran that is not being exploited, and the country itself sits between the gas fields of Central Asia and Europe - that, too, would help reduce the extortionist pressue on the supply side.

But, as I mentioned, grand strategy involves the entire resources of the state.  You can't fight an enemy when one of its allies is bankrolling your army.  The US needs to reduce dependence not just on foreign oil but on foreign debt.  And you cannot expect to have much of a say in the world when your allies are at the mercy of thugs and you can't do anything about it.  So at a minimum, you need to pay closer attention to the needs of your allies and denigrate them less.  

It was only fifteen years ago that people talked of a single ultimate power; in 2003, the Right in the United States pissed on the US' allies because, after all, who was left standing?  Well, China and Russia, at a minimum.  And Saudi Arabia is pulling in $2 billion a day from its oil sales.  I'm not sure that a triumphalist McCain is the right person for the job.  You need a pragmatic unideological and open mind for managing this.

When in the last century has Russia been a great, I'll acknowledge proud for defeating the nazis, nation?

"what exactly has been the US's policy on Russian aggression since the ending of the Cold War?"

1. Respect the territorial integrity of the former Soviet Union republics that have no desire to be dominated by Russia-- eg the Balts, Ukraine, Georgia. Ditto for Pol-Cz-Hun.

2. Ensure that Russia not cause mischief, or mayhem, or at any rate make a bad situation worse, among the arc of instability that stretches across the entire southern border of the former Soviet (and Romanov) Empire's sphere of influence, from the failed states in the Balkans to the gangster and bandit regimes in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan.

3. Keep the chaotic Russian state and military from passing nukes and nuke technology to bad actors like AQ Khan.

4. Try to help Russia have some degree of rule of law, respect for the democratic process, and a reasonably well-regulated ie non-bandit capitalism.

In reverse order, #4 has been an almost total failure. The capital markets have developed in Russia, but minority shareholders still can be screwed out of their holdings by bandits allied with state officials (google "Bill Browder" + Hermitage). Corruption and massive state larceny in Putin's Russia have reached sub-saharan African levels. Democracy does not exist in Russia. Most Russian social institutions-- public health, education, enbironmental protection-- are a shambles. The country is shrinking and will almost certainly cede a large portion of its eastern territories to China at some point in this century.

#3's been a mild success-- so far.

#2's been a big success thanks to both Clinton and Bush's forthright policies and vigorous, military interventions.

#1's also been a big success, again, thanks to vigorous US defense of NATO expansion under both Clinton and Bush.

All in all, the further east you go, the more success Bush has had. He's done a very good job re China, an excellent job re Japan and India, and a pretty good job, all in all, with Russia. But this crisis is a major test. Russia must not be allowed to destroy that pipeline.

jemerk - Russia's defeat of the Nazis is easily the greatest achievement by any major nation in the 20th century. Most westerners are ignorant of the tragic, almost unbelievable scale of this achievement, but the fact is that the war was won on the eastern front. That was Hitler's main concern; that front absorbed 10x as many troops and had >10x as many casualties, as the western front. You can't even begin to comprehend the scale of the suffering, the heroism, or the stakes involved in the battle of Stalingrad, the 900-day siege of Leningrad, Babi Yar, etc etc.

I suggest you read Antony Beevor's "Stalingrad" r Alan Clark's "Barbarossa" for starters. Alas, a definitive history of the Russian experience of the War is yet to be written. It may never be. IIRC Putin-Mobutu the Stalin-worshipper is now intent on closing the Soviet archives that had been opened, to the world's historians' great benefit, under Yeltsin.

The story of Russia's blood-drenched victory over Hitler is our own age's Iliad, waiting for a great writer to tackle it.

First things first--there is effectively nothing we can do about Georgia, which is why admitting it into NATO would have been both provocative and dangerous. It's now a dead letter thanks to Shaakashvili's rashness. This crisis should also be the definitive end of illusions about the UN--the 21st Century equivalent of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, etc. It's hard to see any future relevance for The World Body beyond PR.

--Germany has been a vassal state since 1945, energy notwithstanding. They have existed on the sufferance of the victors as long as they didn't develop any kind of serious (ie offensive) military capacity, which they know almost to a man and woman and have long since accepted. By way of contrast, a couple of years ago Poland's biggest oil company bought the huge refinery in Lithuania that had been the biggest in the Soviet Union. This facility can be supplied by supertanker-born crude, allowing it to supply all of Poland's, and potentially much of Germany's fuel needs without Russian supplies if necessary.

--The key to this dilemma is the Persian Gulf. Bringing Iraq on line up to its potential will speed the inevitable crash in prices that makes Russia's high production costs irrelevant, and striking a "grand bargain" with Iran helps in a number of additional ways. This is where our focus should be, and time is running out. India recently ended its holdout, allowing the $7.5 billion pipeline project connecting it to Iran's gas fields via Baluchistan, and there is surely more to follow with others including China--our leverage is a wasting asset. Iran hates and distrusts the Russians  a lot more than they do the US, but Russia has been actively working to change this for some time. Once Russia has succeeded  in out-maneuvering us in the Persian Gulf, the game is up.

"the inevitable crash in prices that makes Russia's high production costs irrelevant,"

Huh? You seriously expect increased Iraqi and Iranian production to help propel oil prices downward by 85%? Maybe oil will get back down to $80. Maybe $60. But not below $20 in the next few years, if ever.

Also, Germany's dependence on Russia is primarily due to its natural gas infrastructure and dependence. I don't see that a refinery in Lithuania makes any difference there. In addition, the German elite has made a strategic choice to be "partners" with Russia: the Germans ignore Russia's theft, brutality and bullying, and Russian energy and financial houses give German pols and business leaders access to prime Russian assets. Schroeder's a ludicrous example but there are dozens of others.

tep--

I think you're right about price as far as it goes--most experts I've heard think the real supply-and-demand fundamentals mean the price should be about $65 right now, but I don't think it will go down a lot more until there is major demand reduction.  But there is the fundamental economic matter of "rents" as developed by David Ricardo. His case study involved grain, but it also applies to oil:  two landlords, one with fields much more fertile than the other. Both sell at the same price, but the costs of the one with the more fertile fields are much less than those of the other. The latter makes, perhaps, a profit, but the former receives not only a profit but also something much larger--rents. That's the permanent advantage of the Gulf.

You're also right about the gas, but then I don't see Germany behaving any differently if they could heat with seawater. What we see today has become characteristic German, if not European, behavior.

I hope Putin doesn't succeed in closing the archives, but to a large extent that horse has left the barn. Erickson's epic two-volume study ("Road to Stalingrad/Road to Berlin") used them extensively, as did Applebaum's "Gulag" and several others. Recent works I highly recommend--Beevor's follow-up to "Stalingrad", "The Fall of Berlin 1945"; and Catherine Merridale's terrific "Ivan's War".

I'd agree absolutely that Schroeder had a strange and ominous notion of what Germany's options were (the dark Other of traditional SPD thinking), but perhaps the German-Russian energy relationship is a little less conspiratorial than you set out -- at least, beyond the conspiratorial assimilation of Schroeder into Gazprom's board.  In the early/mid 1990s Germany assumed, not without reason, that the Russian economy was scraping along at ground level at most and that Western European (especially German) assistance would be needed far into the future.  They didn't see the global energy demand begin to rise exponentially, and they didn't expect that the Russians would use energy as a f-p tool.  Stupid, yes, but not necessarily so stupid that a lot of smart people in other countries didn't read the tea leaves in much the same way.

So much for Bush looking in to Putin's eyes and seeing the measure of the man or whatever dumb@$$ thing he said.  Putin looked right back and saw the back of Bush's skull.  Another step backward in US foreign policy thanks to Bush, Inc.

Glad to have your return comments, back-slapping VFW's and AL's do not properly acknowledge that the "greatest" effort of WWII was indeed the stopping of the nazis on the eastern front.  The US contributed materials, but not the blood.  The west and the USA owes a debt, perhaps incalculable, to the Russian people, but not the political nation for that.

The wrecked, but preserved, western world, was what provided a base for American ascent to supreme global  status.

There may be no winners in war, but who's coming out on top in this political test?

The German suckup to Russia is not inevitable. The Germans would have done well to heed the words of that clear-sighted Prussian who called Russia a "colossus with clay feet." Putin's Russia is a shambles. They could easily be deterred, if the Germans had any spine. The Poles and the Czechs get this.

"The west and the USA owes a debt, perhaps incalculable, to the Russian people, but not the political nation for that."

You've just precisely expressed the crude and brutal rationale that dominated Stalin's successors' f-p. Whenever anyone told Brezhnev that the East European nations should be allowed to determine their own fate, he'd reprise his line about how the USSR "purchased" those nations "with its own blood." A kind of Soviet version of the New Covenant. Sort of like the Soviet gut response that justified the mass rapes, s.t. like 2m+ per Robert Conquest, by the Red Army of the German adult female population in 1945.

At this point, what is NATO?  And what does its expansion mean?  If Georgia were in NATO now, would NATO mobilize against Russia over two small break-aways from Georgia that the media keeps calling pro-Russian (if the media is right, I don't know)?  If not then what does NATO expansion mean?  Except, perhaps, provocation of Russia.

WHAT WOULD I DO IF I WERE PUTIN?

this is the main problem in question, and if you put yourself in Putin's place than you see that  there are very few possibilities to follow, his options are limited.

assumption no.1

1. There is no pro-Russian or Pro-Putin political faction in Gerogia, and there is no loyal (for Kremlin) ethnic or religious minority to act as a ruling elite as in a classical imperial strategy.

So Putin can not get rid away of Saakashvili  and name a puppet leader like in Cecenia to rule. He knows that once the war is over he will not bend again the Georgian people patriotism, and that the war will make Saakashvili even more powerful and stronger. He can not bring Russian colonists like in the '50s to change demographic ratios and make sure he has an elite to rule the "natives", and he can not kill the all Georgian  people so this leads to the second point...

assumption no.2

The war will not block Georgia's integration in EU or NATO. On the contrary

2. If the war is over even with a devastated Georgia the US and EU will be able to rebuild it, send troops  and weapons, so this will not be a bigger problem. The patriotism will be strong and the policy of getting closer to West will have a broad support, even if Saakashvili is out of the show. Which means he can not get the influence back without the military control of Georgia.

assumption no. 3

Putin doesn't want to get back USSR sphere of influence, he wants to get SOVIET UNION itself back, without communism of course it's out of fashion except the Ivy League.

3. This means that there is just one way of action for Putin, i.e. he has to conquer the entire country in order to stop NATO from coming too close to Russian borders.

He doesn't want to absorb the two separatist regions into Russia, he could have done it long time ago peacefully, he needed this crisis to invade the entire Georgia. This will give him control of the oil duct, the only semi-independent oil source Europe has. Once he invades Georgia and controls the pipeline the rules of the game change totally.

BUT HOW CAN HE DO IT? He needs a good reason to justify the action in the front of the Russian people, the only reference point for him. Killing of civilians by the Georgian forces was a good argument for entering Ossetia, not taking the whole country.

option 1.  Georgia is attacking Russia. If a city in Russia across the border is bombed by Georgian forces this will be enough. The only problem is that is difficult to do it, Georgians are not so dumb to fire inside Russia, and he can not "fake" it ( dress Russians like Georgians and do it yourself), there are too many satellites and reporters to figure out that it was just a "show". So needs an emotional event like ....

option 2. A public figure in Russia is assassinated by "Georgian agents”, of course his own KGB or the Cecens who own him.

The first choice is of course the Russian president, Medvedev which played enough in the movie. If Medvedev is killed Putin gets two rabbits for the price of one: he can argue that the murder was done by Georgian security agents and this is a reason for a total war ( after all George Bush argued that he has to invade Iraq because Saddam “ check out his father” ), and as an epilogue he can be again president. First for 3 months since he is the prime minister, and after this he can run again, the constitution says only two consecutive mandates, nothing about another one or two after a short break. And after all, who cares what constitution says as long as the people are happy.

or...

option 3:

President is not killed, but Putin is injured in the same kind of assasination attempt, but it's risky. He might be killed, and he can not be again President soon. And who knows, Medvedev might start thinking with his own brain and send Putin to watch movies, far away from Kremlin. The only power Medvedev has now it's only to fire the prime minister, in rest he is useless.

Let’s why Putin can not stop the war and accept a mediation.  He will lose the momentum, it would be difficult to do it once the peace is signed, any kind of peace, and maybe some NATO troops are in Georgia.

And even he fails in this, he carried the day. European allies sees now that both US and NATO are useless, and nobody would trust them again. The only danger is that maybe finally every European leader will understand who lies in Putin’s skin, and probably the anti-Russian crusade will be stronger. Which is the main reason Putin can’t stop the war, not even after the entire Georgian army is destroyed, or entire economy wiped out. Georgia will reborn under European protection and the gulf between Russia and the rest will last for a generation. At least he wants to be worthy, which means he has to conquer Georgia and never let it be independent again. Ukraine will be in NATO, but he controls the Caucasus. And unless we discover the proper way to get energy from the "cold fusion", we will need his oil.