I think Victor Davis Hanson on NRO the other day got at it quite well:
"The long-suffering Russian people resent the loss of global influence and empire, but not necessarily the Soviet Union and its gulags that once ensured such stature. The invasion restores a sense of Russian nationalism and power to its populace without the stink of Stalinism, and is indeed cloaked as a sort of humanitarian intervention on behalf of beleaguered Ossetians. There will be no Russian demonstrations about an “illegal war,” much less nonsense about “blood for oil,” but instead rejoicing at the payback of an uppity former province that felt its Western credentials somehow trumped Russian tanks. How ironic that the Western heartthrob, the old Marxist Mikhail Gorbachev, is now both lamenting Western encouragement of Georgian “aggression,” while simultaneously gloating over the return of Russian military daring."
Yep. Read the whole thing. Hanson points out that this crisis advertises, again, the weakness of NATO. True--and I think there's a simple reason for that (still): the end of the Cold War. NATO was a (necessary) invention of western anti-communism. It was very simple: an alliance designed to help keep in check Soviet expansionism. And it worked very well for over 40 years. But what function does it have if there ain't no USSR anymore? Russia today isn't communist; there's no agreement in the West on its aims, or on what threat it poses. Indeed, there's no agreement in the West, really, on just what NATO is supposed to do these days. And so, when crises erupt, NATO and its members tend to flail around a bit and accomplish little.
I am glad to see the Bush administration taking a stern line vs Mr. Putin and the Russians--let's hope it's effective.
