But forget about judging souls in Moscow. They have demonstrated by their invasion of Georgia that they would rather work against us than work with us. This doesn't mean we can't find areas of cooperation, but it should mean we are willing to confront the Russians where needed.
Narrowly, we must prepare the Georgians to withstand another such Russian attack. Keep our trainers and send our engineers to build defenses for the Georgians to better absorb Russian ground forces. Equip the Georgians with better weapons and lots of hand-held anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. And land mines to block the Russians.
This is no time for the Georgians to go soft. They may have dodged a bullet here, and they need to seriously prepare themselves to being a hard target. Russia doesn't have that many good troops and I don't think it is hopeless for Georgia to hold off the Russians. Membership in NATO will be very helpful, too. I know one Lefty blogger recently said Georgia is too geographically remote for us to help them (and it is George Bush's fault anyway, he wrote), but good grief man, look at a map! Georgia borders NATO Turkey! (And no, I don't feel like linking to him any more than I want to link to the nonsense of Juan Cole.)
Our failure to militarily back the Georgians by shooting at Russians won't kill our reputation. We are keeping the Russians out of Tbilisi so far, after all. Yet we really don't want a nuclear war over Georgia. And I hope Russia agrees.
It didn't take long at all for the Poles to agree to a missile defense site inside Poland:
While Prague signed a radar deal in July, Washington's talks with Warsaw have been grinding on for 15 months.
Amid fears about the potential risks -- not specifically from Russia -- of hosting the silos, Poland has persistently pressed the United States to provide a Patriot missile air-defence system.
"We do take very seriously the concerns of our ally," Rood said.
Announcing the deal earlier Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk explained that Washington had accepted Warsaw's "key demand, the presence of Patriots."
"We would start with a battery under US command, but made available to the Polish army.
Then there would be a second phase, involving equipping the Polish army with missiles," he said.
"In five, seven or 10 years we want to be sufficiently well-equipped and well-trained to be ready, both with our allies but by ourselves, to defend ourselves at a critical moment."
Tusk said that the United States had also "committed to close cooperation with Poland in the event of a danger from a third party."
Note that Poland wanted American commitments to Poland's defense separate from the general NATO shield.
Russia will push other neighbors closer to us, and this is where we must respond to Russia to contain them in a Cold War Lite that will be more nuanced than the last one, in that we set up blocking positions to contain Russia even as we look for avenues to cooperate. Ukraine should be brought in. Shoot, convince the Finns and Swedes to join, too.
In addition to the missile defenses, perhaps we should base small naval forces in Romania and Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Taking over the Russian naval base at Sevastopol after the Ukrainians kick the Russians out in less than a decade should not be on the table now. But in ten years? Might be nice to hold that over the Russians.
And certainly, boot the Russians from the G-8 and return it to the G-7.
We tried being nice to the Russians and look where it got us--a thug Russian autocracy, arms and nuclear aid to Iran, and an invasion of a democratic ally.
Watch these Soviet retreads closely until the Russian people select better rulers.
