It’s time for a sober reassessment of the Russian invasion of Georgia. This is more than a Putin power play or a cynical attempt to be taken seriously by the West. This is annexation. From the Wall Street Journal:

Russian troops seized control of the economically vital Georgian port of Poti Tuesday morning, a day after Moscow said it had begun pulling its forces out of Georgia.

At about 9 a.m. local time, some 70 Russian peacekeeping forces entered the port grounds on seven armored personnel carriers, according to Georgian government and port officials. They detained 20 Georgian soldiers stationed in the port and confiscated their weapons, then took up positions on the territory of the port, occasionally moving in and out on armored personnel carriers and in Russian army jeeps.

Tyrannical regimes are natural global predators. The internal horrors of despotic states stay internal only so long as external pressures last. Tyrannies–given half a chance–eat democracies whole, and we’re watching it happen right now.

The six-point ceasefire agreement is dead. Dead, too, are any illusions about Putin and Medvedev being cajoled into acting responsibly on this and any other matters of importance to the West. The need to play patty-cake with the Kremlin in hopes of Russian cooperation on Iran: dead. The need to speak prudently so as not to offend Time magazine’s Man of The Year: dead. It’s time Russia feels a severe economic choke hold, and her neighbors (and our allies) need to be armed and trained, so that their oil supplies are protected and their borders remain intact. We need Europe on this and they need us. As slow and off-base as President Bush and Condoleezza Rice have been on this drama, I suspect we will hear clear and decisive word from today’s emergency NATO meeting in Brussels.