This editorial in the Wall Street Journal Europe aptly characterizes the European Union’s ineffectual response to Russian aggression in Georgia as “Stop! Or We’ll Say Stop Again!” It is indeed pathetic–but hardly surprising–to see how ineffectual the institutions of post-modern Europe are in dealing with a throwback aggressor seemingly straight out of the early 20th century.

Still, while other nations aren’t doing much to punish Russia or to make it evacuate all of its troops from Georgian soil, it is at least comforting to see that other states aren’t rushing to support the aggressors either. Last week the Russians tried and failed to get backing from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization made up, in addition to Russia, of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. All are illiberal states that Putin hopes to organize into an anti-Western bloc. But while these countries are hardly friends of America, they are not rushing to fall in behind Russian
imperialism. The Central Asian states, in particular, have good cause to fear that if Russia succeeds in Georgia, they could be next in the Kremlin’s sights, while China has its own reasons to be suspicious of Russia, especially given the competition between the two in the Far East.

The media spoke of American diplomatic “isolation” at the time of the Iraq War. It is instructive, now, to see what true isolation looks like. The problem is that the U.S. as a liberal democratic state is far more sensitive to the pressures of world opinion than an autocracy of the sort Russia has become. Expressions of foreign disapproval will count for little in the calculations of the hard cases who now run the Kremlin. Sterner steps are called for. But so far–aside from a U.S. naval visit to Georgia and the conclusion of a missile defense pact between the U.S. and Poland–have yet to materialize.