From J.E. Dyer, on Max Boot:

Let’s keep a few things straight.

First, Russia has not been a help with Iran. Russia is not our ally in the project of keeping Iran un-nuked. There are absolutely no concessions we can make to Russia that will induce Moscow to act honestly in this role. Moscow wants the US out of South Asia as much as Iran does. All the Russians will do with our commitment to a Russia-enabled process with Iran is exploit it to keep us from changing course, and acting more decisively.

Second, Russia has, since November of 2007, presented Georgia with every provocation in South Ossetia except a slap in the face with a glove. Russian forces have actually occupied South Ossetia for some time now, even though it is disputed territory whose disposition is supposed to be determined by peaceful negotiation. Georgia has excellent historical reasons, going back three hundred years, to fear Russia’s intentions toward Georgia — and to fear the strategic position Russia would have as the occupier of South Ossetia, to menace Georgian independence.

Third, anyone who doesn’t think Russia would like to menace Georgian independence should refer to Russia’s post-Cold War history with Georgia, and to Russia’s attempt to fix the 2004 election in Ukraine, which almost certainly included poisoning the nationalist independence candidate.

Fourth, South Ossetia itself has a large majority of ethnic Russians, and if it came to a vote, would choose to rejoin Russia. America’s interest here is not in forcing South Ossetia to remain part of Georgia, but in ensuring that South Ossetia’s fate is decided peacefully, and without compromising Georgia’s security.

This last is the place to start. We should do more than send Stingers and Javelins to Georgia: we should make it a project for a full spectrum of US patronage, to enable Georgia to defend her sovereignty. We had US military trainers in Georgia until the day before Russia invaded, training the Georgians to participate in Iraq. The precedent and infrastructure are there to immediately step up our military cooperation with Georgia, and publicly outline our interest there.

Instead of a series of incoherent responses to Russian actions, we should get out in front of this problem by defining it on our terms: a sovereign Georgia, a South Ossetia whose future is decided by negotiation and not force, a Black Sea whose security and accessibility for all is not held hostage by Moscow (critical to Ukraine, Romania, and Turkey), and a resources regime (e.g., oil) that enriches Moscow as much as anyone else, but does not put the region’s resources under Moscow’s exclusive domination.

(Consider, for example, that we in the US do not require all the natural resources of even North America, much less the rest of the Western Hemisphere, to be under our domination. We even let China drill off our coast, without so much as a public political discussion of doing otherrwise, so entrenched and longstanding is our commitment to national sovereignty and UN protocols for the world’s resources. You may not think it’s important to get Russia and China to operate on the same principle — and they don’t, BTW — but you can’t argue that the US doesn’t at least practice what we preach, in this regard.)

We should not attempt, nor do we need, to force Russia out of South Ossetia militarily. If we have to, we can even accept the outcome of South Ossetia being subsumed by Russia through this invasion, although we should make Russia pay for that inch by inch. Our increased commitment to Georgia should be non-negotiable, and we should also promptly increase non-negotiable cooperation with, and military sales to, Ukraine and Romania. But we could also conduct Black Sea naval patrols, with US Air Force cover from Turkey, and make a UN-monitored referendum in South Ossetia the price Russia pays for our forces standing down from that operation. Russia’s capacity to confront such an operation outright is limited, and she doesn’t want to provoke a larger confrontation with us anyway.

We should do nothing without a clear concept of what it is we are trying to achieve. If we have learned nothing else from Vietnam, we should have learned that merely flinging arms at a problem, without a definable objective, is worse than useless. It creates new vulnerabilities without accomplishing anything positive. If we are going to demonstrate resolve to Russia, we will have to make it clear to Russia what she is not to do: try to subvert Georgian sovereignty, or the sovereignty of the other Black Sea nations, by either arms or political subterfuge. What Russia should see is every other nation on the Black Sea strengthening before her eyes — and her gambit in South Ossetia backfiring.