The West's confrontation with Soviet Communism and its proxies, aka the Cold War, lasted from the end of World War II until the late 1980s. We have had a twenty year respite from that grinding slow-motion confrontation. Now the respite is over.
The invasion of democratic Georgia by Russia, the neo-imperialist successor state to the Soviet Union, signals the rekindling of the Cold War and of our conflict with Russia. Clearly, President Bush's 'rapport' with Putin has been seriously overrated.
The United Nations is useless as the Russians will veto whatever we propose in the Security Council. I believe we owe it to the Georgians, and to ourselves, to infiltrate weapons and explosives into Georgia so the Georgians can carry on asymmetrical warfare against the invading Russians. One thing we learned from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, Russia doesn't have the stomach for a drawn out asymmetrical conflict.
Other things we can do by way of reprisal include expediting the NATO membership application of the Ukraine and vetoing the World Trade Organization membership application of Russia. Announcing that we may have to boycott the Winter Olympics scheduled for Sochi, Russia, in 2014 is also useful.
What we must not do is shrug and ignore the situation.
