Georgia on Putin's mind, for now
Angela Merkel did more in one minute to raise Georgian spirits yesterday than George Bush and Condoleezza Rice did in a week.
Germany, as the ‘bad guy’ of the 20th century, has, since World War II, always stepped forward last in foreign affairs, and has been particularly respectful of Russian turf. If Russians fear Germans above all else, Germans - now a fraction of Russian power - fear the awesome retribution from Moscow, as the Russians would like any excuse to heap misery on their 20th century enemy.
Angela Merkel did more in one minute to raise Georgian spirits yesterday than George Bush and Condoleezza Rice did in a week. 
Germany, as the ‘bad guy’ of the 20th century, has, since World War II, always stepped forward last in foreign affairs, and has been particularly respectful of Russian turf. If Russians fear Germans above all else, Germans - now a fraction of Russian power - fear the awesome retribution from Moscow, as the Russians would like any excuse to heap misery on their 20th century enemy.
But the fact that as recently as last April Germany vetoed the American-supported NATO candidacy of Georgia makes Merkel (pic)’s support more significant.
So when she stood next to Mikheil Saaskashvili and announced her support for Georgian entry to NATO, she wasn’t speaking just for her left-leaning Social Democrats, she was truly speaking for Europe. 
She wouldn’t have done it, either, if she hadn’t talked to her pal Condi Rice.
They will nonetheless still have a hard time dislodging the Russian army and moving Prime Minister Putin to honor the ceasefire his poodle president has signed. Although Russia went a lot farther into Georgia than I expected (dismantling their navy was a bit over the top), leading to more of a response than foretold when I wrote last week, it may well amount to the same thing: we can’t do anything, other than join Mr. Putin in re-igniting a cold war.
Small comfort, it will be a lot less bad than the first round, but dreamland, the preposterous hope of making Russia part of the Western security community, is now buried.
Russia is now doing two things: regaining some of her pre-eminence in the near-abroad that she enjoyed from the 1920s to 1991, and salving her own self-respect, through the fears of her neighbours, for the humiliation she suffered in the 1990s when her empire and economy were in simultaneous free-fall. But Russia can’t re-invade Prague or once again carve up Poland. Nor does anyone on either side want to go back to the perilous nuclear stand-off of the 1950s through 1980s.
This round will be fought on the ground and in the minds, but the latter will mercifully be without the socialist pretensions of last time. ‘Peace’ groups
in the West won’t be mobilising forces to support Mother Russia and ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin. So when I refer to the battle of the minds we will be largely be operating on memory - aside from the interests of those under the heels of the Russian army in Central Asia.
Memory of the fears of a nuclear holocaust everyone shared in round one, memory of the damper huge defense budgets put on development, by Russians of the encirclement of the kind Nicolas Berdyaev, the Russian philosopher-historian wrote so eloquently of in the early 20th century.
Strategic partner
On the ground Mr. Putin will have to be bribed with concession after concession to withdraw his troops, and they will never be far away however successful the West is in trying to implement the ceasefire technically. South Ossetia, always a melting pot (a majority of Ossetians actually live in Georgia-proper for that matter), makes a feeble excuse for Russia’s supposedly ‘defensive’ invasion. But on the Russian army will go, wherever there is a soft spot in Western-unity.
What we are losing is the illusion that Russia could be a ‘strategic partner’; that Russia could ever believe that NATO were merely a defensive alliance (though it was that too) that now only wanted to establish a ‘zone of peace’ throughout Europe - as if something so one-sided as to be progressively establishing military ties with Moscow’s old enemies on her borders could be seen in such benign terms.
Poland in NATO was a pretty big bite into the Russian ego.
How could it have looked to Putin and friends as NGOs and western missiles moved into little Georgia? Or as Georgia sent 2000 troops to join NATO forces in Afghanistan? Or as George Bush proclaimed Georgia to be the beacon of democracy in the region when he stopped off there in 2005? Or as the Columbia Law School graduate and young president of Georgia cheered on the orange revolution in nearby Ukraine, a spill-over from his own earlier clean-up of his country? 
Scary stuff for the new Russian Tsar. We are back to the old game. At least this time, Mr Saakashvili (pic) will not be dragged naked to Moscow, as the Czech leader Dubcek was almost exactly 40 years ago. ‘Saakashvili has to go,’ the Russian foreign minister is reported saying to Ms. Rice.
He’ll survive - barely - only with the teeth-clenching united backing of all of Europe and America, brought together by Russia’s moving just a bit too close to Tbilisi.
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PROF W SCOTT THOMPSON is a national security expert who served four American Presidents and is a professor emeritus at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is the author or editor of 13 books on world political issues and resides in Washington, Bali and Manila.
