It looks like Russia wants a pliable Georgia. With the country cut in half, the east-west highway/rail/pipeline closed, access to ports shutdown, communications down and the military bottled around Tblisi the Russians have succeeded. Georgia is no longer a viable entity. Nothing the US can do will change the situation short of a military confrontation.

The message to the world is that the US is unwilling and therefore unable to do anything but bluster. This is bad. Nations are recalculating relationships and the US risks becoming irrelevant. All that hardware is useless if you won’t use it.

The US has tried the “love us” gambit without success. All of the trillions of humanitarian aid, disaster relief and nation building has not won us many real friends in the world. Perhaps there just isn’t enough love in the world. Maybe we need to try the “fear us” approach.