The Russians are behaving exactly like the
Nazis did in 1938, with Georgia taking the place of Czechoslovakia.
They seem to expect that the United States, to avoid risk of a nuclear confrontation, will react the way Britain did 1938, demoralizing the West, and forcing the ex-Soviet dominated countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc to become Russian satellites in fear of getting the same treatment.
The idea here is that Western powers would face the same risk in defending any of these countries, so no alliance will the West will provide any protection to these states.
The West has several possible responses. The humanitarian actions taken by Bush represent one direction. Another is to respond in Iran, whose nuclear efforts have been sponsored and protected by Russia.
The third is for some pro-Western power (be it the United States or Britain or France or Israel or China or India or some combination, to supply the threatened nations with the ability to defend themselves: that would mean hardened silos with many nuclear tipped weapons aimed at Moscow and St.Petersburg.
Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons is mainly aimed at intimidating the oil rich Gulf states, as well as Europe. But two can play at the intimidation game.
In Georgia itself it seems feasible to close the land passages between Russia and Georgia, and keep the sea lanes open.
The United States should certainly announce a program to supply all of Russia’s neighbors with “nuclear reactors” to “help supply them with alternate sources of energy as oil and gas increase in price”.