Now, now, boys.

At the end of the day, whatever happens, when everybody climbs down and things get back to *normal,* the Russians will demand a concession for their troops killed in the initial assault on Tskhinvali. And we’ll give it to them.

The “peacekeeping” fiction is just pro forma plausible enough that it WILL be honored. (Imagine if Serbian army forces attacked a position in Kosovo and killed American troops.) Otherwise, this whole half-way house structure that we’ve evolved to freeze hot conflicts will completely crumble away. We’ll give the Russians some kind of concession …