I’m afraid Russia may well have succeeded in demonstrating not only to Georgia but to Azerbaijain and other countries in the region that they have no effective defense against Russian military power.

An analogy: The tiny Caribbean island of Barbuda, population 1,500, has no effective defense against American military power. We could send three carrier battle groups and six squadrons of amphibious landing craft, and within three days we could say “Mission Accomplished”. And the world would laugh that we essentially used a sledgehammer to bash a baby’s head in. There’s no glory in that, and when Boeing suddenly faced a slew of canceled airplane orders from a pissed-off world, we’d have to think about how the benefits of occupying Barbuda stacked up against the liabilities.

South Ossetia has 70,000 people. That’s how many people attend a county fair in America on a slow day, and they make a living by smuggling or getting handouts from Moscow. Now Russia faces a whole array of diplomatic pain and partners who suddenly wish to pull out of any number of joint ventures. Yes, they can roll to victory in any number of little pissant satrapies throughout Central Asia, but they face the law of diminishing returns. And there’s no way they can sit astride a pipeline outside of their borders and call that “peacekeeping”. In fact, they invite legitimate peacekeepers with a global mandate by such an action.