DJS, concur with your on-point response to 5:51.

The WSJ has an editorial today by Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of the Russian Federation.
It is titled, “America Must Choose Between Georgia and Russia”.

It made me think of four things:

1. Some folks (including W?) believe that Russia lost strategic flexibility in invadnig Georgia whereas the West continues to present the Russians with dilemmas. Lavrov’s piece might be wrong (or even evil) on every count …but there’s no denying that it forces you to understand the larger point that strategic flexibility is not just lost/gained by action but also by inaction… and that for all parties, dilemmas abound. We are not in a good place; don’t anyone kid yourself otherwise.

2. We are trying to play poker and they are playing, well, Russian Roulette. We are not so smart as we like to think we are. Nor are we primarily guided by morality. About all we have going for us is strength, and for a few weeks after 9/11, we had a righteous anger. If you had grown up in the place I did, you would not need to be told that physical capacity is almost never a match for sheer balls. This is not a slam against the average US soldier (who has both in abundance) or against our military apparatus (which, at least, has the former). It is a reflection on the body politic.

3. This third point pains me so much to even say, but I must confess I am now in doubt. Should we stick to the morally compelling vision of pay[ing] any price, bear[ing] any burden, or should we stop trying to be the doula and protector of personal liberty outside our national borders? What, outside of ourselves, is worthy of sacrifice? Why? [At a tactical level I have more than one answer and at a strategic level I have more than one answer, but at a philosophical level I have only one.]

4. If it is worth saving the planet from itself, then it almost follows that we need to save the Russias and the Irans from themselves. Which means, at least in the context of international conflict (as opposed to conflict conducted by non-state actors), that we should aggressivley pursue two things — energy outside the oil paradigm, and a missile defense shield.