The risk of being sucked in to small wars and being used is one reason the United States has usually avoided Peacekeeping missions. This allows us to retain at least the illusion of impartiality. We have a small detachment in the Sinai and have rotated personnel through Bosnia. If you stand guard over a small friend then they own you as much as you own them. In the run my dog plays in a fantasy of freedom. If or rather when he gets in trouble he knows I will soothe and save him but he also knows that if he antagonizes a bigger dog or the pack he can get hurt. If I keep him on a leash then he becomes much more challenging to other dogs. Why? My theory is that knowing that I am attached to him by the leash the dog feels empowered. He can write a check for me to cash. The United States tries to avoid being precipitously wagged by the dog. When Peacekeepers or Observers are needed we prefer that the be provided by Canada or the Netherlands or Malaysia or Fiji. There are countries that now have a made a tidy business out of renting their armies out to oversee other poor countries unhappy minorities or borders. When things blow up everyone then turns to the US to come in and put the fire out.

Perhaps the Ossetians are wholly owned by Moscow and their accelerating campaign on the Georgians in the region was calculated to provoke a response and trigger the waiting column of tanks. Perhaps they used the presence of the Russians and the Russians are as much dupes as the Georgians. One problem the Russians have is that their reputation is so bad that they have a hard time recruiting proxies to serve as buffers for them. Who could they have turned to in 1992 instead of putting their own boots on the ground? This is all academic because the Russian practice of handing out passports destroys the ability to even pretend that they are acting as peacekeepers.