I don’t think there’s any intent to engage the Russian forces in combat directly. Nobody is so foolish as to contemplate that. But there’s no denying that the US is moving a considerable piece of combat power into the Black Sea relative to the Russian Fleet. This is essentially still a signal, but it is a signal with backed with an underlying and very real naval power. Too often the Press has said that the US can do nothing about the Russians in Georgia. That’s not quite true as these movements show. And soon there will probably be accusations that the US, heretofore decried as impotent, is in fact being too potent or “provocative”.

Of course the thing can go too far. Cold War confrontations were the art of knowing how far you could go. But like Teddy Roosevelt once said, “speak softly and carry a big stick.”