Where Do We Go From Here?

After re-catching up on the latest reports out of Georgia, I'd like to discuss the conflict from a more macro perspective.

I think the claim Aaron made in an earlier post that Georgia probably miscalculated the degree of support they could expect from NATO countries, the United States in particular, might not be as true as it would seem at first glance. I think it's more likely Saakashvili felt that he had no options. As the NYT article we linked to yesterday discussed, Saakasshivili was in an impossible situation. He had been rejected by NATO, for the nearly explicit reason that they didn't want to have their hand forced in situations exactly like the one that has transpired. It also seems as though he felt that his presidency wouldn't endure a voluntary annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (we'll put aside for the moment whether the maintenance of his presidency should have been much of a consideration).

More importantly, and this is the bottom line in my opinion -- Russia wanted these provinces and knew that they could acquire them at a cost that seemed reasonable. Putin is the consummate realist and I'm imagining his thought process went something like this:
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Having these territories (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) is better than not having them. They're Russian citizens and we militarily control the provinces anyway.

We have no desire to ever have NATO countries on our borders, especially ones that are openly antagonistic to our government. This action should make NATO strongly disinclined to seriously consider subsequent countries for membership that have any potential at all to be involved in similar conflicts in the future (and we'll make sure that list of countries is never zero). Furthermore, who's going to retaliate against our hostilities? Western Europe? Please. The United States is in no position to expend troops and money that it doesn't have, and the public has no appetite at all to expend them in a former Soviet state that 99% of the population couldn't find on a map. It will probably cause some spirited saber rattling from the McCain camp (and maybe even from Obama), and might even present a headache of sorts if McCain were to win, but he's probably losing, and even if he does win the odds of him really doing anything other than giving a fiery speech about freedom and democracy is so remote as to be acceptable.

While we're at it we can kick the piss out of Georgia, which won't be a bad precedent for any other former satellite that starts acting up.
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That's it. Russia wanted these provinces and now they have them, at very little cost. There won't be any real push back. No sanctions. No bombings. Certainly no foreign ground troops either in Georgia or Russia. Just some condemning rhetoric, and most of the world's paying more attention to the Olympics anyway.

I expect Russia will soon pull its troops out of Georgia, keeping South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and that will be that for now.