Not like '68

People compare Russia and Georgia to 1968; a better comparison is 1938 and Germanys demands on Czechoslovakia, followed by the collapse of the Czech state and Hitler's creation of a protectorate. As yet, Russia have not annexed Georgia and even the neo-cons don't expect them to do so.

The problem with giving guarantees to small nations against our strategic rivals is that we go beyond defending their integrity and give them a blank cheque to be intransigent and aggressive themselves.

Look at our guarantee to Beck's poland and Beck's subsequent (consequent) intransigence against what were in fact Hitler's reasonable demand for the incorporation of German speaking Danzig into the third reich; the poles had illusions of being a great power (Taylor) but reality demanded that they ally with Germany and Russia; the same is true of Georgia just as we were on the wrong side of Germany to defend Poland, so we are on the wrong side of Russia to be able to defend Georgia; it is the fate of small nations to ally themselves with larger ones in order to protect their security and a glance at the map of the Caucases tells us that they have to choose between Turkey, Iran and Russia. The obvious choice is Russia given culture and history. Georgia cannot use the west as a means to gain complete independence from the power politics of the region; we can't allow ourselves to be used in that way. Yet there are those who want to

When taking decisions of geo-political consequence we would do well to know why we do what we do. Is there a moral imperative to defend small nations? Well, who is the small nation here? Georgia defending itself against Russia or S. Ossetia (not to mention Akarzia) defending itself against Georgia? or do we aim to clip the claws of the russian bear in order to defend our own self-interest? - to make a stand in Georgia so that the Russians know we will defend Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics. If Russia made a move on eastern Ukraine and the Crimea, would we seriously intervene? given that the population there see themselves as Russians?