There is an additional misconception that underlies much of the programmatic left/right, Democrat/GOP, détente/Cold War binary thinking on the matter: that the Bush administration encouraged Saakashvili to confront the Russians or at least bolstered his sense of allied support. This is manifestly untrue. Tbilisi insiders told me that Georgia had been asking the Bushies for anti-aircraft missiles for some years. The Bushies consistently refused. Georgia had managed to acquire some from Israel, but the supply abruptly stopped in early summer this year--nobody knows why but it's likely that the Russians had a conclusive word with Israel. The Russkies regularly overflew Georgian territory as constant provocation, dropping a stray bomb here and a missile there, by mistake, in open countryside.

Obama and Medvedev would do well early in their relationship to make some policy decisions that would sharply break with Cold War patterns. For example, although Obama would not have assumed command of the U.S. military when Russia's naval flotilla completes its exercises off Venezuela in mid-November, he could suggest that the Pentagon invite the Russian commanders to stop off at Central Command in Florida before their return to Russia. The purpose of the stop would be to discuss urgent issues that are engaging both navies, such as the piracy that is running rampant off Somalia. And Medvedev, although he would have to push back against Kremlin hard-liners, could recommend that Moscow and Washington have some urgent issues to work on together with Tbilisi. Smuggling through South Ossetia has been a persistent problem, and it has at times involved that most dangerous of contraband -- fissile material that could be used to make nuclear bombs. Both Georgia and Russia have cooperated with the United States to build defenses against nuclear smuggling, and all three could cooperate to confront this terrible problem. These two examples show clearly what must be done to get beyond the Cold War. They convey that Russia and the United States can cooperate rather than compete, even in their own backyards. Since Obama and Medvedev are so clearly of a new generation, they are the leaders who may finally succeed in breaking the old patterns.

The Asian Development Bank, in which China plays a leading role, has extended a $40 million loan at the lowest possible rate to Georgia. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization - which includes China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as well as Russia - refused to countenance Russia's recognition of two breakaway regions of Georgia. The rebuff of Putin is all the more striking because - at least from Putin's perspective - the central purpose of this group was to form an eastern counterweight to NATO. China and the Central Asian states may share the Kremlin's resentment of American dominance in the world, but they are not so eager to construct a multipolar world that they will act against their national interests.

The Russian government’s reluctance to occupy Tbilisi shows that there is still a debate going on in Moscow about how much international opprobrium the country can afford. Half a trillion dollars was wiped off the value of the Moscow stock exchange in the aftermath of the invasion of Georgia. The wealthy, Kremlin-connected elite would like to retain the privilege of having bank accounts in Switzerland, houses in London and tanks in neighbouring countries. It should not be too hard to suggest that there is a choice to be made. A crackdown on visas for Russian businessmen would be a good signal.

"The Russians have demonstrated they can close that corridor through Georgia any time they want," said John Bolton, President Bush's former U.N. ambassador. U.S. officials reject that. "The Georgian energy corridor is safe," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew J. Bryza, one of Nabucco's major supporters, told an audience in Brussels Monday. He stressed that Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline, which transports Azeri gas to Turkey, were unaffected by the fighting. Mr. Bryza also said European energy companies behind Nabucco and the Turkey-Greece-Italy pipeline have told him they are determined to proceed with the two projects. "They haven't slowed down at all," he said. "They are anxious to line up gas supply contracts with Azerbaijan as soon as possible." But some analysts said the Georgian war could scare off investors, making it hard for the consortium to raise the €7.9 billion ($11.5 billion) needed to build Nabucco -- a task already complicated by the global credit crunch. Plans to expand Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan's capacity may also be in jeopardy. "This increases the risk profile enormously," said Jonathan Simpson, head of European projects at international law firm Paul Hastings. "Without the EU and the U.S. stepping in and subsidizing them, they won't get built. And so far they've shown no inclination to do that."

First, Russia remains a land of doublespeak. Listen to what Putin's puppet president, 42-year-old former corporate lawyer Dimitri Medvedev, told the BBC this week: Russia's invasion of Georgia was spurred by the "genocide" in South Ossetia. Even the most rabidly anti-Georgian reports by Russian state news outlets do not justify the claim. Then there was Medvedev's paranoid aside that seemed lifted out of an old Soviet script: his claim that the U.S. is bootlegging caches of arms into Georgia: "What the Americans call humanitarian cargoes -- of course, they are bringing in weapons," he told the BBC. He added graciously, "We're not trying to prevent it." And then Putin continued the paranoid thread on CNN, claiming that "someone in the United States created this conflict to stir up the situation and to create an advantage for one of the candidates" running for president. Lord knows what Putin and Medvedev think Cindy McCain, who also dropped by Tbilisi this week, had hidden in her clutch purse. Second, Russia remains a land where the state is willing to enhance its power through the extrajudicial punishment -- to the point of murder -- of its own citizens.

- Western public opinion fell with disconcerting facility for the thesis advanced -- from the very first day -- by the Kremlin's propaganda machine. We know now that the Russian army had been hard at work on its war preparations since before Aug. 8. We know that it massed at the "border" between Georgia and Ossetia a considerable military and paramilitary logistical presence. We know the Russians had methodically repaired the railroad tracks that the troop-transport trains were to take, and we know that at least 150 tanks went through the Roky tunnel separating the two Ossetias the morning of Aug. 8. In other words, no one can ignore the fact that President Saakhashvili only decided to act when he no longer had a choice, and war had already come. In spite of this accumulation of facts that should have been blindingly obvious to all scrupulous, good-faith observers, many in the media rushed as one man toward the thesis of the Georgians as instigators, as irresponsible provocateurs of the war. We must re-examine all of this. We must analyze in greater depth the mechanisms of a blindness that may, if we are not careful, perpetuate the Western "decline in courage" denounced in his time by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but which we thought belonged to the past. Reason, if not honor, demands that we go to the rescue of Europe in Tbilisi.

[…] To the Russian embassy in Tbilisi they brought old refrigerators, toilets, rolls of toilet paper, irons, bottles of vodka, forks and spoons, clothes and other objects that [looters from the Russian army] took interest in during their visits to private houses of Georgians, state institutions, military bases and army barracks. People are coming up to have a closer look, shake their heads, laugh. Cars that are passing by are honking…

The nation of Georgia is a place of inspiration and danger. I saw both in a single hour. I was in Tbilisi's Freedom Square during President Bush's visit in May 2005, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried. During the Georgian national anthem, the speaker system broke down and tens of thousands of Georgians movingly sang that song without music -- a song that had been illegal to sing under Soviet occupation. It is shocking to imagine those joyful people now bombed, fearful and occupied. At the same event, an assassination attempt was made against President Bush. A man threw a grenade wrapped in a handkerchief. Bush was behind a bulletproof shield but within the blast radius of the weapon. The grenade was live but did not explode -- or maybe the explosion in Georgia was just delayed.