MORE THOUGHTS ON RUSSIA AND GEORGIA, from Prof Kenneth Anderson. “I share unreservedly the belief that Russia is deliberately undertaking a dangerous, threatening, imperial expansion in the “near abroad” and that it must be opposed and rolled back. . . . It is a grave error to conflate rolling back Russian expansionism with the idea that Georgia should have actual political, security, and military control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This is a difficult point, but it is essential. My view, based on what I saw in the brutal, unforgiving, as-bad-as-Yugoslavia ethnic cleansing wars of fifteen years ago, is that it is simply impossible for Georgia to govern those territories.”

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Eugene Volokh, who comments: “But while my instinctive sense in the Russian-Georgian conflict is that the Russians are in the wrong, I think it’s important not to assume that therefore the Georgians are in the right, or ought to get what they want. And my sense is that the talk of letting Georgia into NATO is likely quite misguided.” It’s not a good idea to let Georgia into NATO unless we’re willing to get into a shooting war with Russian on Georgia’s behalf. I don’t believe that we are, and I’m sure that the rest of NATO isn’t.