Let’s see what happens next
The NYT reported that, in Georgia, “both sides appeared to take tentative steps to back away from further fighting and adhere to the framework of a cease-fire brokered on Wednesday,” but that Russia’s tough talk continued:
Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, held a televised meeting with the leaders of the two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and pledged that Russia would provide whatever they needed to secede lawfully from Georgia.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said separately in a radio interview that Georgia “can forget about” its territorial integrity because the Georgian government under President Mikheil Saakashvili had committed so many atrocities that the two breakaway regions could never live under Georgian rule.
Is this a return of the bad old days? Or is it a definitive response to repeated provocations by a blowhard? An awful lot of smart people seem to have reached firm conclusions on this matter, pro, con, and some version of both at the same time. Was it a smart move or an exercise in hubris?
We really don’t know the answers, because this is not Iraq, nor the Sudetenland, or any of the other back ends of metaphors that have been so easily offered. Let’s see what happens in the next period. Let’s see if and how the Russians withdraw. Let’s see, for example, what Gori looks like in a week or two before we propose long lists of ultimatums and sanctions. Is that unreasonable?