Germans green-light Russian Aggression in Caucasus?

The Wall Street Journal Europe posts an article that demonstrates that cowardly Nibelungs have nothing on their modern epigoni in Deutschland, heimat of twentieth century failure and now a paragon of failed socialism in the 21st. The great author Robert Graves said somewhere in "Goodbye to All That" the Germans resembled their shepherd dogs. Show any sign of fear and irresolution and they will be at your throats. But treat them with contempt and demand obedience, and they will cower at your feet. Putin understands this instinctively and has his quislings in Germany simpering and cowering as the feckless POTUS winds out the string of a failed presidency.

Georgia is on Putin's mind, and the recent conference in Bucharest where GWB customarily failed to advance his agenda, put Putin's saliva glands in gear.

Russia has recently put into higher gear its longstanding efforts to topple the pro-Western government in Georgia. The strategy is to make trouble in the two breakaway regions of Georgia. Mr. Putin issued a decree last month that established official relations with authorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which everyone -- including, on paper, Russia -- considers "sovereign" Georgian territory. In reality, Moscow rules both places, and the decree takes them a big step toward incorporation into Russia.

This became possible because:

The spark for the latest Russian aggression wasn't Kosovo, but Bucharest. Last month, at the NATO summit in the Romanian capital, Germany blocked plans to offer Ukraine and Georgia "membership action plans." Rather than put these democratic countries on the long road to NATO, Berlin preferred to play nice with Moscow. Georgia and Ukraine got a vague promise to join NATO one day and to review their "action plan" applications in December. In other words, their fate is up for grabs.

The Kremlin can smell Western wobbliness better than most. Within days of Bucharest it pounced on Georgia. If Russia gets its way there, the message to larger Ukraine will be similar: You're part of our world, too, whether you like it or not. Only with Ukraine in the Russian camp, to paraphrase Zbigniew Brzezinski, can Russia become an empire again.

By the same token, only without an empire can Russia ever become a democracy and a good global citizen, and the region free and peaceful. On the line in Georgia today is nothing less than 17 years of American-led efforts to bring about such an outcome in Eurasia.

Don't look to President Obama to concern himself with democracy in Eurasia. He'll be trying to be Big Man in places where his daddy was from. And basking in applause from ne'er-do-well failed states.

In the end, GWB 's irresolution imitates the wobbly GHWB that he so wanted to avoid becoming.

Like father, like son.