Georgia on my mind

I'm not sure what the buzz relating Georgian-Russian border disputes to American policies is about. Both directions too seem more than willing to do this. The old Cold Warrior nostalgia wants to have Russia back in the game as the bad guy we all love to hate. That force is painting this as a warning against Poland, Ukraine and other former Soviet bloc states which have aligned themselves with Western nations (in particular, the US). The Ukraine was however basically the only state to out and out call Russia on its behavior over the past week...which means either Western countries are still too terrified (or too busy) to deal with Russia or Russia is quite a bit weaker than we think (because the Ukraine is willing to pick on them?).
Conversely, we're being told that Russia went in because we essentially encouraged Georgia by training or arming their military. This makes less sense. Yes they have a better trained (than usual), better organized force of a couple divisions worth of troops. Russia can spare a few divisions to play war games with that. Why bother attacking a nation with 10 times the military force to bring to bear which isn't technologically lacking and certainly hasn't ever shown any qualms about bombing helpless civilians in order to 'get the job done'. What sort of encouragement were we giving here? Yes please go kill yourselves.

It sounds to me more like we said, well you're going to go kill yourselves anyway, let's give you some guns to make it more interesting, then sold those guns mostly through Israel so they get some money and we keep our hands cleaner, hoping nobody notices all the Western military gear laying around with USA stickers on it, and now that went poorly we get to look like the good guy by trying to bully Russia to back down a bit on its military operations and incursions against a weaker former satellite with some (weak) ties to Western Europe (I note with amusement the playing up of religious historical ties to Christianity by Georgian officials..despite the fact that Europe isn't exactly religious..hmm..wonder who they're talking about). Way to go us. That doesn't exactly sound like a strategic plan. It sounds more like a business model.

I suppose more likely this was a combination of the endless cycle of ethnic-nationalism conflicts which seem to plague mountainous regions (like the Balkans or Kashmir) which inevitably boil over without some autonomous concessions of government by the neighbouring ethnic groups (who usually have a few hundred years of vicious killings to prevent such concessions). Russia capitalized on this because it usually does historically rather well by playing between the divisions of ethnicity of what appear to be relatively similar groups of people (particularly by the lands they inhabit). I'd say Afghanistan was the last time they botched this. We used to be rather good at it too but we seem to have acquired this misguided perception that other people must be reasonably good at getting along living next to their sworn enemies because Americans come from all over the place (including the wealthy or educated fleeing such war torn regions). America hasn't always lived in harmony either, but we have an illusion of it at least available to us through the existence of a reasonable stable government with which to resolve our disputes more equitably. Georgia has a very poor track record here. Same with the Balkan states prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, Pakistan isn't all that accommodating, etc.

So Russia stepped into a conflict that was basically the inevitable outpouring of some trivial ethnic dispute over some territory which is basically already ethnically divided into two states and capitalized. I don't see how this means they're about to crash the Iron Curtain back down over Eastern Europe when I haven't heard of separatist leaders all throughout Soviet bloc spin-offs for Russians to align themselves with and press advantage with.