Arguably Georgian efforts to keep Abkhazia and South Ossetia as part of the republic in 1990-91 were simply anti-secessionist. After those efforts failed, every attempt since then has pretty clearly been irredentist in nature. I’m not sure why we are arguing about this. If I had simply called the effort to retake S. Ossetia nationalist, there would be no reason to complain because it is a straightforward nationalist policy to reunite the separatist regions to Georgia. If you want to quibble about what this policy of reunification should be called, that’s your business, but it changes nothing about the substance of the policy.

You have to have an exceedingly narrow definition of irredentism to say that what Georgia tried to do in S. Ossetia was not irredentism.

Territory sought by irredentists does not have to be occupied by people from the same ethnic group, but can be sought for any number of historical reasons. That was certainly the case with much of the history of the Megali Idea, and it is true with other irredentist nationalist movements as well.

When did I deny de facto Russian annexation? I took it as a given that the separatist governments were Russian puppets and that Moscow was in charge.

Irredentism concerns the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one’s nation but now subject to foreign rule. If Georgia were seeking to annex Tao-Klarjeti (in Turkey) or Saingilo (in Azerbaijan)–both populated by Georgian speakers and once part of Georgian kingdoms–that would be irredentist. But it isn’t. South Ossetia was a separatist region of the modern state of Georgia, occupied by Russia. Unless you regarded that occupation as a formal annexation, it wasn’t irredentism.

I use the past tense because, at the time of the conflict, Russia still maintained the fiction that it respected the territorial integrity of Georgia; now, only Russia and Nicaragua recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The ‘we are all Georgians’ crowd have made two strategic errors. First, while we provided Georgia with arms and military training, Russia provides tangible benefits in the form of pensions, hospitals and housing.to those in the autonomous regions opposed to Georgian sovereignty. It’s akin to Iran building schools and hospitals in Columbia, btw, and it’s a lesson in strategic foreign relations the USA never seems to learn.
Second, I suspect that unquestioned rhetorical support of Georgia and other allies gives rise to the false expectation that the USA would rush in with full military force to support,no matter what the circumstaces might be. We did that when we encouraged an uprising in Iraq after the Gulf War and keep on doing it in many of the hot spots around the globe.

That this topic can’t be honestly and openly debated in the US is not a surprise, as very little is debated on a more intellectual level than surface sloganeering The presidential debates were largely confined to excerpts from stump speeches. If Obama had fully laid out his position on thiis subject of Georgia, he would have forfeited the election then and there.

What our prolonged election season has demonstrated is that we elect our leaders and make policy choices on the basis of ignorance and gut feelings, not reason or knowledge. In fact, there is a distinct anti-intellectual,political drift that is truly frighteneing.

McCain’s too tightly wound to be C-in-C. Manic tergiversation? I’ll pass, thank you.

But I am not sure that Obama won’t do the same. Darfur is calling, after all.

In fairness to the neocons, the original program was slightly more realistic “scream like a banshee while ostentatiously waving a sword in all directions”; ture, the fact that the genuinely lethal sword is now stuck in the branch a hornet’s nest hangs from does not seem to have affected their Pavlovian reactions.

I particularly like your use of “scream like a banshee” rather than some other phrase since the bean sí is usually an omen of death.

All this fiasco did is remind us how John McCain is completely deaf to the proper function of diplomacy, and has no respect for soft power. War, War, War – dollars, dollars, dollars going down the drain. Military action is his response to every offense. Even when our military has become debilitated and overextended.

Conservative or not, that is the #1 reason to not vote for John McCain. He will bankrupt us with all his wars.

More important from a US perspective, however, are the discrepancies between rhetoric on the one hand and capacity and interest on the other.

It’s no good to offer Georgia NATO membership and pledge undying commitment to its self-proclaimed democracy while our military is otherwise occupied, the supply lines impossibly attenuated, and our exchequer composed entirely of IOUs. Even a rabid interventionist should regard such chest-beating as sheer folly.

Moreover, our national interest was hardly at stake in the dispute. Yes, there are the matters of the trans-Georgia pipeline, and the loss of prestige that vain chest-beating brought. If we’d kept quiet and respected Russia’s interest in her near abroad, the pipeline would have remained viable and the hollowness of our GSUD (Global Struggle for Universal Democracy) nattering would not have been exposed on this occasion.

Instead we looked like idiots and the Russian fleet is playing games with Hugo Chávez.

TR’s slogan has morphed into “Scream like a banshee and carry a twig.”