In the near future I’ll have a longer analysis of exactly what went wrong on the Russo-Georgian border, but for the time being I’m going to leave it to Dave Schuler at Outside the Beltway. And I think this may be our Quote of the Day when it comes to figuring out why Russia sometimes does what it does.
Is Russia, as Michael Mandelbaum, quoted in the column puts it (pooh-poohing the idea), “innately aggressive”? I don’t think so. But I do think that, like us, Russia is quite paranoid. Or, as Woody Allen once quipped, what’s a three syllable word beginning with ‘P’ that means you think that everybody’s against you? Answer: perceptive.
To take the old blast from the blogging past, go read the whole thing.