Sovereignty is Not Made of Kryptonite

HT To Tony Phyrillas for this excellent post:


Sovereignty is not made of kryptonite. In other words, you cannot hide behind it and expect it to stop bullets. Sovereignty is a concept that makes sense to great powers. Small states haven't a chance in hell of upholding their sovereignty unless they have an ace up their sleeve. This normally comes in the form of patronage from one of the great powers, and even that is not foolproof. Unfortunately for the Georgians, like naive upstarts, they bought the empty promises of the Bush administration.

I'm going to slightly disagree here. While it sucks to have Russian troops walk all over you, Georgian President Saakhashvili is not a saint, either. His biggest mistake wasn't buying into empty promises so much as mistaking the United States' support for having his back, then picking a fight with the biggest bully on the block and realizing we aren't there.

Russia is actively seeking to restart the Cold War and that means 100 little proxy battles like the Georgian affair will ignite across the planet for the next generation. They may be the first, but they won't be the last.