You wouldn’t expect Charles Krauthammer to turn in a sensible column ever. In particular, you really wouldn’t expect him to turn in a sensible column about the Russia-Georgia war. But I feel like today’s effort is an uncommonly silly one. Through his powers of clairvoyance, Krauthammer discerns that Russia’s “real objective is the Finlandization of Georgia through the removal of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his replacement by a Russian puppet” which reveals, among other things, a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Cold War Finland. But Krauthammer darkly warns that the Finlandization of Georgia will let “Russia become master of the Caspian basin” (oh noes! the Caspian basin!) and then this, through magic, would lead to “re-establishing Russian hegemony” throughout its “former Baltic and East European satellites.”

I don’t know how many different ways there are to say this, but to think that Russia’s ability to detach two miniature provinces that don’t want to be ruled from Tblisi from a tiny country with a GDP of $20 billion will suddenly lead to Russian hegemony over, say, Poland with its GDP of $620 billion is daft.

But beyond all that, considering the high stakes Krauthammer thinks we’re playing for, his proposed remedies are pathetic. One, he wants to “suspend the NATO-Russia Council” that nobody’s heard of but that apparently was founded in 2002. Second, he wants to block Russian entry into the WTO which is already being blocked. Third, he wants to kick Russia out of the G-8. And then we get this:

4. Announce a U.S.-European boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi. To do otherwise would be obscene. Sochi is 15 miles from Abkhazia, the other Georgian province just invaded by Russia. The Games will become a riveting contest between the Russian, Belarusian and Jamaican bobsled teams.

All of these steps (except dissolution of the G-8, which should be irreversible) would be subject to reconsideration depending upon Russian action — most importantly and minimally, its withdrawal of troops from Georgia proper to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Basically, Krauthammer thinks that it’s extremely important to American security for Russia to withdraw forces from Georgia proper and his idea of a good way to make them do that is to . . . threaten to boycott an Olympics (note that this didn’t work in 1980) . . . that’s happening six years from now. That would seem to me to give Russia plenty of time to muck around in Georgia. Indeed, I see no indication whatsoever that Russia so much as aspires to have its forces in Georgia proper by 2014; certainly it won’t take them anywhere near that long to finish wrecking Georgia’s military. This seems to me to be an excellent example of what (via Dan Nexon) Jack Snyder calls “The Myth of the Paper Tiger” whose adherents hold that:

[Enemies are] capable of becoming fiercely threatening if appeased, but easily crumpled by a resolute attack. These images are often not only wrong, but self-contradictory. For example, Japanese militarists saw the United States as so strong and insatiably aggressive that Japan would have to conquer a huge, self-sufficient empire to get the resources to defend itself; yet at the same time, the Japanese regime saw the United States as so vulnerable and irresolute that a sharp rap against Pearl Harbor would discourage it from fighting back.

That sums up Krauthammer’s view perfectly. If we don’t stop Russia from having its way with Georgia, next thing you know the entire Soviet sphere of influence will be reconstituted, but Russia might be coerced into backing down by mild gestures.

This is really neither here nor there as far as any public policy issue is concerned, but as a Russophile since my teen years it’s been a bit strange for me to see a conflict between Russia and Georgia described as somehow implicating a larger issue of a clash between “the West” and an alien Other. For one thing, the classification of Russia as non-western is a bit problematic on its own terms. There are some clear differences between Russia and the west proper. But at the same time, figures like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Tchaikovsky are part of the western cultural tradition. Russia, meanwhile, was a key participant in many of the major historical events of “the West.” Unlike, say, China or Brazil or Nigeria — important countries, but peripheral ones to the western experience — you can’t write the history of World War I or the French Revolution without talking about Russia.

Then on the other side of the equation, you have Georgia. Georgia, like Russia, has a reasonable amount in common with the West. But insofar as Russia has non-western characteristics, Georgia shares all of those characteristics. Like Russia, Georgia was ruled by Mongols, lacks a tradition of liberalism or democracy, practices Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and doesn’t use the Roman alphabet. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but it means there’s no gaping cultural void between Georgia and Russia that puts Georgia on the side of “the West.” Georgians have often conceived of themselves as a far-flung outpost of European civilization, but the relevant contrast there was that Georgians are Christians just like Russians but unlike the Muslims who live nearby. It happens to be the case that the current constellation of power politics in the Caucasus has Georgia (and Muslim Azerbaijan) aligned against Russia while (orthodox Christian) Armenia is aligned with Russia but I don’t think any of that reflects some extraordinarily deep cultural divide or deep affinity between Georgia and the West.

Here’s Howard Fineman on the McCain campaign’s claims that Barack Obama doesn’t put his country first:

I asked McCain’s closest advisor and friend, Mark Salter, for an example of a time when Obama did not “put the country first.” His answer: the Senate maneuvering of immigration legislation. In his view, Obama did big labor’s bidding by helping to kill the chances for a grand compromise on immigration reform. “His campaign came before his country,” Salter told me in an e-mail. In other words, if you weren’t for McCain’s deal, you didn’t put the country first.

This might have been a good opportunity for Fineman to note that not only is this completely absurd — Obama supported the idea of a grand bargain on immigration but had a somewhat different conception of what a good deal would be — but also that in order to get the nomination John McCain said he would vote against his own immigration bill:

Under the circumstances, you’d think McCain’s people would want to keep attention off the immigration issue.