Going All In

Noah Millman surveys the mainstream conservative response and correctly concludes that the right’s approach to bluffing doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence. He glosses their logic thusly:

1. Russia has called our bluff and dared us to make good on any implicit promises to Georgia that we would protect Georgian territorial integrity.
2. Our bluff having been called, we now have no good options, as we have no real points of leverage to force Russia out, and no credibility as an honest broker between the Russians and the Georgians. Any cease-fire will probably take place on Russian terms, and the Georgians will know not to rely on the West to protect them. This lesson will, presumably, be well-learned by other small countries inclined to rely on American protection against large and dangerous adversaries. So even if this war ends non-disastrously for ordinary Georgians, it’s bad for us.
3. Therefore, we should have bluffed harder, going all-in with an explicit guarantee, because if we had done that Russia wouldn’t have dared call our bluff, but would have backed down and allowed Georgia to retake South Ossetia by force.

This kind of thinking is, of course, both crazy and also apparently good enough to get you a column in a major national newspaper.

Photo by Flickr user Jamadams used under a Creative Commons license