Kevin Drum does yeoman's work here in batting down the argument, frequently offered in recent days, that the Bush administration somehow encouraged Mikheil Saakashvili's reckless attack on South Ossetia:

Look: Saakashvili came to power on a Georgian nationalist platform of recovering Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He's been jonesing for an excuse to send troops in for years, regardless of anything the U.S. did or didn't do. Likewise, Putin has been eagerly waiting for an excuse to pound the crap out of him in return — again, regardless of anything the U.S. did or didn't do.

Kevin correctly lists Kosovo and NATO enlargement among several "general" drivers of the conflict, but I would be more specific. Let's roll the tape.

When Western countries recognized Kosovo in February, then-President Vladimir Putin immediately threatened to do the same regarding South Ossetia and Abkhazia and promised to deploy more "peacekeeping" troops there. And he made good on his warning in April, granting the two breakaway regions a status just short of official recognition.

The Georgians were duly provoked, and they got busy mobilizing troops and preparing fuel supplies. In May, Russia deployed troops to Abkhazia; Georgia's state minister warned that the two countries were "very close" to war. By August, volunteers were pouring into South Ossetia from southern Russia, and the two sides were trading fire. All the while, as Kevin points out, State Department officials were trying to convince Saakashvili to "stay cool."

Foolishly, he didn't, and here we are. But if anyone encouraged this conflict, it was Moscow, not Washington. If Saakashvili thought the U.S. military would come to his aid, then he's simply delusional -- there was no way it was going to happen.

On a broader level, the Bush administration made two key mistakes. The first was setting an awkward precedent in Kosovo. It would have been smarter to leave the situation ambiguous, like Taiwan. The second was in trying to bring Georgia into NATO prematurely. When in April, Germany and France delayed Georgia's membership action plan (MAP) until it had settled its internal conflicts, that was basically an invitation to Putin to destabilize the country. It would have been better not to push for a MAP at all.

In short, a naive and overconfident West has badly misjudged how Putin would respond to its diplomatic moves. That's the real problem here -- not some imagined whispering in Saakashvili's ear.

No, the Wall Street Journal reports:

Russian and South Ossetian officials have pegged the death toll as high as 2,000. They have maintained that Georgian troops razed the regional capital, Tskhinvali, and left it resembling Stalingrad after the long siege by Nazi troops during World War II. State-controlled television has shown footage of burning buildings and badly damaged infrastructure.

But on the ground in Tskhinvali, where most of the fighting during the five-day conflict occurred, there is little evidence of a high death toll. [...] The civil-liberties group Human Rights Watch, which accused both Russian and Georgian troops of causing civilian casualties, issued a report Wednesday suggesting that the number of dead in Tskhinvali was in the dozens, not more.

With the space shuttle set to retire in 2010, and its replacement not ready until 2015, the United States had been planning on hitchhiking to the International Space Station for a few years. That may be a bit of a problem now, as the one country with the ability to transport to and from the station turns out to be -- you guessed it -- Russia.

Beyond the rising rhetorical showdown between the two sides, there's also a legal roadblock that may prevent further space cooperation with Russia. The United States needs to negotiate a new contract with the Russian space program, which may be difficult because Congress must first pass a waiver to a 2000 law banning government contracts with states who supported nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran. That includes -- you guessed it -- Russia.

In an election year with an increasingly bellicose Moscow, that's "almost impossible," says Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a supporter of the waiver who admits America is stuck between a rock and a hard place:

It is a lose-lose situation," Nelson said.

"If our relationship with Russia is strained, who knows if Russia will give us rides in the future?" Nelson asked. "Or if they give us rides, will they charge such an exorbitant price that it becomes blackmail?"

Still, who knows what relations with Russia will be like in 2010? Even if the Cold War is truly back, that doesn't necessarily spell the end of U.S.-Soviet -- er, Russian -- space cooperation. A lot could change in the next few years.

President George W. Bush has announced that the U.S. military will be delivering humanitarian aid to Georgia, a move that his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili has described as a "turning point."

The announcement, along with the withdrawal plan that Dmitry Medvedev signed on to this morning, seems like a sign that the war is winding down into the clean-up and recovery phase. Russia's foreign ministry is not thrilled about U.S military involvement but says they're open to "consultations" about how best to deliver aid. (Corrected. See comments.)

The only problem is, Russian troops don't seem in any hurry to leave Georgia. Russian tanks, along with "irregular" volunteers from the North Caucasus, contine to occupy the city of Gori. According to the Russians' laughable explanation, they're sticking around to protect the local population from irregulars, who are stealing cars. This menacing quote from a Russian tank commander doesn't make it sound like he's getting ready to pack up:

It all depends on what Saakashvili is going to say. If he doesn't understand the situation, we'll have to go further. It's only 60 kilometers to Tbilisi."

It's still early to speculate, but it's possible that Russia, in fact, has no intention of leaving Georgia. The longer Ossetian and Abkhazian forces stay within the country proper, the more likely it is that Georgia will be provoked into firing back, giving the Russians a pretext for further military action. So, despite this morning's hopeful signs, Georgia is far from out of the woods yet.

One final observation: If the worst-case scenario does come true, serious questions will be raised over whether any statement by Dmitry Medvedev has any basis in the reality of Russian policy.

This is what makes the Olympics great: With their two countries embroiled in conflict, Russia and Georgia took to the sand Wednesday to settle the score in beach volleyball. And Georgia, also the underdog in sport, won the match in three sets.

But the Russians were not about to concede defeat, pointing out that the two Georgians are, in fact, Brazilian:

Cristine Santanna and Andrezza Chagas go by the nicknames of Saka and Rtvelo, which put together spell the Georgian word for Georgia. Cute, perhaps, but not if you've just lost to them at the Olympic Games.

"We were not playing against the Georgian team today," sniffed Natalia Uryadova after losing 12-15 in the third and deciding set. "We were playing against the Brazilian team. If they are Georgian, they would have been influenced [by the war], but certainly they are not."

To be fair, the "Georgian" pair have passports from both Brazil and Georgia, and had trained for two years after receiving personal invitations from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose wife also happens to play beach volleyball. But the two admitted they had only visited the country twice before representing it in the Olympics -- an increasingly common phenomenon, it seems, but one counter to the Olympic spirit.

Georgian Volleyball Federation President Levan Akhvlediani, however, would have none of it, calling the Russians "bad losers" and hailing the victory as "wonderful for the Georgian people."

It's better to make a war... on the sporting fields," Akhvlediani said.

It surely doesn't hurt that on the sporting fields, for this match at least, Georgia won.

This isn't the first time the world has looked on sympathetically while Georgia was trounced by Russia. Does this sound familiar?

The President of the Georgian Republic has made an appeal to the League [of Nations] and sympathetic reference to his country's efforts was made by M. Paul Boncour in the Assembly. But it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression on Soviet Russia. -The Times. Sept. 16, 1924

Here's Wikipedia on Georgia's "August Uprising."

The South Ossetia war may be winding down but fighting continues in Georgia's other breakaway province, Abkhazia. Roughly 3,000 Abkhaz troops attacked Georgian military positions in the disputed Kodori Gorge this morning. The region's president Sergei Bagapsh claims, “We will take the region under complete control in a few days.”

Russia has escalated its "peacekeeping" presence in the region to 9,000 troops in recent days but denies that they took part in this assault though. At this point, they don't really need to. It's hard to imagine the Georgian military launching a major counteroffensive after the Ossetian catastrophe.

Writing in the feverish runup to the Iraq war, the National Review's Jonah Goldberg endorsed the following foreign-policy doctrine, which he attributed to his colleague Michael Ledeen:

Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."

This was never a wise prescription for U.S. policy, but it is a remarkably apt description of what Russia just did to Georgia.

Could Russia have responded to Georgia's assault on South Ossetia in a more measured way? Sure. But from Vladimir Putin's perspective, this was a great opportunity to teach Georgia a lesson and encourager les autres along its periphery. And by shutting the operation day just a few days in, Russia has probably avoided a coherent, punitive Western response.

Over the long term, certainly, Europe and the United States will eye Russia with much greater suspicion. And this war is certainly going to strengthen the Russia hawks, who see their views vindicated.

Inside Russia, it is a victory for the cold warriors and a huge embarrassment for Dmitry Medvedev, who was finally exposed this weekend as a Potemkin president when Putin visibly took charge of the situation. That could doom Medvedev's efforts to crack down on corruption and promote the rule of law -- vital reforms that would ultimately do more good for Russia than any amount of mucking around in the former Soviet Union.

The question now is: Will Russia overreach? Fresh off their blitzkrieg victory in Georgia, will Putin & co. try to stir up fresh troubles in the Crimea? What kind of punishment will they try and mete out to Poland and the Baltic states for supporting Georgia? To the Czech Republic? We can only wait and see.

Gallup just released some fresh analysis from its polling in Georgia that shows that, as of April/May 2007, the overwhelming majority of Georgians were seeing their relations with Russia worsening as their relations with Ukraine and the United States were improving:

I'll be surprised if, when the dust settles down from this week's fighting, Georgians still see the United States in such a friendly light. It must be a deeply embittering experience for them to learn that the 82nd Airborne is not parachuting to the rescue.

As Andrew Kramer and Ellen Barry's heartbreaking report from Gori makes clear, Georgians feel betrayed and abandoned by their American allies. The Russian media isn't really reporting it that way though:

• Kommersant reports that 2,500 to 3,000 mercenaries from Ukraine, the Baltic states and the South Caucuses are fighting in Georgia under the direct command of U.S. military instructors.
• According to wire service RIA Novosti, U.S military transport planes were being used to fly in Georgian troops from Iraq to join the fighting. Vladimir Putin has also commented on this.
• Izvestia claims (in Russian) that an African-American military instructor was arrested with a group Georgian explosive experts in South Ossetia. (Hat tip: Lawyers, Guns, and Money) There are also some odd reports of "dark-skinned bodies" being found.

Whatever the truth of these reports, when this war comes to its (hopefully imminent) conclusion, the United States may find that both sides feel stabbed in the back.

While I am still sorting out the claims and counterclaims about who fired the first shots in South Ossetia, one thing is clear: Russian "Prime Minister" Vladimir Putin -- who is already the big winner in this conflict -- is poised to take advantage of it.

Let's dial back the clock to April, when NATO failed to admit Ukraine and Georgia as members. Georgia was told that it must first resolve its "frozen conflicts" with renegade regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia to join. Nobody in NATO relished the prospect of being on the hook for some inscrutable ethnic conflict in the Caucasus.

But, coming on the heels of Kosovo's February declaration of independence, this was practically an invitation to Putin to do his utmost to ensure that Georgia wouldn't ever be stable enough to be a NATO member.

Here's the basic logic:

• Georgia can't join NATO until it is stable
• Russia doesn't want Georgia to join NATO
• Ergo, Russia will destabilize Georgia

The policy had the added bonus of revenge for the Western powers' recognition of Kosovo and it cast doubts on the wisdom of using Georgia as an energy corridor. Plus, it puts the United States in an awkward position and exposes American backing of Georgia as not worth a damned thing. For Putin, it's a quadruple play.

Did Saakashvili miscalculate? Absolutely. He foolishly thought that Georgia could take back South Ossetia before Russia could effectively counterattack, and then the international community would shut the conflict down. But given Putin's brutal logic, this war was probably going to happen one way or another -- it was just a question of when.

UPDATE: Georgia has called a unilateral ceasefire.

... Russian choosing to escalate? The Times reports that Russian troops are attacking Gori.

The Georgians told them, ‘We're done. Let us withdraw," one American military official said. "But the Russians are not letting them withdraw. They are pursuing them, and people are seeing this."

Also, the Bush administration is heading to the U.N. Security Council, where of course Russia will exercise its veto. Putin and Medvedev are refusing to take calls from Saakashvili, and "Western officials" are speculating that the Russians want to oust the Georgian president.

Here's what State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos had to say about the fast developing conflict in South Ossetia:

We support Georgia's territorial integrity and call for an immediate cease-fire. We urge all parties, including Georgians, South Ossetians and Russians to de-escalate and avoid conflict."

Barack Obama said basically the same thing:

Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis."

The problem with these statements is that they seem to ignore the fact that it was Georgia that started shooting yesterday, not Russia. There isn't a direct contradiction between supporting Georgia's territorial integrity and demanding an end to the fighting but in the context of this situation it's pretty close.

Not surprisingly, John McCain was more directly critical of Russia:

Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations, withdraw all forces from the sovereign territory of Georgia," McCain told reporters in Iowa. "The U.S should immediately convene an emergency session of the U.N. security council to call on Russia to reverse course."

Of course, there's a strong argument to be made that Russia has been trying to push Georgia into this war, but McCain seems to be either unaware of Mikheil Saakashvili's own role in escalating the conflict or deliberately downplaying it.

There's no doubt that the United States' close relationship with Saakashvili puts it in an awkward spot here and it will be interesting to see what form the American response eventually takes.

Update: Same line from the White House:

I want to reiterate on [President Bush's] behalf that the United States supports Georgia's territorial integrity and we call for an immediate ceasefire," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement in Beijing where Bush was attending the Olympics.

So it's war.

Reuters is reporting that Russia has bombed a Georgian airbase near Tblisi, the capital, in retaliation for yesterday's massive military incursion into South Ossetia. Russia has also sent troops into the breakaway region. A senior Georgian military official told the agency, "They have declared war against us."

Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili, a key U.S. ally in the Caucasus, is calling for American aid but I have to assume it's next to impossible that the United States would sent troops into a messy civil war where they would be facing the Russia military. FP author Jon Sawyer's warning is proving prescient.

However this ends, Georgia's bid to join NATO is now effectively dead. In that sense, Russia has already won and the months of ratcheting up the pressure in the breakaway province seem to have paid off.

A 22-year-old St. Petersburg ad executive who was hoping to become the third woman in Russian history to successfully sue for sexual harassment (yes, you read that right) just had her case thrown out. Here was the judge's reasoning:

If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children."

Well I guess that's settled then.

Reversing Russia's population decline is a major priority for Russia's government, but this isn't exactly the most enlightened way to address the problem. Conditions for working women in the country are already in a sad state:

According to a recent survey, 100 percent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 percent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven percent claimed to have been raped.

Telling male bosses that this is their patriotic duty is probably not going to help.

(Thanks to my friend Emily for the link.)