Don't make me tell you again!

A wonderful headline from The Guardian:

Russia warned: withdraw from Georgia, or else

The phrasing is great. It reminds me of an angry parent with a reluctant child. “Look Russia, I’ve already told you once, and I am not going to tell you again! Pull out of Georgia or else! I’m serious! Stop bloody laughing at me! Why you… Don’t make me come down there!”

Of course, that isn’t quite what has been said:

Nicolas Sarkozy of France threatened the Kremlin with an ultimatum for the first time, warning that more delays in a pullout "would have serious consequences on relations between Russia and the European Union".

Putin, with his massive army, huge supplies of oil and massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, must be shitting bricks after Sarkozy’s threat. He must be crying himself to sleep every night. Probably crying with laughter, mind, rather than with fear.

The world needs to redress how it deals with Russia. The invasion of Georgia is illegal an unacceptable, but there is precisely fuck all that anyone can do about it. Russia is a sleeping giant showing the first signs of awaking. It will probably do something very similar to the Georgian adventure very soon, and will continue to do so until it encounters a foe that really fucks with them – just as the Soviet Union did when it invaded Afghanistan. In the meantime, the rest of the world should stop this inane posturing. Unless the EU, or the US, or whoever wants to get aggressive with Russia, all this talk of “serious consequences” means the square root of fuck all. Let’s cut the bullshit. Any real attempts to restrict the Russian behemoth will lead to, at best, a Cold War. At worst, the consequences are unthinkable.