Cold War 21: Our Pawn Moves Up One

President Bush has reacted to Russia's escalation of superpower tensions from yesterday: he deploys our military Coast Guard to rush in humanitarian supplies to thed war-torn people of Georgia.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter, Dallas at Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi, Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008. The U.S. military ship on Wednesday docked at the Georgian port carrying humanitarian aid. The Dallas, had originally been slated to dock at the Black Sea port of Poti, which is still controlled by Russian forces. But instead it arrived in Batumi, a port well south of the zone of fighting in this month's war between Russia and Georgia. ( AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

We have NATO on our side, of course, but the USA is the first to send in substantial help to the Georgians. Unilaterally. That's leadership in the grown-up world of superpower politics. No time for an untested boy to seize control of the wheel.


"Can NATO - which is not a state located in the Black Sea - continuously increase its group of forces and systems there? It turns out that it cannot," Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn was quoted as saying Wednesday by the Interfax news agency.

To recap: Russia kills hundreds if not thousends of Georgian civilians in a hostile takeover of region in a bordering soveriegn nation. The rest of the world reacts with shock and horror. While there is much European nail-biting and rethinking of everything they knew, the US saddles up and risks it's military men's lives to send much-needed aid to the Georgians. And beacause we are navigating between their naval blockade in the Black Sea to bring Georgia this help, Russia calls us "devilish." (source)

Your move, Old Bear.