Europe isn't up to the job, even if they actually protest, it will only empower Putin because he knows one day of turning off the natural gas will bring them to their knees, which won't be very far to fall, since their protestations will be on blended knee anyway
The USA is weary of war and carrying the burden of the world, it will be a hard sell to the American people to do more to Putin than talk big and show them the big stick
Obama is a pacifist at heart as all elitist have a yellow streak down their back and will do nothing but ask Americans to be concerned about her own problems and look away
McCain will see the landscape for what it is but, be hamstring by a democrat / socialist Congress that will fight him every step of the way
Bottom line Georgia is screwed and the remaining former satellites better be prepared to defend themselves
I believe yours is an appropriately cynical comment. The Greatest Generation here and in Europe has done a poor job of raising their kids and the next generation isn’t any better. Most are now concerned about disturbances of their rights to complacency, comfort, and self-actualization through enabling behaviors. People are unfamiliar with the concepts of peace and freedom, except those few who volunteer to fight on behalf of others.
In Western democracies, people desire intellectual comfort food supporting serenity and apathy, spiced with selective moral exhibitionism. Elegant foreign policy models defining necessity, proportional response, multi-lateralism, re-deployment, and exit strategy ensure turning a blind eye, agonizing over the body count from afar, or cutting and running.
Few remember an urgent desire for freedom, or regard peace as the priceless jewel that can only be obtained by winning the war. The events of Soviet totalitarianism commencing with the Russian Revolution are no more relevant than Japan and German adventurism beginning with Manchuria and the Rhineland.
I try to write from the now archaic perspective of the parents and grandparents of the Greatest Generation. These people held the positions of power throughout the darkest times of this world. Their words and deeds expressed a durable morality earned through emersion in the worst economic catastrophe, and the ultimate bloody deluges of the twentieth century.
Peoples’ actions today are particularly reprehensible, because they reject the council of these people. I try to at least make my expressions of position a point of reference.