Can't win for losing

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTcxN2EzZGQwNTc3MzE0ODkxODNlNjQwZjgwNTRkZTU=

This article reflects exactly my thinking on the Georgia situation- Russia had done everything right, but because of Putins clunking inability to do diplomacy...

'we have since seen the following developments:

Four presidents and one prime minister from Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states arrived in Tblisi to show solidarity with the Georgians. They addressed a large, enthusiastic crowd alongside Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili.

George Bush issued a strong statement condemning Russian behavior, put the Pentagon in charge of humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Georgia, and sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to demonstrate U.S. backing for Georgia.

Poland signed the missile defense agreement with the U.S. that Russian prime minister (and de facto leader) Vladimir Putin had strongly and aggressively opposed.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany — the country that had blocked the applications of Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO at the spring Bucharest summit — announced on her visit to Tblisi that Georgia’s membership was still open. In doing so she joined several other Western politicians and officials, including the NATO secretary general, who held out the continued prospect of NATO membership.

Ukraine, having left the Russian missile-defense system, has offered its interceptors to the new NATO one.'

It has been evident for some years now that this Russian administration just don't get international diplomacy. They seem to think that you can act like mafiosi and threaten people with extra-judicial murder and cutting off their vital supplies, and then merrily wander off to the next international diplomatic junket. What washes in Russia just doesn't wash in the West. And if Russia is ever going to challenge powerhouse economies like Brazil, it is going to need western money, expertise and good will. Lets face it, if the worlds largest country, with enormous natural resources, and a population twice that of France has HALF the GDP of the latter, you aren't doing well. Especially if your main export is oil... Much of that has to do with the brutality and criminality of the Russian business environment.

And sadly, there is a confluence of power between the top political criminals and the top business criminals in Russia. They are often the same people. The Russian constitution is a meaningless scrap of paper, as evidenced by Putin running the show in Georgia despite that being officially none of his business. It was funny in a sad way to see Medvedev plodding along in Putins wake like forlorn puppy. If Russians really want to head into the middle of the 21st century with a medieval kingship, are we in a position to chide them? Well, yes really. Because there are millions of good, honest, educated Russians who hate their newly rediscovered national pariah status, their lowest-common-denominator kleptocracy and the perennial loser attitude once again to the fore in international relations.

A strong, confident vibrant Russia is something everybody should want. But that is not what we have.