We’ve been so absorbed with Afghanistan and Iraq and 4th-dimensional warfare that we forgot the world still reacts to 19th-century conventional military force in the manner of Russia’s brutal entry into Georgia. So far we haven’t heard much of a Georgian insurgency or IED campaign, and probably won’t. And for all the talk of “soft” power, with one fell stroke the Russians disabused their former republics of any trust in Western utopianism, the glitter of NATO membership, or the moral weight of the EU. Only Barack Obama seems to believe in the efficacy of the UN. And while we talk of hard versus soft power, the Russians, the Iranians, Chavistas, et al. believe in power-power — the influence and cash from energy exporting that gives an otherwise failed state power it has not really earned.