US News economics writer Jim Pethokoukis looks at the upside of Russia’s attack on Georgia, including:

We also now have greater clarity on the need to dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil. As fast as possible without ruining the economy. It’s “all of the above” time, gang—domestic drilling, nukes, concentrated solar, deep geothermal, clean coal, and whatever else Silicon Valley and heroic capitalists everywhere can dream up as we conduct a market-driven transition to a post-hydrocarbon economy. Now the inside-the-beltway types tend to pooh-pooh all this, as if anyone suggesting energy independence is an isolationist, nativist rube who wants to turn America into Juche North Korea. But why they would want to risk the American economy potentially held hostage to, say, a couple of oil pipelines running through Soviet-occupied—I mean, Russian-occupied—Georgia is baffling to me.

I’d add that it’s not simply that our hydrocarbon addiction makes us vulnerable to disruptions in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, but it’s also the only reason Putin has the resources to engage in this adventurism — like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, Russia is a non-entity without oil.