While I deplore the Russian actions against Georgia, this is not a new conflict - it merely has reached the point of open warfare. Georgia has been trying to keep the two would-be breakaway areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazan within her Internationally recognized borders, and finally, against the better advice of her allies, decided to send troops into South Ossetia.

It was the wrong decision. What many fail to realize is that this precipitated the recent invasion by Russian forces.

However, that said, why did Russia keep such a large army on the border, ready to pounce within a moment's notice? Did they bait the Georgians into war, knowing that the tiny, fragile democracy would be hard pressed to fight back? Indeed, the immediate rout of the Georgian forces leaves us wondering about their ability to secure their own borders, much less any threat they posed to the Russian border areas.

As far as I can tell, this fight over South Ossetia and Abkhazan has more to do more with the old Soviet Union philosophy of populating the "Near Abroad" regions with ethnic Russians, thereby suppressing the local populations. In a way it was much like Apartheid except that the majority was to be found among the outsiders.

The history of Russia, first as an Imperial Power over the centuries, and later as the Soviet Union and now as a growing power of apparent nationalistic fascism under Vladimir Putin, is filled with distrust and hatred of people in other lands. While arguably Russians have an inherent right to feel paranoia and have deep feelings of distrust about their nearest neighbors' intentions, I find there is no excuse for the massive, crushing of a neighbor who would be like a gnat fighting a bear, to use the analogy to explain the size and power differences between these two nations.

Has Russia gone too far? I would like to think that the nations of the world will condemn Russia, and especially Vladimir Putin, the real architect behind this overwhelming reason to the gnat-bite Georgia presented in moving into its own territory, namely South Ossetia. But I am a realist.

Nobody will confront the Russian government under the puppet Medvedev any more than we in the U.S. will be able to "force" Russia to take back its actions.

Our own inability to act will cause other nations to hesitate. Europe may protest, but not too greatly, because of the need for the natural gas and oil that Russia now monopolizes. Even the former Soviet states in the Russian dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will not be able to do much. A few may heed Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili's call to leave the CIS, but apart from the Ukraine, most of them live under the shadow of the Russian bear and will now think twice before doing anything to anger the Russian government.

Our own politicians have weighed in on the matter, with presidential candidate John McCain calling for forceful actions to be taken against Russia. However, his calls for action are somewhat suspect because of the close ties of former Georgian lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, a man who now acts as a top policy advisor to McCain.

Still, what will the U.S. and the world do, and indeed what can we do? We do not have a large army, even though we are a powerful nation. And with a good part of armed forced in Iraq, not to mention Europe, South Korea and various other places from which they can not easily be deployed elsewhere, we would be unable to back up any ratcheted up rhetoric with military force.

And of course, there are many who are first asking - isn't this how we got ourselves into quagmires in the recent past? Indeed, it is beginning to look as if some of our leaders and potential leaders are calling for military solutions to just about every problem that comes along.

Fortunately, there are other ways to meet this challenge, starting with a call for strong, united multi-national diplomacy. If the United States is to take the lead, then we must be willing to work with other nations on terms that will produce results. By going in with guns blaze as we did in Iraq, we will immediately lose both our credibility as well as our ability to get positive, lasting results.

But the bottom line is this: We either we lead, follow or get out of the way. And no matter which course we take, we must be willing to act responsibly and accept that any solution will be a compromise of our ideas blended with the ideas of many other nations. We must at all costs avoid the "You are either with us or against us" mentality - it will not lead to success.