The brink

(**Sweeping generality warning**) Assassination is never a good thing. It makes for interesting cinema, but in real life, it's glorified murder perpetrated by a) thugs or b) cowards, sometimes both. When the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated on June 28, 1914, I suspect most Americans wondered, "Who?"

Likewise, when the scrawny leader of Germany started stretching his arms around a sliver of ground called Sudetenland in 1938, most folks between Bangor and Burbank shrugged, "So?"

Ah, the early machinations of global chaos. It's kind of like that pain and tingling in the left arm. Discomfort. A little annoying. Then--click--out go the lights. What happened?

For those of you who regularly scan these ramblings, you've likely plussed yourself up on where Georgia is. Frankly, a week ago, had you spun a globe in front of me, it's unlikely that my finger would have landed within 1000 miles of where I believed the former Soviet Socialist Republic to be. Now I know.

Today's news indicates that the country is split in two, the Russo-friendly territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within the protective, iron grasp of Vladimir Putin and the southern half of the country (oddly South Ossetia is in northern Georgia. North Ossetia is in Russia) is ducking for cover.

"Who? So?"

I've got to say, the situation gives me a gnarly foreboding. Here's why:

1. Road Block. That wedge of land, slightly larger than West Virginia serves as a western friendly buffer between the Russian Bear and the Middle East. Should Russian have designs toward any country in the Southwest Asia, only the desolate mass of western Turkey stands between it Iraq, Syria (Russian ally), Iran (Russian ally), and Israel (not so much a Russian ally).

2. Timing is everything. Does it strike anyone else as odd that this boil ruptured during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics? Is the world sufficiently distracted? How's the chai?

3. Who's the Boss? It's not Tony Danza. It doesn't look like it's the recently elected president of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, either. Seems the old president, the new "prime minister," Vladimir Putin's calling the shots on Russia's southern border.

4. Playing "Chicken." Somebody's got to flinch. If not, the crash (clash?) will hospitalize many at best and most likely kill the participants. Georgia is an ally of the West, an ally of the United States. Russia's suggesting this conflict has been provoked by the White House (Obama fodder? WMD revisited?). Putin's already peeved that America transported Georgian troops out of Iraq and back to Tblisi to support their homeland. So here's the Scylla and Charybdis we find ourselves between. If we flinch, we let Russia have its way in Georgia, and we essentially cede all of the former Soviet states back to the Bear's paws. America will show itself too weakened to stand against its Cold War foe. If we hold the wheel steady and we intervene on behalf of Georgia, the bounds of escalation are unimaginable.

And so, Georgia burns and Vlad fiddles. Somebody pass the Tums.

Photo by Reuters