The inhabitants of a small province on the periphery of Europe overwhelmingly sought annexation by their ethnic brethren across the border.  They felt little kinship with the small nation to which they were attached, and could see no reason why they should be reunited with their nationalist kin.

            The Prime Minister of the adjoining nation mounted his troops to “liberate” these people from the “autocratic” rule of the democratic nation under which they were forced to live.  The leaders of Europe and America argued what right did they have to deny national self-determination?

            Of course, the small province was a predominantly mountainous region, once occupied allowed the rest of nation--including the national capital less 60 miles away--to be shelled and quickly thereafter conquered.

            Neville Chamberlain’s justification that the West should not go to war for the Sudetenland, an ethnically German alcove whose populace eagerly desired Nazi annexation, seemed surprisingly reasonable at the time.  The public remained unaware that the mountainous border region contained the Czechoslovak Army’s defensive installations.    The Treaty of Versailles had transferred the Germanic enclave specifically to provide the Czechs and Slovaks with a natural wall that they could defend against a numerically superior German invasion force.

            Chamberlain reasoned that this vague notion of geographic security would not raise enough popular support for conflict against a well armed enemy.  Moreover, the British people were tired of war, not just due to the Great War twenty years previous, but Imperial brushfire conflicts in Iraq, throughout the Middle East, and in the Indian Raj’s Northwest Province (today’s Afghanistan/Pakistan border) that had absorbed British lives and monies for almost a decade. 

            In transferring those mountainous regions, Chancellor Hitler would be satisfied that he could negotiate with the West, and would think twice before seeking any other territory--particularly those German speaking regions in Poland that he talked about all the time--and would have no justification to block the supply of petroleum that from Romania upon which the rest of Europe desperately depended.   

            PM Chamberlain, the scion of an American mother and a famous political dynasty, just could not understand that Hitler was not alone in his desire to expand the borders.   The German people, having faced hyperinflation, economic collapse, and the loss of much of their empire and world position, had something to prove.  They were a major power, and the world would take notice or else.

            Just over four years ago, as Vladimir Putin was tightening his grip, I recounted in this newspaper the Independence Day “celebrations” in St. Petersburg's Palace Square. With the flags of the Russian Federation streaming and bands issuing forth the national anthem with honor guard salutes, virtually no one bothered to show up to see the festivities, to participate in any way.

            It was June 12, independence day for the Russian Federation, and no one appeared to care. For an otherwise deeply patriotic country, the attitude seemed odd, except when one considers from whom the Russians celebrated the split.

            "Independence from who?" said Mikhail, a guide at the nearby Hermitage Museum recounted to The Louisiana Weekly. "Independence from ourselves? June 12th celebrates independence from the Soviet Union. Everyone wanted independence from us. So, nobody cares [in Russia]. Just a day off from work."

            The Russian people, even the most anti-communist amongst them, had no interest in celebrating the anniversary on which the vast majority consider that their country shamefully self-destructed.   Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest tragedy in Russian history”, and a majority of popular opinion has consistently agreed, craving the restoration of an empire and an epoch when the world trembled at their nation’s military might. 

            For example, the first symbol that greets a visitor as he enters Russia is a double-headed eagle gilded in gold. Any student of modern history knows the emblem represented the autocratic rule of the Romanov Dynasty for 300 years, yet today it has supposedly returned as the symbol of a free and democratic Russia.

            On top of buildings from Red Square to the Maranesky Theater, the Red Stars of Communism were replaced with the golden double eagle. Instead of the union of the Orthodox Church and the monarchy, which the two heads meant under the Tsars, the government proclaims that the two eagles signify the union of European and Asiatic Russia.

            One wisecracker jokingly called it the “union of the Government and the mafia“, but there was little doubt that the average citizen took it seriously.  One felt a popular desire existed on the most basic, individual level to harken back to the time of the Romanovs, when Russia was an unabashed Empire, as an almost golden age.

            For a country that emerged so recently from tyranny to almost palatably romanticize another previous age of tyrannical rules disturbs and perplexes Westerners. There is even an active effort to have the last Tsar Nicholas II canonized as a saint. (The original article is available at http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20040628o ).

            Consequently, Putin and his pet president will not face any domestic calls to withdraw from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  The public approves of the reality that control of those mountainous regions leaves the road to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, open, with no defensible landmarks or instillations.  In fact, the Russian military has outdone the Wehrmacht by capturing the port city of Gori (appropriately, Stalin’s birthplace), effectively cutting Georgia in two and blocking the flow of petroleum from the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan.

            There is more oil in those two regions, according to some estimates, that what remains under the sands of Saudi Arabia.  Wiping away the only pro-Western free market Democracy allows Russia to put a stranglehold on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

            Make no mistake.  Putin’s dual requirements for peace of annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia and deposing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-American reformer who “brought on the invasion” in the Russian Prime Minister’s words by modestly requesting to join NATO and the European Union, would block Europe’s and America’s only Russian-free petrol source in Central Asia.

            Installation of pro-Putin puppet regime in Georgia, the Russian Prime Minister’s direct intention in refusing to talk in any way to Saakashvili, would bring long term economic effects to the West that would rival the 1970s OPEC oil shocks. 

            Moreover, it would send a message to Russia that it can encourage liberation movements in any former Soviet Republic of its choice.  Just as Hitler’s real intention was annexation of the Danzig Corridor and most of Poland, Russia wants at least Eastern Ukraine back in its orbit.   If NATO concedes Georgia‘s autonomy, the Western Allies could quickly find themselves in a 21^st proxy-conflict version of the Crimean War, with Putin’s Russia again seeking hegemony over all the waterways of the Black Sea.   As Lord Palmerston put it, the difference of Russia with or without the Crimea is the difference between an Empire and a merely annoying autocracy. 

            Plus, the United States which has spent the last decade spreading the word that Democratic reform will bring backwards states into the modern family of nation’s would see its words rendered to complete hypocrisy. 

            The example of Georgia under Saakashvili which at great domestic cost joined international conventions and institutions affecting arbitration, accounting and ownership; enhanced property rights; changed local securities law so corporate insiders could not expropriate minority investors; pursued free-trade agreements with their regional trading partners; instituted true multiparty democracy; and pursued defensive alliance with the West, that example of democratic reform would be an international joke with long term repercussions for U.S. Foreign Policy.

            Who would trust the United States to follow its rhetoric with action?  The Kurds, who have worked on our behalf to unite Iraq, would simply walk away from the bickering Shia and Sunni Arabs in favor of their own homeland.  Not only would Ukraine frightened of invasion turn away from America and Europe, but Central Asian republics might accept vassal status knowing that America would do little to keep the oil flowing and their independence assured. 

            In a way, the Bush Administration inadvertently brought the resurgent Imperial Russia upon the world.   When Russian cyber attacked Estonia for this pro-US position on missile defense, the White House made only a token protest.   When Germany blocked Georgian NATO membership out of fear of losing Russian oil, President Bush did not offer unilateral commitments to Georgia’s security.

            However, the major mistake that the Bush Administration allow came from the most noble of intentions and was shared by not only John McCain but Barack Obama.  When the Kosovar Albanians sought independence, we supported their efforts, and recognized their fledgling Republic.

            Our reasons were justifiable.  National self-determination has been an integral part of U.S. Foreign Policy since Woodrow Wilson, but the dismemberment of Serbia on ethnic grounds opened the door for the Russians to do the same in Georgia (and in time the Serbians in Bosnia). 

            Putin, who massacred the Muslims of Chechnya when they sought ethnic freedom, had no problem in hypocritically using America’s high-minded internationalism against the West.   The Russian enclaves simply wanted to be reunited with the Rodina, the motherland, afterall.  Wasn’t Putin’s picture flying from banners across South Ossetia with the words “Our President”?

            Aren’t the same banners flying in Eastern Ukraine right now?

            Simply excluding Russia from the G-8 or removing its seat on the NATO council as most have suggested will not be enough.   Putin will see such attempts as pathetic as Hitler did when the League of Nations condemned he and Mussolini.  And, Putin will just use Russia’s veto to block any UN Security Council resolutions or punitive action.

            Instead, President Bush’s final diplomatic initiative should be an immediate invitation for Georgia, Ukraine, and any former Soviet Central Asian Republic to join NATO.  If the Germans or the French block the move on petroeconomic grounds, the United States should unilaterally make defense commitments to Georgia, and demand Russian withdrawal from the disputed provinces. 

            Should Putin’s Army ignore these threats and march on Tbilisi, seeking to remove President Saakashvili, George Bush should make clear in no uncertain terms that the United States will arm any resistance movement.   As the Georgians displayed to other invaders throughout history, they are as capable as the Afghanis in making Russians bleed.

            Lastly, the United States should station part of the Atlantic Fleet off the coast of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, with corresponding ground forces on the borders.

            This small Baltic, warm water port and its surrounding farms were annexed by Stalin from conquered Axis territory after World War II.   Modern Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus land lock Kaliningrad from the Russian Federation.   We must make it clear if Russia seeks to make border changes in Georgia, on vague historical grounds, NATO will gladly restore part of Prussia to Germany--or to Poland or Lithuania.

            Tyrants respect only strength.   It is past time to show some. 

            When Chamberlain brought home the Munich Agreement to the British House of Commons, Winston Churchill said prophetically, but to much public condemnation at the time,  "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war."

            It is a choice President Bush has to make in the coming days.

Christopher Tidmore is a contributor to Bayoubuzz.  The opinion was first published in the Louisiana Weekly.