The hard truth is that no country will come to Georgia's aid. Reeling under the Russian onslaught, the Western democracies, NATO and the U.N. Security Council are as impotent as Georgia. The hard truth is, no matter how much Georgia's American-educated president may want to embrace the United States and its Western allies, no country is about to go to Georgia's defense militarily in the present crisis.

The West's strategic interests in Georgia are simply too insignificant compared with Russia's centuries-old stake in dominating the Caucasus. This gaping disparity alone should cause the United States and other NATO members to rethink their reflexive invitation to Georgia to join the rapidly expanding military alliance against Russia. Consider that, if Georgia were a member of NATO today, the United States and its allies would be obligated by treaty to invoke military force to counter Russia's ground, air and sea assault — an almost unthinkable scenario.

Some pundits have reflexively declared that Russian tanks would not have dared to enter Georgia if it were a NATO member. But this "fighting the last war" thinking assumes that Russia's interest in controlling a region dominated for centuries by czarist and Soviet regimes is no greater than its interest in controlling, say, France or Spain. For good or ill, even with Georgia slated for future NATO membership, the Kremlin calculated — quite accurately — that it could have its way in Georgia without fear of military intervention by the West. This calculus in the Kremlin likely would remain unchanged whether or not Georgia enters the Western alliance.

Tbilisi's extraordinary vulnerability has been laid bare by its provocation of Moscow over the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the breakaway regions that last week were recognized as Georgian territory. But no longer.

Vladimir Putin, leaving no doubt he retains supreme power behind the Kremlin walls, has reasserted Russian nationalism in a swift and stunning display of military force that showed contempt not only for Georgia's sovereignty but for the rest of the world as well. Having achieved his short-term objectives through five days of ruthless attacks, Putin appears content for now to allow Georgia to retain its sovereignty in name while forcing it to relinquish any prospect of reclaiming the Russian-ethnic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The real crisis for the West will come if an emboldened Putin decides to smash pre-emptively Georgia's bid to join NATO by making it once again a vassal state of Moscow.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

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