Oops, forgot the actual point in the geostrategic analysis in the first paragraph: With Iran and India neutral-in-Soviet-favour and Afghanistan in their possession or at least firmly in their sphere of influence, the USSR would have effectively boxed in Pakistan, which has a blue-water port in the Indian Ocean.

The overall picture would not be dissimilar to the encirclement of China by US client states (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) during the Cold War, except that Pakistan would be in a much less favourable position than China on account of not being a great power in their own right.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Poland 1939, various Caucasus and Central Asian takeovers in the wake of the Revolution and Civil War, take over of Poland in the eighteenth century, various wars against the Turks, suppression of various uprisings by colonial peoples...

I turned my attentions to literature in grad school.

Russian and Eastern European Studies was my undergrad degree but that was a looong time ago (although exciting in the mid-90s).  So I am racking my brian for facts and beating my forehead with the palm of my hand knowing that I remember something but that it is on the tip of my tongue.

goes for your posts below, too

"Schiller sprach zu Goethe, Steck in dem Arsch die Flöte! Goethe sagte zu Schiller, Mein Arsch ist kein Triller!"

the Winter war?  Of course!  The Finns here have every right to berate me for that one.

Sorry guys, brain fart

"Schiller sprach zu Goethe, Steck in dem Arsch die Flöte! Goethe sagte zu Schiller, Mein Arsch ist kein Triller!"

The difference today is that I don't see any convincing motivation for Russian expansion. Black Sea ports would be useful strategically, but after that - what? What would the point of annexing the Ukraine and threatening Poland?

Imperial cultures are inherently aggressive because territorial gains are needed to prop up the self image of the emperor. (Unless that emperor is George Bush, in which case nothing at all can prop up his self image.)

The Soviets were aggressive because Stalin was a paranoid drunken psychopath and there was always shreds of a nominal ideology explicitly interested in bringing the workers' paradise to the rest of the world.

Maybe I'm being staggeringly naive, but I can't see Putin in the same mould. He looks to me more like a spook-trained CEO and mafioso and a wannabe Tsar. Georgia is about making the point that Russia is back in the game again - but it's a single sentence statement, not a threat to invade Europe.

Threatening Russia with exclusion from the G8 is - of course - the worst possible course of action, because it undermines that sense of Russian participation, and will only increase Russian paranoia.