As a matter of official policy, Russia is now following a Cold War territorial model:

A question that looms large in the wake of the past week is whether Russian policy has changed with regard to the permanence of borders. That seemed to be what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was hinting yesterday when he said, "You can forget about any discussion of Georgia's territorial integrity."... Lavrov is a careful and experienced diplomat, not given to shooting off his mouth... South Ossetia and Abkhazia might be set up as supposedly independent countries... but would in fact be satrapies of Russia.

They're also returning to a Cold War military posture:

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a U.S. missile defense battery exposes ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons,... The statement by Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn is the strongest threat that Russia has issued against the plans to put missile defense elements in former Soviet satellite nations... "Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent," Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying.

They've even revived their Cold War propaganda tactics and rhetoric:

Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to stop Barak Obama being elected president of the United States... The Establishment and its media supporters are dusting off favourites from the Cold War shelf. Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, accused Washington of playing dangerous games. The West was guilty of "adventurism".

And the big debate between foreign policy experts on our side is over whether Russia's brutal land grab was merely a response to misguided US foreign policy or the result of a far-reaching shadowy neo-con conspiracy in the interests of guess who:

Georgia does not act militarily without the assent of Washington. The Georgian head of State is a US proxy and Georgia is a de facto US protectorate. Who is behind this military agenda? What interests are being served? What is the purpose of the military operation. There is evidence that the attacks were carefully coordinated by the US military and NATO. Moscow has accused NATO of "encouraging Georgia"... Let us be under no illusions. This is not a civil war. The attacks are an integral part of the broader Middle East Central Asian war, including US-NATO-Israeli war preparations in relation to Iran... The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption

So domestically - aside from the obvious storyline about the international left's unseemly self-loathing and chronic weakness - the reaction of foreign policy experts has been as not entirely unpredictable. What's really breathtaking is how pathetically parochial the entire narrative is. As if the world revolves around the United States. As if other global actors don't have their own goals, interests, and policies. Russia has had designs on Georgian territory since before the United States existed. But our foreign policy experts insist that Putin is merely responding to US actions - in the same way, not coincidentally, that they insist that global political Islam will be placated if we tweak a couple of things on our end.

I was going to blame this obsessive provincialism on some combination of petulant resentment and self-esteem idiocy. But this has been a standard liberal narrative for decades - so it's probably more of an old habits die hard situation. That would also help explain why Obama's foreign policy team - an eyeroll-inducing collection of ossified and predictable foreign policy knee-jerks - had him rolling out what is demonstrably the single dumbest foreign policy idea conceivable.

Internationally - aside from the obvious storyline about Russian territorial expansionism - the defeat of Georgian forces represents another spectacular State Department failure. The US has been providing security assistance to Georgia to the tune of some $15 billion over the last 15 years. The only difference between that security assistance and the security assistance that State gives to the Palestinians is that the Russians won't be keeping hundreds of tons of US arms like Hamas did. These wall-to-wall security assistance failures have sunk into the minds of foreign policy elites exactly as deep as their diplomatic failures. Usually they just scapegoat Israel for their generals' incompetence. The conspiracy nuts are already going in that direction. It'll be interesting to see whether that gets folded into any of the official "respectable" explanations.

References:
* State Department's Arab TV Station: Israel Conducting "Holocaust Against 1.5 million Palestinians" [MR]
* Kremlin dusts off Cold War lexicon to make US villain in Georgia [Times Online]
* Russia's Ominous New Doctrine? [WaPo]
* Russia: Poland risks attack because of US missiles [AP]
* Georgia: Europe wins a gold medal for defeatism [Times Online]
* Hamas Has 200 Tons Of Explosives That The US Gave To Fatah (Plus: Egypt Says It's Israel's Fault) [MR]
* Fatah Weapons Champion, Abject Failure Keith Dayton Said Nablus Was Fatah's "First Real Test" How's That Going? (Plus: Dozens Of Fatah Soldiers Building Rockets, Targeting Israelis) [MR]
* Obama Calls for UN to Pass Resolution Condemning Russia, Forgets Russia Has UNSC Veto [LGF]
* Obama Discovers That Iran Has Nukes, Circa 2011 (Plus: Sophisticated Foreign Policy Expertise About Iran Is Very Sophisticated) [MR]

Previously:
* No New Sanctions On Iran. Sophistication On Display.
* Leftist Sophistication Watch: Shiites And Sunnis Do Work Together, Iran Admits Funneling Money To Hamas
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran