Pootie-Poot Comes Home to Roost

"Even as the conflict between Russia and Georgia appeared to ease on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said the Russian attack had forced a fundamental rethinking of the administration's effort to forge 'an ongoing and long-term strategic dialogue with Russia.' . . .

"'My view is that the Russians -- and I would say principally Prime Minister Putin -- is interested in reasserting Russia's, not only Russia's great power or superpower status, but in reasserting Russia's traditional spheres of influence,' he said. 'My guess is that everyone is going to be looking at Russia through a different set of lenses as we look ahead.' . . .

"The unspoken new danger is that a cooling relationship could cost the administration any hope of working closely with Russia on some of its topmost priorities, like controlling nuclear proliferation, countering terrorism or resolving the problems of the Middle East."

Here's something else unspoken. As Myers and Shanker note: "Mr. Bush has not directly addressed his relationship with Mr. Putin or his successor, President Dmitri A. Medvedev, and his aides declined on Thursday to discuss his personal views."

And all the tough new language isn't translating into action -- in large part because there's not much Bush can actually do at this point.

Matthew Lee and Lolita C. Baldor write for the Associated Press: "The United States warned sternly Thursday of a long-term rupture with Russia if Moscow does not quickly abide by its promise to withdraw its fighting forces from Georgia. In contrast to the tough talk, Condoleezza Rice rushed to the former Soviet republic with a new cease-fire plan offering concessions to Moscow. . . .

"Issuing urgent statements in Washington and abroad, President Bush and his foreign policy lieutenants sought to jawbone Russia into compliance while taking a U.S. military response off the table -- suggesting strict limits to how far he was willing to go in the waning days of a controversial presidency."

Here's Bush's brief statement after a visit to CIA headquarters yesterday afternoon. "I call for the territorial integrity of Georgia to be respected and the cease-fire agreement to be honored," he said.

But as Megan K. Stack writes for the Los Angeles Times, that comment "produced a derisive response from Moscow.

"'I think we can forget about talking about Georgia's territorial integrity,' said [Sergei] Lavrov, the foreign minister, according to the Interfax news agency. 'We do not want Georgia's breakup, but neither the South Ossetians nor the Abkhaz want to live in the same state with a man who sends his troops against them.'"

McClatchy calls this one for Russia.

Nancy A. Youssef, Tom Lasseter and Dave Montgomery write for McClatchy Newspapers: "American officials on Thursday ended speculation that the U.S. military might come to the rescue of Georgia's beleaguered government, confirming Russia's virtual takeover of the former Soviet republic and heralding Moscow's reemergence as the dominant power in eastern Europe. . . .