I caught this letter to the editor of the IHT from a Rutgers political science professor. I expect we’re going to start to hear this perspective quite a lot in the United States soon.

The war against Georgia is not the first instance of Russia’s aggressiveness vis-à-vis its former colonies. Estonia was the target of a cyberwar; Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and the Czech Republic have been subjected to energy cut-offs; Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have been punished by trade sanctions. These states, like all of Russia’s non-Russian neighbors, know that the war in Georgia is really about them.