To Be Free From America.

The consensus in Washington holds that a revanchist Russia must be stopped before it is too late.

Even small wars can act as watersheds. The most recent one in the caucasus has marked the end of an era in which Moscow sought, with waning intensity, to fit itself into a common security system with the West, while the West, trying to "engage" Moscow, was mostly managing Russia's decline. Now Russia is on the rise, and while its move into South Ossetia was triggered by the reckless and brutal actions of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, its real target was Washington and the growing American presence along Russia's borders.

The United States' plans to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and to build a missile defense system in Central Europe have pushed Russia to go beyond ineffective protests and take action.

Moscow views NATO's new arrivals--unlike the established members--as little more than U.S. satellites, ready to act as platforms to launch American armed forces. With more such platforms appearing closer and closer to Russian borders, Moscow's concerns have been growing. Russian strategists don't dispute the U.S. claim that the planned missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic would not threaten Moscow's strategic nuclear deterrence. Yet, as an element of the U.S. global ballistic-missile defense system, they raise the specter of a decapitating first strike. This may be paranoia, but Moscow's confidence in the United States these days matches Washington's trust in Russia.

Where do we go from here? Georgia will pose an ever-present danger of an armed conflict for years to come. Moscow views Georgia much as the West once viewed Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, and it wants to see Saakashvili removed, and in jail. The Kremlin hopes for the emergence of a Georgian Vojislav Kostunica (the moderate transition figure who followed Milosevic in Serbia), followed eventually by a Russian-leaning leader. Whatever happens, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are lost to the Georgian state, with no final settlement of either conflict likely for decades.

To counter U.S. moves in missile defense, Russia will step up its military rearmament, redeploy some of its forces and strengthen the defense alliance with Belarus. It is Ukraine, however, that moves into the center stage of the new geopolitical rivalry. No Russian leader could have failed to respond to a direct attack on Tskhinvali. But, more ominously, no Russian leader can remain in power if he "loses" Ukraine to the United States as a member of NATO. The fractiousness of Ukrainian politics, with its constant maneuvering and double-crossing, offers Moscow a host of opportunities unavailable anywhere else. More important, the divisions within Ukrainian ...