Georgia [Update, Sunday Aug. 10, 2008 -- 5:10 PM, PDT] -- Options running out

It is not possible to overstate how quickly this is escalating. It is clear that US options are very limited, short of nuclear war. Thereare no sanctions anywhere that will cause Moscow to blink. What are we going to do? Boycott vodka and caviar? It has also become clear that the Russians have launched a Blitzkrieg attack which has very specific objectives that have yet to be fully achieved. They now control Georgian airspace and a full-scale cyber attack has paralyzed Georgian C3 (command, control, communications). You can bet that there's a battlefield in space that no one is going to talk about, maybe not until satellites starting falling out of the sky. There is little doubt that Russia will bat .1000 on the battle plan, probably within 2-3 days. This tactic is what Russia prepared for starting in 1946. It's in Russian DNA by now. I'm certain that Russian military commanders are under strict orders to "go for broke" in the region. The second front in Abkhasia and the engagement of the Black Sea Fleet signal that Russia prepared for total conventional war well in advance of the invasion. Therefore the nuclear option has been on the table from Day One. The U.S. pushing back through the Ukraine, which has refused to allow the Black Sea Fleet to return to Sevastopol while the conflict rages, is a limp-wristed move sure to further enrage Moscow. The Black Sea Fleet is going to go anywhere it damn -well pleases.

In the meantime Bush goes to church and a swim meet at the Olympics. It must be difficult for him with his pants around his ankles.

The rhetoric at the UN shows a Russian belligerence unlike any I have seen since Kruschev pounded the table with his shoe. The Russian ambassador is doing everything but saying, "Go ahead, make my day."There's one big difference. Kruschev said, "We will bury you." The Russian Ambassador to the UN is saying, "We have buried you!"

The United States has been pushing Russia hard since well-before 9/11, trying to weaken and encircle it. I devoted a whole chapter to that subject in Rubicon. It is clear that the Bush Administration, in its Neocon cock-suredness, mistook Russia's comparatively tepid responses thus far as a sign of weakness. This is a rope-a-dope strategy that the U.S. looks certain to lose unless it can pull a rather large and intimidating hippopotamus out of the hat. The potential humiliation for U.S. prestige is so great that I would bet that the "football" has been dusted off in Beijing while Hu Jintao wonders what happened to his Olympic games. Either the Chinese had advance warning or they did not. If they did, which I suspect, then it's perfect to have Bush in Beijing where both Russia and China can carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. If they didn't, then I'm certain that Russia had a huge carrot to put on the Chinese table as the first tanks crossed the border.

Meantime, not a word from Bush or Cheney who -- I'm certain -- are flummoxed and spasmodic. I can see nothing that will prevent the completion of Russia's Order of Battle within the next few days. So it will be a fait accompli. Russia will not pull out voluntarily. Georgia will be occupied, either totally or enough to make sure that it can pose no risk to Moscow -- ever again. Forget the BTC pipeline. And who is BTC's primary owner-operator? British Petroleum. The simultaneous bombing of BTC by Kurdish PKK (Marxist/Leninist) "separatists" in Turkey drives the point home. "We can take out this pipeline any time we want, from any place we want." Investors in Caspian oil are going to start drastically rethinking their decisions. Caspian production is certain to fall and I can now see a possibility that Russia might eventually get what it has wanted more than anything, a return of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan into a Russian sphere of influence. If that happens, especially as Saudi Arabia is starting t ofade, Russia will be the energy king of the planet, especially in terms of natural gas.

More importantly, Russia may have just succeeded in breaking theAnglo-American alliance. Russia has just beaten the United States over the head with Peak Oil.

Zbigniew Brzezinski should have remembered that chess is a Russian game.

Still lacking is any apparent response from Georgia's southern neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has been solidly in theU.S. sphere for a while, but both small countries must be quaking in their boots, fearing that their own southern neighbor, Iran, might get into this from the south. If that happens, all bets are off and Iwould say that nuclear war would be a certainty within days, if not hours. For the moment I believe that Iran will remain silent and just watch with glee, as I am sure it has thus far.

Britain has been officially silent. So has Germany in any meaningful sense. They depend upon Russian energy. There are few voices of consequence to do anything other than make lame sterile pleas for a cease fire. There will be one, just as soon as Russia finishes what it started and we don't know yet how far they plan to go, especially since it seems there is nothing at all to stop them.It is all in the map we drew together.

MCR