So the Russian military has been ordered to halt operations.

You really have to admire how quickly the Russians were able to move. I was thinking they'd just go ahead an annex Georgia. The swiftness of the operation put me in mind of one of my favorite scenes in The Hunt for Red October:




No doubt, plans for such a retaliatory invasion have been on the table for years, South Ossetia being a contestable area and all. Dick Morris has an article at his website comparing this invasion to another one around seventy years ago:

On October 3, 1938, Adolf Hitler’s armies marched into Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia. Germany said it was responding to separatist demands from the large German population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Germany. Hitler’s tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States did a thing to stop him.


On August 7, 2008, Vladimir Putin’s armies marched into South Ossetia, a part of Georgia. Russia said it was responding to separatist demands from the large Russian population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Russia. Putin’s tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States did a thing to stop him.

Encouraged by his occupation of Sudetenland, Hitler continued his designs on Czechoslovakia itself and invaded the rest of the nation a few months later.

Will history continue to repeat itself?

For now, it doesn't seem like history will repeat itself. We'll see.

There was, in the Morris piece, another passage of some interest:

Russia has encouraged migration by ethnic Russians into its satellite empire ever since Stalin’s days and now is using the provinces with large Russian populations to foment discord in nations that lean to the West.

It seems to me there is another country in the world which encourages migration by its citizens across the border into a neighboring country, which has experience the fomenting of discord. The name of this country escapes me at present, but it's right on the tip of my tongue. I know I've read a lot about it, but I just can't remember it. Oh, well. It's probably not a big deal.