The big Georgia-Kosovo picture

Here's a link to my most recent column for Antiwar.com. With some bows to George Friedman at Stratfor.com, it notes that the roots of the Georgian-Russian conflict lie to a great extent in Kosovo -- not so much that western recognition of Kosovo as independent(though it really isn't) gave Putin a justification for recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but the original US-NATO decision to intervene over Kosovo with a brutal bombing campaign to stop a "genocide" that never was. That decision was taken over the objections of a Russia that was weak in the 1990s, but now that Russia is stronger it's determined to "get a bit of its own back." Intervention leaves a long trail, and we don't know the ultimate outcome for years, but in this era it usually involves blowback. Bomb Kosovo, get an anti-American-inclined new Russian empire. Invade Iraq, get a stronger Iran. And so it goes.