Westerners miscalculated Mr. Putin’s ability to miscalculate, a mistake they’ve made before. Likely, Mr. Putin miscalculates too. Western powers may not do much immediately about his squeeze on Georgia, but over time he will find he has created conditions for the emergence of a coalition to contain Russian energy power. His immediate neighbors, with fresh memories of Soviet domination, will be even more eager to align themselves with the West and NATO. Possibly even the myopic Germans will discern they’ve gone too far in putting themselves in energy hock to Moscow. They may even start asking pointed questions about the presence of former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on the board of Nord Stream, a Gazprom affiliate devoted to increasing German reliance on Russian gas. Those of escapist bent will see in all this a reason to put Congress in charge of spending billions aimed at the false utopia of “energy independence.” You will hear such blather in the coming months, but it will amount to little. America instead will grapple with the need to administer the reality principle to the Russian regime; we will face up to our responsibility to diversify our energy supplies—dropping our trade barriers to Brazilian ethanol and opening up our domestic resources to development would be good places to start. The time to really worry will be when America, in pursuit of primitive concepts like energy independence, decides to follow Mr. Putin back to the 1930s.
