no. it's not the onset of another cold war.
although something like that is a neocon wetdream: the world would once again make sense and their military keynesianism would once again find a (flimsy) rationale.
i don't see much latitude for old-school imperial penis-waving in this one.
a. what mccain says he would do is in this situation meaningless. it says nothing to claim that next year he would back georgia. the bush people backed georgia now.
this is a little overview:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/wa...3diplo.html?hp
mccain offers little---a bit more of the same incoherent nonsense.
and at this point, the game has been forcibly changed--so at another level, saying "i'd back georgia for nato membership" isn;t worth the air expended in saying the sentence.
but it appeals to the manly man fantasies of the conservative set i suppose.
one way of seeing all this is as a bit of blowback from the american's imploded credibility and strategic weakness thanks to the overwhelming incompetence of the bush administration.
another is that the russians really did nothing to oppose the american invasion of iraq so the americans did nothing to oppose this.
another is that it really has nothing to do with the americans.
no doubt the central role being played by sarkosy rankles some of the same rightwingers---but it mostly got play on cspan (and who watches that) and in other places like the financial times.
geopolitically, this seems not far off the mark at the moment:
FT.com / Comment & analysis / Editorial comment - Living with the Russian bear