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NYT, Myers+ Shanker, “U.S. Ties With Russia Being Reassessed, Bush Aides Say” (14 Aug ’08):

Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has jolted the Bush administration’s relationship with Moscow, senior officials said Thursday, forcing a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia and jeopardizing talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missiles defenses. [emphasis added]

Getting Iran ‘off the table’ was one of Putin’s main goals in this adventure, of course.

Here’s what’s going on: As a young man, Putin watched the USSR fall apart and the US, the “only remaining superpower,” vaingloriously take credit and humiliate the remnants of the country he had served. Drawing on these experiences, he concluded that, with the right combination of luck and skill, it’s possible to bring a superpower to its knees. That’s what he and his comrades set out to do to the US. They’re lucky to have had a pretentious, belligerent imbecile in the White House for the last seven years, but it’s a grave mistake to assume that Bush’s shortcomings played a causal role in this particular narrative—he’s just a schlemiel. Putin and Co. will continue to pursue the same project regardless of who the US elects in the fall.