Kenneth Anderson, who monitored the horrors in the Georgian secessionist regions in the war 15 years ago, strongly believes that Russia's unashamed expansionist policies must be checked. But he is also very clear that Georgia can not, and should not, control South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The ethnic cleansing back then, conducted with equal intensity from both sides, is a clear legacy explaining much of what is happening today, a situation Russia is taking advantage of.
It cannot possibly be, in other words, in the foreign policy interest of the United States to commit itself to a policy of actual, in fact Georgian political and military and security control over zones that would be in the same general ball-park as suggesting that, in the name of territorial integrity, Serbia could run Kosovo. Where, you ask, is the Milosevic of Georgia? But you were almost certainly not around fifteen years ago during the fighting and, anyway, one doesn’t necessarily need a Milosevic in order for a militia-army to loot, pillage, rape, and murder its way to ethnic cleansing. Or alternatively, if you don’t like Balkan analogies, simply say it is not in the foreign policy interests of the United States to endorse the creation of another India-in-Kashmir situation - once you are in it, then you might have to deal with it, but why you would create it in the first place, merely in order to satisfy a formal legal idea of sovereignty over territory, is quite beyond me. And the reason it is not in the foreign policy interests of the United States is because it is not in the interests of Georgia, either - to create for itself not one, but two, Indias-in-Kashmir. Yet the nature of Georgian politics - the politics of a democracy, to be precise - is that it cannot help itself.
Disentangling rolling back Russian imperialism from endorsing Georgian control in fact over uncontrollable territories is only one of two core problems for US policy
A very thoughtful article you should read in its entirety.
How can possibly the US (or any major power) move away from the principle of territorial integrity, with all the mess which will come out of opening that can of worms? Kosovo is already a case in point, a precedent not at all lost on Russia's government.
This is one of a number of international problems Obama and McCain are striving to get on their desk. We can only wish good luck.
11:59:44 PM 
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