THE Russian invasion of Georgia is an ominous portent. Georgia is too small a state to be a threat to Russia, and the composition of its government is of only marginal importance to the Kremlin. Yet here are Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian president, and his Siamese twin Vladimir Putin, the prime minister,

The provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia--hitherto integral parts of Georgia--are under Russian military occupation, their previous Georgian inhabitants expelled. The stage is set by Moscow for the annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Russia proper. The Russian ambassador to the United Nations says the territorial integrity of Georgia has become "a very thorny issue." Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, is less delicate: "The world can forget about any talk of Georgia's territorial integrity."

Abkhazia and South Ossetia are pinpricks on the map. Their populations, part Christian and part Muslim, number a few hundred thousand in the jumble of minorities that make the Caucasus a tinderbox of nationalisms. The collapse of the Soviet Union encouraged separatist movements in both provinces--national aspirations that are pure fantasy, given the circumstances. Fighting broke out in the 1990s, and Russian troops moved in to bring about a standoff with Georgia, or what the jargon calls a "frozen conflict." Given a minimum of good faith, this was open to resolution. Instead, the Kremlin began to hand out citizenship to the populations, Russifying the provinces. Georgia then carried through the democratic revolution led by Mikhail Saakashvili. As the new president, he freed the economy, cracked down on corruption, welcomed American and Israeli advisers, and applied to join NATO. When he also tried to reestablish government over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Kremlin decided to put a stop to Georgia and Saakashvili, and to their democracy.

Putin and Medvedev are reproducing Soviet strategy and tactics faithfully. As before, aggression is masked as peacekeeping. Victims of the Soviets used to be blackened as Nazis or counterrevolutionaries; the up-to-date version is that Georgia is guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide. "Attack our citizens and Russia will shatter you," Medvedev declared, calling to mind many a Communist boss before him. Ceasefire agreements have been signed, and peace conditions publicized, but the Kremlin has no intention of respecting any of these. Mendacity is standard. Khrushchev lied that Soviet forces were withdrawing from Budapest at the end of October 1956, the very moment when they were advancing into the city, and his successors told similar lies when launching the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. The propaganda remains as absurd as ever. Vesti FM, an outlet of Russian state radio, has been broadcasting that Vice President Cheney set these events in motion in order to prevent the election of Senator Obama. (And spare a thought for the great poet Osip Mandelstam, who lost his life for writing, "Every killing is a treat / For the broad-chested Ossete"--Stalin was thought to have Ossetian blood.)

The Politburo of old professed an ideology, though it is doubtful whether cynics of their rank could have believed that Marxism was the key to possession of the rest of the world. Stalin and his colleagues were primarily Russian nationalists for whom the Red Army was the source of power and expansion. They were aware that an immense military and a secret-police apparatus were indispensable if so many reluctant people at home and abroad were to be held down. Violence was instrumental, to be deployed when convenient. The ideology is gone, but the ambitions it cloaked remain.

Did Mikhail Gorbachev, the last general secretary of the Communist party, really understand that violence was integral to the ideology? His reforms opened the way for the oppressed millions to take political initiatives on their own behalf. The countries of the Soviet bloc, the non-Russian republics and the autonomous areas of the Soviet Union, seethed with nationalist resentment of Russian domination. All over that empire, regional party and ideological secretaries were soon losing control, and in their panic they urged Gorbachev to declare martial law and move the tanks in to restore the status quo. In exceptional instances in Riga, and--especially painful now in retrospect--in Tbilisi, Gorbachev did resort to force, but not on a scale sufficient to restore real fear of the Russians, and therefore compliance. Gorbachev likes to claim that he was too high-minded to order the spilling of blood. It's more realistic to say he was naive, unable to grasp either the true nature of Communist ideology or how hatred of the Russians had fueled implacable regional nationalisms. The New York Times now sees no irony in publishing an op-ed article by him in defense of the invasion of Georgia, repeating exaggerated claims of the "horrifying scenes" for which he believes that Georgia and the United States are responsible, with "the American news media leading the way."

Vladimir Putin has devoted his career to reestablishing force as the Russian state's main instrument, reversing Gorbachev's legacy. He has made no secret of it, declaring that the fall of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century." He has disregarded the rule of law, rigging the political process in favor of his personal rule, virtually extinguishing freedom of speech, and bringing the energy industry under state control. Reliance upon force necessarily unleashes corruption and crime. Putin's associates have become billionaires; his opponents have been broken and quite likely murdered.

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In the face of this steady reversion to Soviet behavior, the Western response has been to mollify and placate. The Clinton administration went out of its way to make every allowance. The Partnership for Peace, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the NATO-Russia Council, and Russia's elevation to the G8 are among the numerous initiatives based on the illusion that Russia is a democracy or the wishful thinking that it is becoming one. President Bush looked into Putin's eyes, thought he could trust him, and now confronts a fait accompli to which he is virtually powerless to respond--the position of most American presidents during the Soviet era.

The Europeans have been outright appeasers. Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, is on the board of Gazprom, the Russian energy monopoly whose treatment of Germany and other consumers resembles blackmail. In April, Angela Merkel led a successful drive to keep Ukraine and Georgia out of NATO--the opposite decision might have held off Russia's invasion. Responding for the European Union to the attack on Georgia, Nicolas Sarkozy hurried to Moscow, where he took down Medvedev's orders--which omitted mention of Georgia's territorial integrity and were worded with a looseness that the Russians claim allows them to occupy whatever parts of Georgia suit them. Like a dutiful errand boy, Sarkozy delivered this capitulation to a mortified Saakashvili in Tbilisi. Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, was equally humble, paying tribute to Russia as "a great nation" and going on to say, practically beating his breast, "Look at how we have been treating it." The correspondence columns of the British press are full of letters bewailing that the West has gone in for "bear baiting" and concluding that it is only logical and right that Russia should lash out.

In the manner of the Soviet Union, Russia is taking it upon itself unilaterally to decide what the boundaries of other countries are to be and who is to govern them. Consternation grips neighbors who have been through this life-and-death experience before, within living memory. The Baltic republics, the Asian Muslim republics, and Moldova all contain ethnic-Russian inhabitants, on whose behalf some grievance is easy to concoct, allowing the Kremlin to treat these neighbors in the same way it has treated Georgia. Ukraine stands in the greatest danger. Russians tend to believe that country is their ancient patrimony. Khrushchev gave the Crimea to Ukraine, a token gesture in his day. Russians are in the majority there, and nationalist extremists are already urging them to reverse Khrushchev's quixotic gift. As with Georgia, Putin did everything he could to derail Ukraine's democratic revolution:

Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko suffered dioxin poisoning, possibly at the hands of Russian agents. The agreement that the Russian fleet may use the Black Sea port of Sevastopol runs out in 2017, and senior Russian officers have already declared that this is an interest they will never give up. In a dramatic display of solidarity--and alarm--Yushchenko, President Lech Kaczynski of Poland, and the three Baltic presidents flew to Tbilisi for a joint press conference. Determined to defend their independence, Ukraine seeks NATO membership while Poland has hastily concluded an agreement to have an American missile-defense system on its soil. Russian spokesmen threaten both countries with nuclear strikes. Marxist ideology may be missing, but the intimidation hews to the familiar Soviet style.

Force as the instrument of policy supersedes the abstract barriers of international law erected to contain it. The West now can expect that a nationalist Russia will mobilize its resources to probe every weak point around its borders: It will reach as far as possible, devising new hostilities (such as the cyberwar waged against Estonia and Georgia), playing on the retreat of NATO and European defeatism, exploiting its control over oil and gas supplies, protecting Iran's bid for the nuclear bomb, and once more selling weaponry to destabilize the Middle East--everywhere testing the resolution of the next American president. If this isn't Cold War II, how should it be described?