The Fourth Dispatch...

GEORGIA

The Russian action against Georgia in August was seen in some quarters as a challenge to the advocacy of democracy - Robert Kagan being one representative, given his August 30 Wall Street Journal piece entitled "Power play". The following quote from Reinhold Niebuhr served to close Mr. Kagan's essay: "[T]he world problem cannot be solved if America does not accept its full share of responsibility in solving it."

An earlier quote form George Kennan characterized American democracy as "one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as [a] room and a brain the size of a pin."

The advocacy of democracy is the central concern of The Mighty Quinn. The weight of the material it employs in its argument - a weight not confined to just the intellect - is meant to be of great interest to those who would embrace efforts involving soft power and gray matter in hope of lessening losses in treasure and blood.

The August 28 WSJ included an opinion piece by Melik Kaylan with this quote from Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili as its conclusion: "If America thinks it is too weak to do anything about Georgia, you should understand how the Russians see it, how much Moscow respects a strong United States - or at least a U. S. that believes in its own strength."
 

[Pictures: Map of Georgia, Ray Charles, Hoagy Carmichael, Soviet tanks in Georgia.]