Is there anything that can be done about Georgia?

Richard Fernandez has an update on the latest moves in the Russian attack on Georgia and it doesn't sound like good news anywhere. It sounds as if Russia is close to being able to divide Georgia in half. So far, the Russians have been successful without having to withstand much more than foreign condemnation or calls for their withdrawal. Putin has been able to shrug off such statements and continue on with what he wants to do.

Then couple their aggression in Georgia with what they're doing internally. The Wall Street Journal reports today on chilling internal moves that Putin has taken to grab up more government control of the oil and coal company.

The story revolves around Russian coal and steel company Mechel, which is publicly listed on the New York Stock exchange. On Friday the firm said it was going to postpone a preferred share placement in the wake of a battering its shares took from the volatile Mr. Putin.

Late last month, Mr. Putin accused the company of price gouging and tax evasion and warned of investigations to follow. He also got personal after Mechel CEO Igor Zyuzin failed to show up to a meeting the prime minister was holding with business leaders. "The director has been invited, and he suddenly became ill," said Mr. Putin, according to the Moscow Times. "I think he should get well as soon as possible. Otherwise, we will have to send him a doctor and clean up all the problems." Mr. Zyuzin had been hospitalized a day earlier with heart problems.

Coming from Mr. Putin, such talk is nothing short of terrifying: Consider the fate of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now in jail in Siberia while Yukos's assets were gobbled up by state-owned oil company Rosneft. Investors swiftly took note: Mechel's stock dropped by more than 33% in a day, while the Russian exchange fell by 9%.

The Mechel play springs from a familiar game plan, in which accusations of tax or regulatory problems become the alibis by which the Kremlin and its cronies seize the assets of unwanted competitors. "It is a strictly commercial operation in the framework of Kremlin Inc. Tribute is no longer enough for them; they want to take everything into ownership," speculates Russian analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky.

Although President Medvedev has issued some feeble protests, it seems clear that Putin is moving step by step to not only maximize government control over the domestic economy but to try to recreate the Soviet empire. He is helped in all this by the petroeconomy that allows Russia to fund its aggression and by western pusillanimity. The rest of the world is powerless to stop him. And calls for him to change his policies are as useless as calls to Iran to stop developing its nuclear weapons program.

It seems that John McCain, who has been warning about Putin since 1999, has been, as Jonathan Martin writes, more prescient on Putin's imperialistic desires than Bush who infamously looked into Putin's eyes and thought he understood him. McCain was also more on target in his statement right after the news of the invasion broke than Barack Obama's seeming equivalence between the country invaded and the one doing the invading. As Scott Johnson has pointed out, Obama had to come out a day later and offer a stronger condemnation of Russia than is first statement.

McCain is clearly much more up to speed on the whole situation and has even traveled to Georgia and South Ossetia. This is where McCain's experience gives him a definite advantage, but I don't know that anyone in America is following the story enough to really care which candidate knows more about the area. And the further question that I have is what exactly the United States can do about the whole situation. It's clear that calls for Russia to stop or saying we'll bring it to the United Nations where Russia has a veto are not going to do anything and Russian tanks continue to roll through Georgia. I appreciate that John McCain recognized right away what was happening. What I want to know is what would a President McCain do now that we're facing a situation where the Russians may take over that pipeline and recreate the Soviet control over Georgia. I fear that he'd be just as helpless as President Bush seems to be in this situation.