For the past week, Georgia has been on everyone's mind, and I'm not referring to the genteel Peach State down south but the former Soviet Republic way out east, in the caucuses or some place like that. If Americans can't exactly point out the other Georgia on a map, we're all very concerned about its borders and provinces and the invasion of the country by Czar Vladimir the Bad.

Both the McCain and Obama camps are working hard to draw distinctions between each candidate's response to the crisis--and you guessed it, Obama is more diplomatic whereas McCain has unilateral moral clarity. But then these operational differences only mask a general consensus on the situation--the Georgians are the Good Guys and we're backin' 'em; Russia must be opposed.

Few are talking about it publicly, but this bi-partisan enthusiasm over Georgia, and hostility towards the Bear, played no small part in the eruption of the recent conflict over South Ossetia. In last April's NATO summit in Bucharest, Bush pushed hard for the admittance of Georgia (and Ukraine) to the alliance, his plans being scuttled by those unwilling French and Germans. As Bush was on his trip, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a resolution in support of his efforts on behalf of Georgia--Obama and McCain cast ballots.

As Morton Abramowitz writes in The National Interest Online, Georgia might have lost out on NATO, but its ruling party believed that Uncle Sam would back it on most anything--including cracking down on that pesky separatist region of South Ossetia.

"Quite simply Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili gambled and lost. Whatever Russia's constant provocations and Vladimir Putin's contempt for him personally, Saakashvili appears to have thought he could quickly retake South Ossetia in a fait accompli or, if he got in trouble, the United States and other NATO nations would send forces to rescue him."

The text of the Senate resolution didn't include much foreign-policy talk: strategy, objectives, national interest, etc. It seems to me like the Senate wanted to grant NATO membership to Georgia on the basis of good behavior: human rights--check!, democracy--check!!, pro-Washington--check!!! But then NATO isn't an honor role for good nation-states; it's a military alliance in which an attack on one is an attack on all. If Bush--and McCain and Obama--had gotten their way, we'd now be in a shooting war with Russia. Of course, one could argue that if Georgia had gotten in NATO, then Russia would never have sent troops into South Ossetia. Probably true. But this only means that we'd currently be in a perilous toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin--who ain't no cupcake. Do we really care about the Georgians that much?

Since the end of the Cold War, there's been a lot of good feeling about NATO enlargement on both Left and Right. But then is there really anyone out there who wants to die for South Ossetia? If you feel so strongly, I'm sure the Georgian army is taking volunteers.