If France is talking about sanctions and taking more aggressive actions to dissuade you from gobbling up nations and empire-building at your former satellite states’ expense… you are probably on the wrong track.

Even the would-be Central-East Asian answer to NATO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), has not backed Russia’s land grab in Georgia.

Now granted, France is “just discussing” the idea of sanctions, and while Britain refuses to accept a Europe carved up along mid-20th century Cold War lines, Germany is very well dependent upon all that dead dinosaur juice coming Russia’s GazProm fields.

In the end, it will be all a bunch of posturing and talk, but let’s hope that France under Monsieur Sarkozy shows itself to have a backbone, and that Britain’s leadership will stand fast with Mr. Churchill’s spirit when dealing with the brutally ursine Messrs. Putin and Medvedev and their attempt to annex pieces of sovereign nations back into the old Soviet sphere of influence.

Ukraine, and particularly on account of the Crimean Russians, and its seaport on the Black Sea, might be able to yet avoid being forcibly annexed back into Russia, if Europeans pull together to contain the Russian Bear once again.