The Volgi has tried to restrain himself from going foreign-policy berserk, but it’s too tough today, especially with all my excess anxiety about the Redskins game. (Though they just got what could be the game-winning interception!)

So, looks like the Post‘s columnist Jim Hoagland is on the Volgi’s page: Russia is playing offense, and we need to think about how to stop them. His suggestion of strengthening the Baltic states is welcome and smart, but his “go north” strategy ignores the fact that Ukraine is Russia’s major object, and frankly the thing that should worry the West most, in terms of not only moving the Russian frontier west, but putting an emboldened and aggressive foe on the Black Sea and on the borders of four different NATO members.

Natan Sharansky, also appearing in the Post today, makes a case that Russia’s imperialism cannot be separated from its authoritarianism. This is terribly, terribly true, but here’s where American power makes less of a difference. We are much less able to cause Putin’s regime to crumble than we are to dissuade them from conquest. Not that we shouldn’t try—containment is fine, but it leaves us on defense and a gangster clique in charge of a large power with billions in attendant oil revenues.

Last, Gordon Chang, riffing off Hoagland’s piece, says: “Russia has chosen to be our enemy. We need to recognize that fact.” True dat. But you Gormogons readers (all four of you) knew that already.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.