The many layers of "Georgia"

I'm preparing for three courses this fall: The Global Cold War and the Making of our Times; Cold War Crises (in Dutch); and Germany between East and West in the Time of Stalin, 1923-1953 (not sure what language). The Georgia crisis is relevant for all in ways that are too numerous to discuss in a single post. How the crisis can be connected to the Cold War (and how it came out) I've discussed already, but one element has struck me in particular. Reading a long string of op-eds (for example by Mikhail Gorbachev and foreign minister Segei Lavrov), it has become even more clear to me now how Russians of all stripes have felt humiliated by the defeat in the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet/Russian empire, and by the way the West has expanded its influence. Many Westerners believe this last element should not irritate Russia, as it's not meant as traditional power politics or as directed against Russia. But we've learned by now that what we in the West view as benevolent change--even necessary reform of international politics (the creation of more open societies and their integration with a larger, collaborative international "order"), to Russia(ns) actually represents a threat. Same for China. Given the importance of these two powers, and other, even less benign regimes around the world, those who assume that the way the West has evolved in the last half-century (exemplified by European and Atlantic integration, and its expansion) can and should be the model for the rest of the world will have to rethink. Not that a new world order on this model would not be an improvement, and not that we should not try to maintain it as a goal, but it's just not going to happen in our lifetimes. Why? Mostly, it seems, because for this to progress, you need genuine, stable democracies. We thought we were getting one in Russia, but instead (as explained in last week's excellent Economist three-pager) we're getting an increasingly nationalist, corporatist, expansionist Russian state, one most Russians do not seem to oppose. We may think China is on the right path, but that may be wishful thinking also. Perhaps there are ways Westerners can promote the growth of democracy in dictatorships such as these two, but it appears that at best we can tinker a little on the margins. Which takes us back to good old power politics as at least as important a factor in international relations as the many celebrated, but perhaps not as influential forms of "soft power."