Georgia and the "new" Cold War history

So I thought I'd do something a little different with my Cold War course. I thought I would have my approach reflect recent developments in the field of Cold War history, especially the redefinition of the Cold War as a genuinely global conflict, one in which the Southern hemisphere (the "Third World") figured just about as large as the "North." I picked a text that essentially argues that the Cold War was about the Third World, and tried to learn about countries and regions that for a U.S./Germany/Soviet specialist were rather obscure. (Zanzibar, anyone?) If "globalization" is the defining (albeit vague) characteristic of our time, a global Cold War should go further in helping to explain its characteristics. I still think this global view is instructive for us today, as I continue to believe that one of the more interesting aspects of the post-World War II era is the many ways the East-West conflict on the one hand, and the break-up of the old, mostly European colonial empires, on the other hand, influenced each other. In the meantime, however, just as I got to my new academic home, Russia has invaded a neighboring country. The West is indignant but virtually helpless; and other countries in Russia's traditional sphere of influence worry they're next. This of course is very reminiscent of the "old" Cold War, which was mostly about Russian (Soviet) expansionism and Western efforts to oppose it. As many people have pointed out, the differences may be more significant than the similarities (a more apt analogy may be 19th century power politics, with only a small dose of ideology), but that we're back in the "North" is hard to dispute. Back in the North certainly when you observe transatlantic debates on how to deal with the new situation in Georgia (and Ukraine), but back in the North also because just like Stalin (although not in identical ways) Putin acts out of a mixture of great power aspirations and hostility toward Western ideas. It becomes global again if you realize that Russia is both a European and an Asian power, and that Putin has a seat on the security council of the U.N.--a forum where he can make great mischief, because the U.N. has many member-governments which, just like he, find Western ideas threatening to the way they run their own countries.