George Bush does indeed look ineffectual, sticking around in Beijing to watch water polo while Vladimir Putin zips back to Russia to take direct command of the troops heading into South Ossetia.
But that's because Putin knows he has a vital strategic interest of his country at stake, while Bush has just the fading, chimeric image of an imperium americanum -- without the assets to back it up.
One hopes the Russians don't overplay their hand. But even if they do, no one is going to stop them.
Not the U.S., not the Europeans.
Certainly not the Georgians.
Right now, they are saying Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "must go."
American UN envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is whining that the Russian position constitutes "regime change."
Gander, meet goose.
Actually, Saakashvili's departure isn't such a bad idea.
Condi Rice was there last month to discuss the U.S. retraining of his military and his bid to join NATO.
I'm sure whatever else she said, the first words out of her mouth were: "Whatever you do, don't poke the Russians in the eye." And what does Saakashvili do?
Right now, the U.S. goal should be to stop the slaughter, and restore as much of the status quo as possible (although Georgia has blown any chance of reintegrating South Ossetia or Abkhazia into some federal framework).
But that's not what the State Department is doing.
Rice is drawing up Security Council resolutions that blame Russia for starting the conflict.
Hello, Condi. Russia has a Security Council veto. You are subsituting cover-your-ass PR for positive action.
Let's be clear: the Russians aren't the noble-minded defenders of the South Ossetians here; those 70,000 shepherds, smugglers and subsistence farmers are mere pawns in the Great Game, and the Russians would sacrifice them without a qualm.
Same for those other Georgian separatists, the Abkhaz.
But there's more than enough hypocrisy to go around. Russia supports independence for Georgia's South Ossetians but has never offered it to the much more numerous North Ossetians who live within Russia.
Not to mention Chechnya.
The U.S., NATO and EU insist that Georgia's territorial integrity must remain inviolate, while they sanctimoniously defend their dismemberment first of Yugoslavia, then of Serbia.
Russia warned at the time that whatever principle applied to Kosovo must apply to the Georgia ethnic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The western response: STFU.
The media are spinning the Russian response in Georgis as expansionist aggression.
But Russia rightly perceives a U.S.-driven move to encircle and humiliate it.
Anti-missile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic are directed at Iran? Right.
Ukraine and Georgia are proposed for NATO membership? Nothing to do with Russia.
U.S. and Israeli military aid pours into Georgia, and Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia hold joint exercises under American supervision? Don't worry your pretty little head about it.
In short, dragging its European allies behind it, the U.S. has been doing everything it can to restart the Cold War.
Buoyed by its new oil wealth, Russia has finally drawn a line in the sand.
An interesting sidebar: Ukraine has warned Russia that ships of its Black Sea fleet that sail from Sebastopol to blockade the Georgian coast may not be allowed to return to that Crimean port (which Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine in the 1950s).
I suspect Putin will welcome that confrontation as much as he does this current one.