Making Putin Pay

Vladimir Putin proved last weekend that Russia's army can push over Georgia's army. In the past 48 hours, the West has begun to push back. If its leaders stay the course, they may yet turn Mr. Putin's meager military success into a significant political defeat.

In Washington yesterday, President Bush issued a statement of precisely the sort the world expects from American leadership in such circumstances. It made clear what he understands to be Mr. Putin's goals and made equally clear the intention to resist those goals, and why doing so is in the world's interests.

"The United States and our allies stand with the people of Georgia and their democratically elected government," Mr. Bush said. In other words, the Russians have made no pretense that their purpose in Georgia is to remove President Mikheil Saakashvili from the office to which he was elected in 2004. This would make the West complicit in the overthrow of a democratic government.

Mr. Bush also noted pointedly that "The days of satellite states and spheres of influence are behind us." It has become clear through this week that Mr. Putin's rationale for the invasion extends beyond Georgia's violated borders. His intent is to convince independent nations on Russia's periphery -- Ukraine, the Baltic states -- that persisting as Poland has to deepen formal ties to the West, particularly NATO, will cost them dearly. In crudest terms, it will be fatal.

This would be a reversion to the vassal-state relationship of the Cold War that the West cannot allow. It is evident and welcome that in the days between Mr. Putin's decision to belly-slam into the Olympics' opening weekend and now, Mr. Bush and his team have notably hardened what was a tepid early response.

Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are specialists in the Soviet era and are acutely aware of the price paid in human terms to bring the Soviet Union to dissolution in 1991. It must discomfit them to see that achievement threaten to unravel, especially after having invested so much in good relations with Mr. Putin. So it is reassuring to hear Mr. Gates say the Russians run the risk of damaging relations with the West "for years to come." This isn't just some point of disagreement. The Americans and their allies must continue to make Mr. Putin pay a political penalty for Georgia.

Yesterday the Russians said their General Prosecutor's Office would undertake a "genocide probe" in South Ossetia, and they called for putting President Saakashvili on trial at the Hague for "war crimes." As it happens, Chapter 1, Article II of the U.N. Charter, signed amid the smashed borders of World War II, forbids Members from the "use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state." The U.S. and France should force Mr. Putin's U.N. ambassador to veto a Security Council resolution describing his week-long mockery of those words.

Additionally, a genuinely independent prosecutor investigating war crimes might examine the Russian bombing runs over Georgia and the looting of Georgian villages by Ossetian militias. An intriguing article by Pavel Felgengauer in Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper, argues that an examination of the movement of the ground equipment and ships used in the strike against Georgia required planning that predated August.

Western authorities should also explore the vulnerability of Russian assets abroad. At the least, they can make life difficult for the holders of those assets. Post-Soviet Russia allowed the emergence of businessmen and entrepreneurs who indeed wish to function as normal participants in world commerce. Their number, however, assuredly includes the lucky billionaires under Mr. Putin's protection. All of them want to benefit from the West's rules. That privilege should be restricted so long as Mr. Putin breaks the rules.

In the world of global commerce, reputation matters. China has calculated that its own ambivalent reputation can only gain from staging the Olympic extravaganza. The glow of the Games is money in the bank. By contrast, the Putin government has embarked on a strategy that seems to believe its power grows in sync with its reputation as an international pariah, an outsider state.

Mr. Bush said Friday that "Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world." True, and if the West remains firm, it can make clear to Mr. Putin that the political price of behavior beyond the pale of normal relations is high. Overrunning Georgia was easy. Life after that should not be.