Paul Krugman is understandably concerned about Russian actions in Georgia and questions, as many have, whether this portends an end to an era of peace among the great powers: 

[O]ur grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies -- but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism.

Some analysts tell us not to worry: global economic integration itself protects us against war, they argue, because successful trading economies won't risk their prosperity by engaging in military adventurism. But this, too, raises unpleasant historical memories.

Shortly before World War I...[the] British author, Norman Angell, published a famous book titled The Great Illusion, in which he argued that war had become obsolete, that in the modern industrial era even military victors lose far more than they gain. He was right -- but wars kept happening anyway.

It's that phrase, "as we do," that should stop us.  As David Remnick writes in his commentary on Putin's Georgia gambit, "Every thing is what it is, and not another thing."

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