The Russian Federation led by President Dmitry Medvedev and his predecessor, current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, certainly exhibited a classic 19th and 20th century reliance on hard military power when they sent the Russian army to conquer one-third of the mountainous and forested territory of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in only five days in August 2008.

Since then, the supposedly more sophisticated and futuristic soft power that EU leaders argue will be the model for international relations in this new century has failed to persuade Russia to desist from its design to reassert its influence on one of the pieces of the former Soviet Union and change course in this crisis.

Russia continues to arm and build up its own forces in the secessionist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia within Georgia, while this month the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization is holding exercises in Georgia to demonstrate its continuing support for the embattled Georgian government of President Mikheil Saakashvili, although Georgia is not a NATO member.

It would appear that the Russian government of Medvedev and Putin has therefore established who the boss is in the Caucasus, while actual or potential EU reactions played almost no role in the way in which the Kremlin managed the operation and its aftermath over the past eight months.

European verbal reactions since then have been treated as inconsequential noise.

Yet, in foreign policy debates, it was and it is still quite fashionable and "progressive" to compare the EU nations' enlightened policy of engagement with Russia and other countries, founded on the EU's soft-power tools, to the United States' indiscriminate and rough use of raw military power, especially in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to this well-meaning modern European conventional wisdom, soft power suggests dialogue, persuasion and the ability to engage others through agreements, trade and cultural exchanges.

By contrast, in the perception of American attitudes now remarkably widely held by European ruling elites, U.S. policymakers are prone to a somewhat tyrannical, unilateral approach that can be succinctly expressed in the threatening comment, "Do as I say, or the Marines will be following shortly."

According to this simplistic but powerful pair of contrasting stereotypes, Europe is about multilateralism and engagement, while the United States remains fixated upon applying coercion through the exercise of military power, whatever the ostensible political purposes of the exercise.

Part 2: Exploring the implications of the 21st century European conception of the futility of military power

(Paolo Liebl von Schirach is the editor of SchirachReport.com, a regular contributor to Swiss radio and an international economic-development expert.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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