During developments this autumn in the Russo-Georgian conflict over the secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, great minds were heard rejoicing quietly over the fact that Georgia was not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty, sparing the members of that alliance the unpleasant duty of solidarity in the face of Russian might.

This article does not propose to enlarge on the justifications for Ossetian and Abkhazian secession or the worth of arguments for one side or the other, and even less on the various responsibilities of the actors in the outbreak of this latest active phase of an enduring conflict, but to examine whether, in international politics, continual submission to the law of the strongest and the permanent abstention from any intervention on behalf of solidarity is the height of diplomatic astuteness.

History is full of examples showing that renouncement and weakness do not necessarily lead to the outcomes desired by those who urge them on their compatriots. Without evoking the policy of appeasement that is usually associated with the outcome of the Sudetenland crisis and the Munich conference of September 1938, we shall refer here to a much less well-known episode of modern history, the destruction of the Venetian Republic in 1797, in which France, unfortunately, played the major role.