surprise, surprise...

Russia has refused to honor the terms to which it agreed just days before regarding its conflict with Georgia. Cavalier to the end, Putin and his cronies have shown themselves incapable of playing by the rules of modern international relations, declining to pull Russian troops from Georgian territory beyond S. Ossetia. What is it about Russia’s psyche that renders it unable to suppress the basest of human social instincts? Why does Putin's Russia, as James Traub points out, "take a zero-sum approach to diplomacy: You must lose if I am to win?"