Three things would be prominent in his analysis, applicable as it was then, in the main, to a rigid, dark communist cadre and worldview.

1) That Russians qua the Kremlin act out of an historic sense of xenophobia and paranoia;

2) That their expansionism often centers on regions with, his phrase, “diseased tissue”;

3) That their Stalinist DNA left the Politburo boys incapable of indulging shared or joint power and made their doctrinaire “rightness” a kind of geopolitical sine qua non. Their ideological membrane compelled them to crush and to forever validate their sense of “infallibility.”

Now let it be said that the mortifying days of The Party and Kennan’s world thereof are long gone, obviously, but power politics in Russia today still finds its resonance and inspirations from the communist pathologies of that time. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. By extension we might ask, does the KGB ever really leave a person, even if that person leaves the KGB? And has the “Hannibal at the gates” ruse ever really disappeared from the Kremlin’s playbook?

I think not to both questions. Accordingly, it’s not so much that Volodya wanted to illuminate some balance of power instantiation by invading Georgia. Nor do I suspect he sought to teach his once and mighty satellites a lesson in geopolitical loyalty.

I’m ssticking with Kennan and the law of parsimony, here. I’m guessing Putin heard Stalin whispering in his ear, telling him what he told mindless generations. Kill or be killed, and don’t let the truth
ruin a perfectly simple construct for establihing order, and empire.