"This is not 1968"

In her White House briefing, which was mostly devoted to the crisis in Georgia, US Secretary of State Condoleeezza Rice warned Russia that "this is not 1968" - i.e.  Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, and does not possess the power of the Soviet Union. In order to prosper, indeed even to survive, Russia needs integration with Western economic and political insitutions, but it has already put the likelihood of such  integration seriously at risk. By overreaching, and taking brutal actions against Georgia that go far beyond anything that could be supposed to have a connection with the South Ossetia/Abkhazia issue, Russia runs the danger of an international isolation which could bring the country to its knees.