"The first order of business should not be some sort of punishment," said Dan Fried, the Bush administration's assistant secretary of state for European affairs, in an interview this past week about U.S. policy toward Russia in the wake of its invasion of Georgia.

Fried is an accomplished Foreign Service officer who has served this and previous administrations loyally and professionally, and undoubtedly he is working with the instructions given to him by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Steve Hadley. But, in this case, the sentiment is dead wrong and only reinforces the worst tendencies in the key alliance capitals of Paris and Berlin.

Up to now, the transatlantic policy toward the Russian aggression in the Caucasus has been to offer aid and assistance to Georgia but avoid any steps that might be viewed as a substantive sanction in Moscow. It is the equivalent of coming across a victim of a violent mugging and robbery and offering to help the victim but doing nothing when it comes to punishing the actual perpetrator of the crime. Helping the victim, of course, is important, but that alone will not deter the mugger. Indeed, absent punishment, the mugger is only likely to grow bolder and deterrence even less sustainable.

Complicating matters is that Washington is not the sole judge in this matter. To make any punishment effective will require the cooperation of America's transatlantic allies--and right now, key allies, such as France and Germany, are actively stalling efforts to make Putin and company

Difficult, but not impossible.

The first step is to make clear that the German and French approach is not working. Moscow is not keeping even its minimal promises agreed to in the French-brokered ceasefire. If anything, with its de jure recognition of the independence of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia and de facto absorption of the two into Russia, Moscow has made a mockery of Paris's efforts. Nor, stepping back, has Berlin's policy of commercial engagement with Russia been shown to gain it any special leverage over Russian behavior. Worried most of all about its supplies of gas and oil from Russian pipelines, Berlin has blinked. For Germany and France, two states that want to (and should) play a bigger role on the world stage, Russia's blatant disregard of their concerns should be sufficiently humiliating to spur a reappraisal of their policies, one would think.

Of course that reappraisal is likelier to happen under pressure. And the best source of that pressure is from other European governments who live on Russia's doorstep. Sweden, the Baltic States, and Poland have all argued for taking a tougher line with Moscow--and they should continue to do so. It is precisely because NATO and the European Union operate by consensus that these frontline states have the ability to push their neighbors to the west in the right direction. This is especially true of the EU, where their potential unwillingness to cooperate on other issues of importance to France and Germany gives Warsaw, Tallinn, and the other capitals leverage they might not otherwise have.