Many people will see a double standard in the American response to the Russian invasion of Georgia given our current involvement in Iraq. This is a problem for the United States, and the Russians have exploited it in their public statements.

But double standards are hardly unusual in international relations. Less obvious, but far more important, is the revelation that the United States is a bad and potentially dangerous ally.

We are a bad ally to Georgia, which would like some help in this conflict. The help they would really like is not a bland appeal to international norms of non-aggression -- they want military assistance and they have the right to expect it.

Georgia currently has 2,000 troops in Iraq. While only a small part of the total number of troops in Iraq, this is the third largest national contingent in the country. Its troops have been there since 2003 and they have taken 24 casualties. All that, to help the United States invade, occupy and pacify a country without weapons of mass destruction thousands of miles away from the American homeland.

Now Georgia itself is being invaded by a country with weapons of mass destruction -- and the United States cannot spare any troops for this member of the coalition of the willing. The military might of our nation is fully committed to the Iraqi operations. Indeed, the United States would not even immediately commit to helping Georgian troops get back to Georgia.

The irony is that the neo-conservative movement whose members pushed the United States into war in Iraq coalesced long ago around dissatisfaction with the unwillingness of the United States to aid Hungarians and Czechoslovaks against Russian aggression in 1956 and 1968.

Now, because of misguided and ill-planned policies in Iraq, the United States is unable to do anything about the military aggression of the new Russians.

While the irony is thick, the message is clear to potential allies. America deals on a cash basis. Whatever diplomatic concessions, trade agreements or military assistance you get when you sign on is all you can expect. If you get in trouble don't look to us, we don't recognize moral obligations to friends who help us.

In addition, this situation reveals that the United States is a dangerous ally for our old friends in Europe. NATO has declared that Georgia will become a member of the alliance.

In attacking Georgia, Russia has come as close as one can to attacking a NATO ally without actually doing so.

Had this attack come after Georgia had joined NATO, the alliance would be obligated to respond. The response would not have to be a military one but the value of a military alliance that limits itself to diplomacy when a member state is invaded -- by the state against whom the alliance is centrally concerned -- is questionable.

Given the degree to which the Iraq war has stretched the U.S. military, a substantial part of any NATO response would fall to our NATO allies, many of whom were critical of the Iraq war in the first place. The message to our NATO allies is that entanglement with the United States can have consequences that you must bear while the United States pursues its own unilateralist agenda. More generally, Europeans may begin to wonder whether they ought to trust their most central security arrangements to so unreliable a country as the United States.

I don't necessarily think that the United States should send troops to Georgia.

I do think that we could better pursue both our interests and international peace if we were in a position to do so.

Events in Georgia show that America's current military limitations may embolden countries in their external international relations. The Georgian invasion shows that, pinned down in Iraq, the United States can be treated as a paper tiger.

It didn't have to be this way.

Post-cold war American military power had the potential to be a positive force. For all their imperfections, American involvement in the first Gulf War and Haiti and NATO involvement in the Balkans had positive, though limited, consequences. Had the United States continued to use military power judiciously to help bring peace to divided countries and defend internationally recognized borders both the United States and the world would be better off today.

The next president of the United States should return to this approach. He should also withdraw our troops from Iraq not least because our involvement there emboldens our enemies and alienates our friends.

Alec Campbell is associate professor of sociology and chairman of the department of sociology at Colby College, Waterville.