What if Bush had gotten his way on Georgia?

Fred Kaplan, reflecting on George W. Bush's push for accepting Georgia into NATO, ponders the nuclear-tipped bullet we just dodged:

Bush pressed the other NATO powers to place Georgia's application for membership on the fast track. The Europeans rejected the idea, understanding the geo-strategic implications of pushing NATO's boundaries right up to Russia's border. If the Europeans had let Bush have his way, we would now be obligated by treaty to send troops in Georgia's defense. That is to say, we would now be in a shooting war with the Russians. Those who might oppose entering such a war would be accused of "weakening our credibility" and "destroying the unity of the Western alliance."

To be fair, refusing to defend a NATO country that had come under attack would weaken the credibility of the alliance. But of course it would be insane to get into a shooting war with Russia -- which still has nuclear weapons -- to defend Georgia. This is why Bush had no business leading the Georgians on with this kind of crazy talk. As Kaplan says, you feel like a "heartless bastard" for saying so, but the US has no compelling interest in putting its own soldiers on the line to defend Georgia. And for all the neocons who are screaming "Sudetenland!", Kaplan has the following to say:

Do you really believe that Russia's move against Georgia is not an assertion of control over "the near abroad" (as the Russians call their border regions), but rather the first step of a campaign to restore the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe and, from there, bring back the Cold War's Continental standoff? If so--if this really is the start of a new war of civilizations--why aren't you devoting every waking hour to pressing for the revival of military conscription, for a war surtax to triple the military budget, and--here's a twist--for getting out of Iraq in order to send a few divisions right away to fight in the larger battle? If not, what exactly are you proposing?

As repellent as I find the prospect of an Obama presidency, the idea of hotheaded John McCain sitting in the Oval Office now trying to figure out how to deal with a newly aggressive Russia makes me extremely nervous -- this, to the extent that a McCain administration, on national security and foreign policy, represents a third Bush term. The Bush years exemplify what Andrew Bacevich, in his forthcoming book "The Limits of Power," describes here:

Since the end of the Cold War, the tendency among civilians -- with President Bush a prime example -- has been to confuse strategy with ideology. The president's freedom agenda, which supposedly provided a blueprint for how to prosecute the global war on terror, expressed only grandiose aspirations without serious effort to assess the means required to achieve them.

Notice, though, Bacevich doesn't say this is merely a Republican problem. To what extent does Obama share an ideological view of national security and foreign policy, versus a realistic view? More precisely, given that most US civilians, per Bacevich, share this way of looking at America's role and relations in the world, to what extent can any candidate who hopes to be elected president do so on a Realist foreign policy platform?