As the White House struggles, agonizingly, down the road to striking Syria, Moscow has put on its own sideshow, railing against yet another American misadventure in a mysterious and tangled region. Russian ships have started churning the Mediterranean's waters again, ostentatiously getting into position. Russian officials warned obliquely of "catastrophic consequences" should the U.N. Security Countil be bypassed. Dmitry Rogozin, a blustery deputy prime minister who is close to Vladimir Putin, came out to deride the U.S., saying it behaved in the Muslim world "like a monkey with a hand grenade." Meanwhile, Russian state TV, setting aside its programming of bread and circuses, has detailed the ways in which America is again circumventing international institutions and, worse, undermining international law. In the most extraordinary example of the Russian media's exuberance, ITAR-TASS, the state news wire, quoted Carla Del Ponte, a member of the UN commission looking into the gas attacks, as saying that the chemical weapons used in Ghouta had been fired by "the paramilitaries of Syria's irreconcilable opposition." The only problem was that Del Ponte had made no such statement, and still, ITAR-TASS, whose story was picked up across Russian news outlets, declined to issue a correction.

The message was the old, familiar no, this time buttressed by some menacing-looking warships.

And as always, it means nothing.

What can Russia really do? Well, not much. It can, and will, veto any resolution authorizing the use of force in Syria. In fact, its representative has already walked out of a meeting in which Samantha Power, America's ambassador to the U.N., called for "immediate action." And you know what? That's both utterly predictable and not insurmountable. The most helpful Russians have been on things like this is simply abstaining on the resolution allowing the use of force in Libya. "They have the power when they say 'no,' but when we say 'no,' they lose their power," says a Senate foreign policy staffer.

Okay, but tactically speaking: Will the Russians use those warships? Fat chance. The state of Russia's military and Russia's navy is notoriously terrible, and, for all their talk, the last thing Russia wants to do is engage in a game of battleship with the U.S.