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Whatever happened to the principle of self-determination? Bipartisan demands by the White House, Congress and U.S. allies for Russia to respect the "territorial integrity" of Georgia disregard what was once proclaimed as an essential human right by the United States. The land of Washington, Jefferson and Wilson can do better.

It was Woodrow Wilson who articulated the right to self-determination as a guiding principle of international law. He did so in response to a European situation strikingly similar to the current one. Then, as now, the wishes of inhabitants of certain regions were being subordinated to the interests of arbitrarily drawn states and their great-power patrons. That, in turn, led to a conflict that threatened a wider war.

Before gaining statehood in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, modern Georgia had only a brief period of independence (1918 to 1921) before the Red Army subjected it to Soviet rule. Then, as now, it did not consolidate authority over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

That is no accident. The borders, lumping together different ethnicities, were designed to facilitate rule from imperial St. Petersburg and Soviet Moscow. Thus, North Ossetia is in the Russian Federation, while South Ossetia is in Georgia.

Neither the Ossetians nor the Abkhazians want to be in Georgia. From the time Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union, the Abkhazians and South Ossetians declared their independence from Georgia, and backed that up with armed revolts that made them self-governing in fact, though without international recognition. If Georgians have a right to self-determination, surely so do Abkhazians and Ossetians.

For geopolitical reasons, the United States sided with Georgia. It spent years building a modern army in support of Georgia's bid to join NATO. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili used that army to invade South Ossetia earlier this month, hoping for a quick fait accompli. Instead, the Russians crushed the Georgian army in six days, humiliating Georgia and the U.S. alike.

Both sides are using the South Ossetians and Abkhazians as pawns in a great-power game over spheres of influence and access to key resources, such as oil. Both sides are arguing for "self-determination" and "territorial integrity" selectively, to bolster allies and weaken adversaries.

Yet, the Russians did not initiate this conflict. They are also justified in pointing out American hypocrisy in supporting independence for Kosovo. The call to respect "territorial integrity" is invoked in support of a U.S. ally - Georgia - but deliberately overlooked in the case of a Russian ally - Serbia.

The American position on Kosovo would be more credible if it were part of a consistent policy of support for self-determination. That would mean supporting Georgian self-determination, but not forcible imposition of Georgian rule on Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The governance of these regions should be decided by internationally supervised referendums.

Georgia should not be admitted to NATO as long as thorny self-determination issues remain unresolved. Nor should it receive military aid, because of the danger that it will be used to suppress local demands for self-determination.

Granted, there may be a price to pay in reduced access to oil from the Caucasus. But U.S. dependence on oil is its major vulnerability, and will never be properly addressed until oil becomes sufficiently expensive to make alternative sources of energy economically viable. Moreover, U.S. taxpayers shoulder a huge burden in maintaining a military that is tasked to secure continued access to foreign oil.

So there are practical as well as moral reasons for establishing the principle of self-determination as a consistent guiding light of U.S. foreign policy. Anything less is unworthy of a nation born of a "declaration of independence."