Will South Ossetia War end up preventing Nato membership for the Republic of Georgia?

Writing in The American Prospect yesterday, political science professor Robert Farley attempts to handicap the likely impact the South Ossetia War (a battle waged earlier this month between the Russian and Georgian armies) will have on the Bush administration's plan to secure Nato admission for Georgia and the other independent satellite states of the former Soviet Union.
According to Farley's analysis:

The war between Russia and Georgia, on the heels of a NATO refusal to “fast track” Georgia’s application for membership, has reignited the debate over the wisdom of extending NATO to Russia’s borders. Realists on both the right and the left suggest that the war is a predictable reaction to NATO’s intrusion into Russia’s sphere of influence. Neoconservatives and their allies respond that the war could have been avoided if NATO had agreed to include Georgia this year, as the Bush administration desired. (This debate has reopened a discussion strategic theorists have been having about the continued relevance of NATO for more than a decade.) The war has clarified this hypothetical debate by bringing the costs and benefits of the alliance and its expansion into relief.

The case that NATO expansion was to blame goes something like this: If NATO had not extended to Russia's borders (the inclusion of the Baltic countries -- Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia -- is the push most often cited, although some people also feel that Poland should not have been included), then Russia would be more agreeable and less likely to abusively coerce its neighbors. I doubt that for several reasons

.
Farley also makes a critical observation: that Russian abuse is the single largest motivating factor behind most states' efforts to seek and acquire NATO membership. For illustration, The Poles, Baltic countries, Ukrainians, and Georgians all strongly desire membership due to "threatening" Russian behavior.