Russia has scored a big geopolitical win by slapping tiny Georgia around. Now what?
If Georgia and Nato are the principal casualties of this week's ruthless display of brute power by Vladimir Putin, the consequences are bigger still, the fallout immense, if uncertain. The regional and the global balance of power looks to have tilted, against the west and in favour of the rising or resurgent players of the east.
In a seminal speech in Munich last year, Putin confidently warned the west that he would not tolerate the age of American hyperpower. Seven years in office at the time and at the height of his powers, he delivered his most anti-western tirade
Pernicious
To an audience that included John McCain, the White House contender, and Robert Gates, the US defence secretary and ex-Kremlinologist, he served notice: "What is a unipolar world? It refers to one type of situation, one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. This is pernicious ... unacceptable ... impossible."
This week, he turned those words into action, demonstrating the limits of US power with his rout of Georgia. His forces roamed at will along the roads of the Southern Caucasus, beyond Russia's borders for the first time since the disastrous Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. ...
Celebrating the biggest victory in eight years of what might be termed Putinism, the dogged pursuit by whatever means to avenge a long period of Russian humiliation and to deploy his limited range of levers - oil, gas, or brute force - to make the world listen to Moscow, the Russian prime minister has redrawn the geopolitical map.
In less than a week, Putin has invaded another country, effectively partitioned Georgia in a lightning campaign, weakened his arch-enemy, President Mikheil Saakashvili, divided the west, and presented a fait accompli. The impact - locally, regionally, and globally - is huge.
"The war in Georgia has put the European order in question," said Alexander Rahr, one of Germany's leading Russia experts and a Putin biographer. "The times are past when you can punish Russia." ...
However, what has everyone on edge is where Russia goes from here. Will Russia's "success" in asserting itself in Georgia lead to attempts to forecefully re-establish its influence over other Soviet-bloc nations?