KEY POINTS:
A peace plan brokered by the European Union appears to have snuffed out a brief war between Russia and Georgia over a tiny place called South Ossetia. That conflict could, however, have had big implications for the disposition of power in the world. South Ossetia is one of two provinces of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia - the other is the Black Sea coastal region, Abkhazia - that would prefer to be independent states or part of Russia. They regard themselves as ethnically different from Georgians but were incorporated into the same republic by the Soviet Union. Since the Soviet collapse, they have been fighting to separate.
Russia has taken more than usual interest in their plight lately because Georgia wants to join the Western security alliance, Nato. So does Ukraine, a former Soviet state even closer to the Russian heartland. Russia, which has watched several former Eastern European allies join Nato, has made it clear it regards Georgia and Ukraine as steps too far, amounting to its Western encirclement.
It remains unclear why Georgia attacked separatist forces in South Ossetia last Friday, triggering Russia's decisive response. Georgia's attack broke a ceasefire that followed a series of clashes with the separatists last week. Thousands of people fled their homes under Georgian shelling and Russia appealed to the United Nations to avert "massive bloodshed".
The next day, while George W. Bush was warmly greeting Vladimir Putin at the Olympic Games, Russia launched its retaliation, quickly driving Georgian soldiers from South Ossetia and bombing targets near the Georgian capital for good measure. So ends Georgia's hopes of keeping the rebel territories and probably its hopes of joining Nato.
Those hopes had been well advanced. Nato countries agreed in April that Georgia would become a member at some time, possibly as soon as next year. Russia immediately boosted its peacekeeping forces in Abkhazia and sent army engineers to upgrade the railway from the Russian border. Georgia should have read the signs, particularly as it was accusing Moscow of fomenting trouble in the breakaway regions to portray the country as unstable and an unworthy of Nato membership.
Georgia has overplayed its hand, disastrously for its own hopes of escaping the Russian sphere of influence and fortuitously for Russia's new President, Dmitry Medvedev. He has been at pains lately to show Russia's power-brokers that he can be as assertive as Mr Putin, who continues to oversee foreign policy in his role as Prime Minister. Mr Medvedev has condemned United States plans to put its missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, denounced Kosovo's Western-recognised independence from Serbia, and accused Russia's former Baltic republics of rewriting the history of World War II.
Georgia's punishment will be chilling for the now-independent Baltic states and all former Soviet republics that share a border with Russia. The hegemony that Moscow has assumed since its era of Tsarist expansion has clearly survived the collapse of communist rule.
Nato is not inclined to interfere, despite Georgia's strategic importance as a crucial link in the supply of oil and gas to western Europe. The pipeline is the only channel from Central Asia that is not under Russian control. To maintain that security, the West now needs to shore up Georgia's independence as best it can while doing nothing to further antagonise the diminished republic's powerful neighbour.
A leadership change in Georgia is almost certain. A new government in Tbilisi must reconcile the country to the loss of territory and the temper of the bear on its border. Nato is clearly not coming and for that Georgia has mainly itself to blame.
