ARTICLE: 2008 Year-Ender (yobserver.com)

By Gwynne Dyer, is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

[...] In order to conquer South Ossetia, Georgia had to kill or expel the Russian peacekeeping troops who were stationed there. Some might see the disparity in the size of the two countries (4 million Georgians, 140 million Russians) as a serious obstacle, but Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was not deterred. The Georgian assault on South Ossetia in early August, however, was easily repelled by the Russian army, which seized control of large parts of northern Georgia after the Georgian troops broke and fled.
A cease-fire stopped the shooting after five days, and Russian troops had all left Georgia proper within two months, but Moscow did recognise the independence of South Ossetia and of Abkhazia, another ethnic enclave that broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s.
Some circles in the West believe that this war proves that Russia under Prime Minister Putin has expansionist goals, and the Bush administration and several Western European governments promised to bring both Georgia and Ukraine, another former Soviet republic, into NATO. But the tangled facts on the ground argue for a more measured judgement, and enthusiasm among NATO nations for this course of action is visibly shrinking. There is no reason yet to believe that the West and Russia are committed to a new Cold War. [...]

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