Editorial

In his book, Our Game, John le Carré quotes an Ingush proverb - He who thinks of the consequences cannot be brave - that in some cases is not true at all. Ask Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili. His attempt to seize South Ossetia on the principle that whatever breaks away can be brought back by force has exploded in his face. Perhaps he thought that with everybody's eyes on Beijing, he could get away with it.

As events have shown, the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, who was in the Chinese capital when Georgian forces marched into South Ossetia to reclaim the province, disagreed with the Mr Saakashvili, invaded South Ossetia and rolled back the Georgian forces. Reclaiming South Ossetia, which was not Russia's to reclaim was bad enough but yesterday evening, the reported capture of Georgian towns by Russian troops added an alarming dimension to an already worrisome situation. The world waited to see whether his forces would go on to Tbilisi.

Mr Saakashvili's decision to pit Georgia's puny, military strength against Russia, has resulted in the foreign occupation of South Ossetia - from which area it will be impossible to dislodge the Russians militarily and not easy to get them to withdraw by diplomatic means - and now part of Georgia. Mr Putin is contemptuously demonstrating that he is unafraid of aggression and the world's reaction to it. And by failing to think out the consequences, the Georgian President unwittingly opened a can of worms, and a Caucasian can of worms at that.

The United Nations is impotent; Russia has already seen to that in the case of Kosovo and, recently, in that of Zimbabwe. The US is hardly likely to go to war if Russian troops are not withdrawn. And Russia has long been issuing Russian passports to South Ossetians - does the Sudetenland ring a bell?

There is no unity in the European Union over how to handle Russia. "Our divisions arouse derision" as the head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, put it. But if Russia were to dictate terms to Georgia without reference to parameters for negotiations established by the UN or the EU, or the even more unlikely OSCE, what is there to prevent an increasingly nationalistic Russia doing the same elsewhere in the Caucasus?

The military-political implications are obvious to a first-year student in international relations. Add an economic one - Europe's partial dependence for its energy supplies on a pipeline that runs across Georgia before it changes course for Turkey - and there is little doubt as to what is at stake. Mr Putin has not hesitated to turn off the taps that allow Russian oil flow to Europe. He may be tempted to do the same with that Georgian pipeline; but that would mean war.

Georgia is overwhelmingly pro-West and wishes to join both the EU and Nato. The EU and Nato encouraged this. When it happens, it will bring the European frontier to Russia's frontier in the Caucasus.

Although the crisis is currently one that engages Georgia and its future, and even if Russia does not overstep, the current situation is crisis enough. The potential for its enlargement, bringing in Black Sea interests - and, therefore, Ukraine and Turkey to name but two - and unforeseen global repercussions is a threat waiting to be unleashed. Mr Putin's cock o' the walk approach has to be disabused.