Russia

No, it's not a Robert Ludlum novel. The Socialist Project has posted an interesting take on the new war in Central Asia.

By attacking Tshkinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, a de facto independent territory since the 1992 ceasefire between Georgian and Osset armies, Saakashvili seems to have attempted to provoke Russia into a confrontation and thus force the hand of the NATO alliance into acting more rapidly. Russia has seen this bluff. But the West, despite some harsh words by the U.S. administration, has simply not followed suit. Saakashvili is a political adventurer who has not refrained from risking to throw the region, indeed the whole world, into the vortex of all out war just to have his country join the imperialist alliance.