As commentators on both sides of the argument have been anxious to stress, the warning signals have been visible for some time that a bloody conflict involving the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and its former masters in Moscow was looming.

Speaking in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Alexander Rondeli, head of the independent Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, summed up the ill-feeling that has soured relations and inspired the Kremlin to make clear that Georgia's persistent attempts under its American-educated President, Mikheil Saakashvili, to join Nato are a "red line" which it will strive to prevent Georgia from crossing.

"The Russians regard us as untrustworthy and ungrateful dogs who want to throw ourselves into the arms of the Americans and toss everything to do with Moscow, including the Russian language, out of the window," he told me. "The ill-feeling is exacerbated because they patronise us. They basically think that we are no good for anything but running
restaurants and have no idea how to manage a state."

The enthusiasm which Georgia, since its self-styled Rose Revolution of 2003, has been embracing the American eagle instead of the rejected Russian bear is illustrated immediately on arrival at Tbilisi's international airport (military elements of which are reported to have been bombed over the weekend), as visitors find themselves driving down the re-named "George W. Bush Avenue", complete with large and grinning likeness of the soon to be replaced US leader.

A little further into the capital at 25 Antoneli Street is the fortress-style US Embassy, home to a surprisingly large 650 staff, some 200 of them American citizens.

Even more disturbing to the Russians – who have had to watch as Cyrillic posters are replaced – is the fact that Washington is dispensing one of America's highest per-capita assistance programmes. It is no real surprise that many opponents of the Georgian president dismiss him as "Bush's puppet."

The presence of US military "advisers" helping train the Georgian army has given rise to some hostile comparisons with the early days of Vietnam.

It may also have played a part in persuading Saakashvili to overestimate the possibility of the West joining in after what looked very like an attempt to sneak in militarily and solve the problem of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia while the world's attention was distracted by the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

But as Mark Almond, Eastern European expert at Oriel College, Oxford has pointed out powerfully, the Georgian leader – known for his impulsiveness – seems to have foolishly ignored Henry Kissinger's famous dictum: "Great powers do not commit suicide for their allies."

It is no secret among pro-Soviet diplomats around the world that Russia would like to get rid of Saakashvili, who was recently democratically returned to power in an election judged as largely (though not entirely) fair and above board by independent observers.

In addition to Russia's near paranoia about the prospect of Georgia – whose region it refers to tellingly as "the near abroad," – joining Nato and even the EU, is its anger at the new BTC pipeline, which circumvents Russian and Iranian territory and pumps about one per cent of global crude supplies (or one million barrels per day) from the Caspian into the Turkish port of Ceyhan for export to Western Europe.

The importance of such a strategic energy route (30 per cent owned by BP) in enabling the West to be free of Kremlin influence over its energy supplies was highlighted on Saturday when Russian warplanes attacked it, but missed.

"Russia does not like to see its role as the region's dominant distributor of energy undermined in any way," explained Rondeli. "Especially in an area it regards as its own backyard."

Both the SAS and US special forces have had a role in protecting the pipeline (which ironically was recently put out of operation by Kurdish anti-Turkish PPK guerrillas unconnected directly with the current conflict), another factor which has added to the dangers of any conflict between Georgia and Russia spilling over into wider areas.

"The United States works closely with the Georgians on security and counterterrorism efforts," explains the US State Department, whose Tbilisi ambassador, John Tefft is an old Moscow hand. "The United States provides Georgia with bilateral security assistance, including English-language and military professionalism training."

So, although the origins of the current violence lie in the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the refusal of two pro-Russian leaning provinces of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to accept their position within sovereign Georgian borders, its implications of a geo-political nature are potentially much more serious and wide-ranging. Memories of that civil war are still deep and bitter. Putin has claimed that the most recent bloodshed will ensure that South Ossetia will never be absorbed into Georgia as Saakashvili is demanding (albeit with some kind of semi-autonomous status).

The catalyst for much of the fighting was no doubt reaction in the Kremlin and beyond (including in the office of South Ossetian president Eduard Kokioity, a former Soviet
wrestling champion) to the Western decision in February to recognise Kosovo's independence – a move which pro-Russian sympathisers say is being hypocritically denied to the 70,000 citizens of South Ossetia.

Just how many other such complex nationalistic disputes lay simmering in the always volatile Caucasus region is a matter for conjecture.


Christopher Walker is a former Moscow correspondent for The Times newspaper.