The war has a retrograde feel says Charlie. I believe* it’s only the third conventional war between two countries since the Gulf war. They were far more common during the cold war era.
The other was the Ethiopia-Eritrea war**, and…Iraq. One hopes retro hasn’t become fashionable following a weakening of the international law. That would [...]

James Sherr writes in today’s Telegraph:
… Russia is exasperated with the West and also contemptuous of it. In the Georgian conflict, as in the more subtle variants of energy diplomacy, Russians have shown a harshly utilitarian asperity in connecting means and ends. In exchange, we appear to present an unfocused commitment to values and process. [...]

I’m writing this in advance, so things may change during the night, but my better half’s foundation made evacuation mandatory Saturday afternoon, so off we go. We’re on our way to Yerevan to see if things subside reasonably quickly. I hope so, as I really like Tbilisi and was enjoying settling in there. One way [...]

Well, the South Ossetia conflict is going pretty badly for Georgia. The Russians appear to have cleared Tsikhinvali, and they’ve moved over six! hundred! armored vehicles into theater. Russian bombers have struck at a number of military targets inside Georgia, and the Russian Navy is maneuvering off the Georgian coast.
It’s increasingly [...]

Let’s take a moment to consider this para from Doug’s (the Doug in Tbilisi, that is) first post.
Second, what will the Americans and EU do? A senior State Department figure was here in Tbilisi last week, and I would expect that the Georgian side at least hinted very broadly about what was up. He [...]

Forces from Abchazia, the other Russian-supported separatist republic, led by Sergei Bagapsh (sp?), has attacked Gergian forces in the Kodori area, says Dagens Nyheter.

The Austrian Social Democrats have elected Werner Faymann as their new leader, before new elections in September, following the collapse of the coalition government. Faymann, currently down in the polls has apparently suggested there should be a referendum before any new EU treaties. I doubt anything will come of this, but a boy can dream.

So Tbilisi was very normal as I drove around this morning. Did I notice more uniforms than usual? Maybe, but maybe that’s just me looking for them more. The tank being hauled on the back of a truck in from the outskirts of town was definitely out of the ordinary. The short convoys of black [...]

That’s Latin for “throw the dice high”, and that’s what it looks like Georgian leader Saakashvili has done.
I’m no longer the Fistful’s Man In the Caucasus — I left in March, after the violence in Armenia. Doug Merrill is now the go-to guy: he’s in Tbilisi, very close to the action. But he’s [...]

This one is breaking fast — as I was writing an earlier version of this post, Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili said at a press conference that Georgian forces had downed two Russian planes that had breached Georgian air space. Local media are reporting that Georgia has taken most of Tskhinvali, the breakaway region’s capital. The [...]