The five-day war around South Ossetia marks the triumphant return of the Russian Army to Georgia, which, let us recall, it only left in November 2007, evacuating its bases. This conflict places the very existence of the Georgian state in peril, and reveals the extreme rise in tension between Russia and the West.

This geopolitical ‘volcanic eruption’ serves to remind us of the Russo-American rivalry well known to geopolitical experts that has been growing more serious since 2004. The rivalry is set in the framework of the rebuilding of a Eurasian buffer zone (the former Soviet republics), where Washington and Moscow are facing up to each other very actively, against a background of passivity on the part of the European Union. Vladimir Putin has frequently declared that he considers the former Soviet states to be a natural sphere of Russian influence. For his part, George Bush has announced that America has the right and the duty to support democratic regimes (Ukraine and Georgia) and the spread of democracy throughout the post-Soviet area.

The requests by Ukraine and Georgia in April 2008 to join NATO were interpreted by Russia as a flagrant overstepping of the ‘red line’, encouraged by the United States. Does the Russo-Georgian war represent the simple continuation by other means of Russo-American rivalry? What were Russia’s aims in this conflict? Have they achieved them? What are the military lessons of this war? What are the repercussions for regional geopolitics (above all for Ukraine) and for the world?