Page last updated at 09:23 GMT, Monday, 11 August 2008 10:23 UK
Early lessons from S Ossetia conflict  By Paul Reynolds World
affairs correspondent, BBC News website    Georgian President
Mikhail Saakashvili Did President Saakashvili miscalculate?
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili must have thought that
Russia would not react strongly when he sent his forces in on
the eve of the Olympic games to regain control of a territory he
had insisted must remain part of Georgia, albeit with some form
of autonomy.  Yet Russia was always likely to respond. It
already had forces there, leading the peacekeeping force agreed
back in the easier days of 1992 between President Boris Yeltsin
of Russia and President Edward Shevardnadze of Georgia, himself
the former Soviet foreign minister who helped bring the Cold War
to an end.  Russia has been supporting the separatists in South
Ossetia and handed out Russian passports to the population,
thereby enabling it to claim that it was defending its own
citizens.  The result o