The war in South Ossetia is essentially over, and the Georgians have lost. There may be some more shooting yet, but it is now clear that Georgia will never regain control of the rebel territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, that President Mikhail Saakashvili has handed Russia a major victory, and that Georgia's hopes of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are gone. Yet sections of the Western media are carrying on as if the Russians started it and are now threatening to invade Georgia itself.
Now Saakashvili is playing on old Cold War stereotypes of the Russian threat in a desperate bid for Western backing: "What Russia is doing in Georgia is open, unhidden aggression and a challenge to the whole world. If the whole world does not stop Russia today, then Russian tanks will be able to reach any other European capital." Nonsense. Georgia started this war.
The chronology tells it all. Skirmishes between Georgian troops and South Ossetian militia were more frequent than usual over the past several months, but on the afternoon of Aug. 7, Saakashvili offered the separatist South Ossetian government "an immediate ceasefire and the immediate beginning of talks," promising that "full autonomy" was on the table. The same evening he ordered a general offensive.