The bear has teeth

Russia flexed its muscles last week and served notice that what remains of the old Soviet Union is still a bear.

As Russia has slowly recovered from the collapse of the USSR it has begun to reassert itself on the world stage. Its invasion of the breakaway Republic of Georgia demonstrates its willingness -- and ability -- to reassert hegamonic control over some of the USSR's former components.

Even though the Russian military is a shell of what it was before, it is rebuilding and despite the presence in the last few years of American advisors helping train the Georgian military, Georgia had no chance in this conflict. Its forces were simply too small and out of date to deal with the Russian invasion, and their communications were crippled by a massive cyberwarfare attack on military and civilian computer systems that preceded the invasion.

The Russians quickly punched through the rugged and constricted terrain in the north of Georgia, where smaller forces might have had a chance to slow or even stop them, advanced into the central plains of the small nation and effectively cut it in half.

They are now in a position to dictate terms, which almost certainly will include the absorption back into Russia of two Georgian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkahzskaya.

This is naked aggression for the pure purpose of territorial expansion (or reabsorbtion), at its worst.

The invasion was prompted in part by an unwise bellicose attitude by the Georgian government toward Russia, and in part by the proposal to bring Georgia into the NATO alliance.

The Russians have viewed with alarm and anger the recent moves of NATO to add more and more of the former Soviet Warsaw Pact nations to its own ranks, reducing significantly any buffer zones to invasion from the West.

While we may laugh at that concept, that paranoia is deeply seated in Russian history and psychology.

While many in the west had tended to write off Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they shouldn't have.

The bear still has sharp teeth.

-- Kelly Everitt