Caucasus Belli.(Russian-Georgian War)

THOUGH the order "Lights, camera, action!" was given by Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, the wartime drama now unfolding in the Caucasus was devised, scripted, directed, and produced in Moscow by Vladimir Putin and his fellow siloviki (former-KGB kleptocrats). The Russians say their invasion was meant to protect the rights of a persecuted minority; in fact, it was nothing of the kind. For almost two decades Russia has sought to divide and destabilize the new independent states in its former backyard by establishing, financing, and protecting "breakaway" ethnic statelets--such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia, within the sovereign territory of Georgia.

These statelets fulfill two important functions. First, they provide the siloviki with country estates. Almost none of the officials in the South Ossetian government are locals; most are high-ranking former KGB officials from other parts of Russia. South Ossetia provides them with a safe haven in which they can launder money, run smuggling operations, traffic in women, divert official funds into their pockets, and wage small but useful wars. Those wars are the second function: They punish pro-Western states such as Georgia, which is already weakened by division.

South Ossetian "forces" have been bombing Georgian villages at irregular intervals for years, but more intensely of late. Saakashvili sought to regain at least some of South Ossetia with a lightning raid, whereupon a massive Russian response, quite manifestly ready to go, was launched. Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia; another pro-Russian force attacked Georgia in the part of Abkhazia that Georgia still controlled; and Georgia's modest army was forced to withdraw. Russian planes continued to bomb central Georgia, and when Saakashvili proposed a ceasefire, the Russians at first refused to talk to him, then started multiplying conditions for their acceptance.

The Russians remain bent on ...