Return of Cold War Diplomacy - Daily Telegraph editorial

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/08/10/dl1001.xml

Return of Cold War Diplomacy - Daily Telegraph editorial

Russia's ruthless attack on Georgia is a dramatic and depressing reminder of the willingness of the Soviet Union (and, before it, imperial Russia) to pursue its foreign policy across the borders of sovereign nations. It is true that Georgia - unlike, say Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 - walked into a trap. What did it imagine would be Moscow's response to its own assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of the Russian-supported breakaway province of South Ossetia? Did the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, not realise that he was providing his enemy with an excuse not just to invade the rebel province but also to launch air strikes on central Georgia?