I’m afraid Michael Totten has been spun (JRL/2008/160/1). Two quick points.

“‘A key tool that the Soviet Union used to keep its empire together,’ Worms said to me, ‘was pitting ethnic groups against one another. They did this extremely skillfully in the sense that they never generated ethnic wars within their own territory. But when the Soviet Union collapsed it became an essential Russian policy to weaken the states on its periphery by activating the ethnic fuses they planted.’”

Note the confusion of “theys”. The first “they” to pit ethnic groups together was Stalin, who was a Georgian, ably assisted by his Mingrelian satrap Beria. The borders of the Georgian SSR were set up in 1936 with the two timebombs of South Ossetia and Abkhazia ticking away in it. The second “they” are presumably Yeltsin, five years old in 1936, and Putin not then born. Yeltsin did not cunningly force Georgia to take two areas that did not want to be part of Georgia so that he could later weaken it.

The other point is this “That evening, the 7th, the president gets information that a large Russian column is on the move. Later that evening, somebody sees those vehicles emerging from the Roki tunnel [into Georgia from Russia]. Then a little bit later, somebody else sees them. That's three confirmations. It was time to act.” This may be Tbilisi’s story today, but it hasn’t always been. Saakashvili did not mention Russian entry into South Ossetia in his celebratory speech on the 8th when he announced the “liberation” of most of Tskhinvali – he claimed Russian air attacks and Ossetian shelling of Georgia villages. (See report on civil.ge). And deputy defence minister Batu Kutelia is quoted in the Financial Times a week ago as saying that Tbilisi did not expect Russia to react. (See report).