Russia knew the West wouldn’t dare step in

With its brutal show of force in South Ossetia, Russia has proved one thing to the world: the bumbling old bear which used to fall flat on its face when it initiated a power play has been replaced by a much smarter beast.

The last time Russia launched a war in the Caucasus - against Chechen separatists in 1994 - the defence minister said the job could be done by "a single regiment in a couple of hours". In the end it took almost a decade and cost more than 100,000 dead. The attempt to turn Afghanistan communist had to be abandoned after ten years, in a humiliating defeat.

Recent attempts to manipulate Russia's neighbours through non-military means have not prospered either. In 2004 Russia put its money and media clout behind the pro-Moscow candidate in the Ukrainian

presidential elections, Victor Yanukovich. He won in a rigged ballot, but the result provoked the Orange Revolution, where street protests backed by the Kremlin's enemies got the vote overturned.

The crisis in South Ossetia, a mountainous territory which wants to secede from Georgia and join Russia, is certainly not over. But Vladimir Putin, who despite his reduced status as prime minister is still clearly the man in charge of Russia, can claim to have achieved his objective - to show that he is top dog in the Caucasus region, despite the collapse of the Soviet empire.

The secret of his success is not the Russian army, generally ill-equipped and poorly officered and no match for Nato forces. Instead, he is judging his enemies by a different yardstick - "the correlation of forces", a concept taught in Soviet times and part of Putin's KGB education.

Unlike the balance of forces, which looks at firepower, the correlation of forces takes into account the intentions and personalities on both sides. In this case, it means the