The dangers of sabre-rattling

During the May holidays, Russians' thoughts naturally turn to remembrance of World War II, and the 26 million Soviet citizens who died defeating Nazism.
The victory was bought at an extremely high price, with every family in the country today affected by those huge sacrifices. Victory in 1945 did not end the anguish of totalitarianism, or prevent the Cold War, but the shared suffering was something that united the Soviet peoples.
This weekend, commemorations for the end of that conflict will be held in Moscow and Tbilisi, even as the Russian and Georgian governments are once again locked in a dangerous standoff, less than a year after the war over South Ossetia.
The latest spark is NATO's largely symbolic military exercises in Georgia, as President Mikheil Saakashvili tries to shrug off calls for him to quit over last year's war. Relations between Moscow and NATO have deteriorated, leading to the massing of Russian troops on the South Ossetian-Georgian border and the tit-for-tat expulsions of Russian and NATO diplomats.
This, just as hopes were building that ties with the West would be mended. U.S. President Barack Obama's new "reset" policy was starting to bear fruit on a range of issues from nuclear disarmament and cooperation over Afghanistan to the U.S. missile shield in Europe.
It's perhaps not surprising that the tensions are building exactly on the eve of Victory Day, an increasingly militarised holiday with a full-scale military parade on Red Square.
A year ago, tensions rose between Moscow and Tbilisi after Russian troops conducted military exercises in Abkhazia that coincided with President Dmitry Medvedev's inauguration and the Victory Day parade two days later.
The thing most likely to derail improvements in Russian-Western relations is, sadly, the Saakashvili factor.
Whether he stays or goes has become more than an issue for Georgians unhappy with his record on the war, poverty or corruption. It has become a zero-sum game between Russia and Washington - or that's how many of the hawks on both sides see it.
Russia's General Staff knows that NATO is overstretched - military and financially - right now in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and so realises it has a chance to press Obama to drop or defer the U.S.'s costly missile shield plans.
The real danger is that the provocations could get out of hand.
As Russia's envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told The Moscow News, Moscow is worried that hawks in the Pentagon will use the latest Georgia row to go back to a Bush-era Cold War stance. Equally, there are those in the West who see Russian hawks trying to make Obama's new policy fail.
What is important is that tensions do not build further. Otherwise, it is not ruled out that a new conflict may break out with Georgia, exactly when both countries - along with the rest of Europe, NATO and the U.S. - need to be battling another enemy, the global economic crisis.