I don’t want to boast, but in my lifetime I was lucky to visit many famous sea resorts like Côte d’Azur in France, Costa del Sol in Spain, other renowned Mediterranean beaches in Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Israel; I tried the waters of Indian Ocean in India, Ceylon and Indonesia; besides I was born and raised right on the Baltic Sea, and there are number of delightful beach towns there – in Russia, Poland, Latvia and Germany. More so, all in all, for about 15 years I lived in the USA – all the time either on Atlantic or Pacific coasts - and never missed an opportunity to plunge into the waters of either Long Island, or Cape Code, or San Diego, or Miami… Why am I saying all this? Because now, I believe, you can completely trust my judgment on this subject. And I’m telling you: if they ask me where is that just ONE place where I’d love to spend my annual leave, without any hesitation I would give up all those wonderful seashore locations for that tiny piece of paradise on the Abkhasian coast of Black Sea - Pitsunda… I’ll spell it for you, Americans, to remember: “Pee-tsoon-dah”. Those sounds are music to my ears. And not to mine alone – all my friends loved it. We might not have seen each other for the rest of the year. But on the very first days of September we all had to be there: the Russians - me and Alex from Leningrad, Alexei and Victor from Moscow, the Georgians - Ilya and Zurab from Tbilisi…   I cannot list all of them. Our gracious Abkhasian hosts Rem and Sergey had arranged well advance the accommodations for us - and the great fun was beginning!

I have already happened to write that unfortunately after the collapse of Saakashvili's anti-Russian political adventure, we need to expect a following similar strike (in the sense of a provocation, although the plot will be different); moreover, in the near future from the current Ukrainian government. All of President Yushchenko's actions, both in the course of the Georgian campaign as well as after it, indicate that any other development of events would simply be a miracle, since it does not fit at all into the logic of the functioning of the Ukrainian state in the form in which it was created and particularly under the power of those who today form Ukraine's real policy and implement it.

Nowhere are the signs of U.S. foreign policy failures more visible than on the Russian front. Instead of making every effort to bring Russia closer to the West, Washington chose the strategy of encircling it with the new NATO members and weakening its position on the energy market. Such a policy is driving Russia into the camp hostile to America at a time when we badly need its cooperation on a wide range of issues, most importantly on Iran. The foreign policy mess is enough to make one wonder if the heads of the Pentagon and the State Department had not mixed up their briefs. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, whose job apparently is to wield the big stick, sounds more conciliatory than the State Department head. Gates cautions U.S. allies against hasty punitive actions against Russia and offers a nice humorous touch as he notes that his and Condy’s PhD in Russian Studies are not doing America any good.

What particularly strikes me in M-me Secretary’s arguments is the sheer incongruity of her own account of the nature of the S.Ossetian-Georgian conflict with the statements of the scores of American officials on the same subject. Sure, it took them about a month to see the light, but nevertheless now the highest officials of the CIA and the Congress, influential media personalities, and lots of politicians - from obscure Georgian opposition leaders up to General Colin Powell himself! - clearly and unequivocally assert that it was Georgia who started it all by shelling and bombing Zkhinwal in the earliest hours of the morning of August 8. Thus, by all means, not those “awful, unpredictable, treacherous Russians”, but Mr. Saakashvili and his government should be branded as aggressors. It seems crystal clear to everybody.    But apparently not to Secretary Rice who adamantly and emphatically keeps claiming the opposite. It doesn’t make any sense to me and I vainly searched for some plausible explanation of such a strange phenomenon.

The statements made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Britain could have been described as mild compared with the latest ruthless speech by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Although criticizing Russia severely, the Pentagon chief made some statements in stark contrast to the U.S. government’s predominant attitude. For example, the idea that authoritarian regimes too have their own legitimate defense interests sounded revolutionary for a member of President George W. Bush’s team which in fact has spent two presidential terms trying to prove the opposite. Gates urged both sides to undertake careful commitments but be ready to make good on the ones already taken.

Russian Federation President Dmitriy Medvedev considered it necessary to make public five basic points in his foreign policy program on 31 August, just a month after publishing his new blueprint for Russia's foreign policy, and under conditions where conferences, meetings and negotiations connected with the situation in the Caucasus were taking place with unprecedented intensity. So this happened to be one of the highest priorities for him, a matter of prime importance.

Russia is grossly disappointed because the West it had regarded as a partner practically unanimously backed the aggressor that wouldn't hesitate to murder noncombatants by the hundred. President Dmitry Medvedev told the Valdai Discussion Club that the war had disabused him (and many others) of illusions. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin condemned the propagandistic machine of the West and announced that improvement of relations was something the Western community should aspire to now. It does not mean that Russia wants a confrontation. What Russia has suggested still stands and that means establishment of a comprehensive framework of European security, combination of
efforts to update the Treaty on Conventional Arms in Europe,
cooperation in the war on proliferation and terrorism,
Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and so on. The new reality,
however, means that the West cannot automatically count on
Russia's readiness to be partners with it anymore.

Western allies have a strong strategic interest in supporting Ukrainian democracy and Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration. But this course must be pursued prudently and with great care. As the Georgian crisis has underscored, there are limits to the ability to influence developments in a region where Russia has strong strategic interests and a preponderance of military power. Thus Europe and the United States need to be very careful about making security commitments they are unwilling or unable to carry out. This does not mean that Moscow should be given a veto over Ukraine's security orientation or that Ukraine can never become a member of NATO. The door for Ukraine to join NATO should remain open.

Soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment. It is not the solution to all problems. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s fondness for Hollywood movies is unlikely to affect his nuclear weapons program. And soft power got nowhere in dissuading Afghanistan’s Taliban government from supporting Al Qaeda in the 1990’s. But other goals, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights, are better achieved by soft power, which can also create an enabling or disabling environment, as the United States discovered in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Skeptics who belittle soft power because it does not solve all problems are like a boxer who fights without using his left hand because his right hand is stronger. Soft power is rarely sufficient, but it is often crucial to combine soft and hard power to have an effective “smart power” strategy. As the American Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last year, “I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power.” Military force is obviously a source of hard power, but the same resource can sometimes contribute to soft power behavior. The impressive job by the American military in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the South Asian earthquake in 2005 helped restore America’s attractiveness.

The war in Georgia could not have happened if America had not mishandled its global hegemony so disastrously. The US entered a calamitous war in Iraq, missed more than one opportunity to engage Iran's revolutionary regime, pushed for unending expansion of NATO onto the doorstep of Russia, and haughtily ignored Russia’s protests against the deployment of missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Under the cover of the “war on terror,” the US played into Russia’s fear of encirclement through its military penetration into Central Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. In its quest to counter what it sees as a hostile US strategy of creating American “Cubas” on its doorstep, the Kremlin is promoting alliances with Raúl Castro’s Cuba and Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.