THE correct intervention of the Russian army to defend the people of South Ossetia against the onslaught of the Georgian army has initially been very successful.
It is a fact that, with a large number of US instructors training the Georgian army, the US government knew all about Georgia’s intention to attack South Ossetia, and approved of it.
Also on Friday night the US and UK representatives on the UN Security Council refused to allow through a Russian motion calling for both sides to stop the fighting immediately.
It seems that the US was interested in just what the Russian response would be, and was prepared to gamble that there either would not be a Russian military response, or that differences between President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin, which the imperialists are banking on, would emerge to paralyse the Russian side.
This did not happen and the Georgian forces are being pushed back.
Now, the Georgian government has panicked and is recalling its 2,000 troops from Iraq (proving that if not every cloud, that this cloud anyway, has a silver lining).
The US imperialists are now extremely worried about the security of their pipeline that connects Azerbaijan and the Mediterranean sea via Georgia. There have already been reports that the pipeline has been too close for comfort to some of the Russian air raids on Georgian military targets.
The imperialists are also worried that the struggle, unleashed by their Georgian proxy, is spreading and that volunteers from all over the Caucasus are flocking to support the Ossetian and Abkhazian peoples.
The fact is that the Georgian dictator Saakashvili is none too popular in his own country, with many Georgians insisting that his last election victory was rigged, to the point where riot police had to be used against tens of thousands of demonstrators to make the result stick.
The prospect is that Saakashvili will fall either as the price for organising a failed military adventure or because he is hated by ‘his own’ people.
There is also the question of the Ukraine.
The Ukraine has been split between the mass of the working class in the east who are opposed to NATO and support an alliance with Russia and a reconstitution of the USSR, and the people of the west whose majority supports NATO and the EU.
These issues have split the country.
Yesterday the Ukrainian government announced that Russian ships that are seeking to prevent arms going to Georgia by patrolling its Black Sea coast, will not be allowed back to their base in Sevastopol in the Crimea.
The population of the Crimea is opposed to Nato and the EU and opposed to the oppression of the Ossetian and Abkhazian people.
Any attempt to prevent the Russian Black Sea fleet returning to its home port could well result in a general strike by the working class of the Ukraine.
The United States and its Georgian puppet have succeeded in setting the Caucasus ablaze with a fire that is threatening to spread to the Ukraine and a number of other countries in the region.
Underlying the conflict there is the essential and basic issue.
This is whether the rulers of a number of former Soviet states are going to be able to join the NATO alliance and allow US and NATO troops to garrison their countries, while preparing a future attack on the Russian Federation, or whether the working class of the region will organise political revolutions throughout the region to reconstitute the USSR by revolutionary means, to restore rule by workers and peasants soviets, and eject the imperialists and their political agents.
This conflict is being driven forward by the greatest world crisis of capitalism since the 1930s.
The whole of the capitalist world is gripped by slump and being driven towards war and revolutions.
What has emerged is a new stage of the world socialist revolution.
In this situation the building of the Fourth International in every country to unite the working class of the world with the oppressed nations is vital for the victory of the world socialist revolution.
