I remember back a few years ago, when Russia was beginning to recover from their economic collapse, seeing Vlad Putin make an impassioned speech about Russia’s return to greatness (or something like that). I remember getting a cold feeling about Putin. He just looked so “Soviet.”

I shrugged it off and blamed it on the fact that I grew up during the Cold War. Probably just some old propaganda in my subconscious, right? Riiiight.

In more recent years, good ol’ Vlad has been doing a lot of chest thumping. Blocking Bush’s missile defense plans. Making friends with our enemies (*cough* Iran *cough*). Generally sounding more and more like the old bullies that the “old Cold War propaganda” warned me about. Still, this is just a guy looking out for his own country, right? Doing what a president… er… sorry… prime minister should do. Right?!

But don’t forget. Russia is famous for it’s chess masters. They understand dubious strategy (maybe better than anyone). Let’s take a chess master’s look at the Georgian conflict.

With oil hitting record prices, the entire western world has been focused on our energy dependence problems.  With all our hand wringing over the Arab shaikhs taking all our money, we probably didn’t notice that Russia is a huge oil exporter and has been quietly raking in the dough, not to mention that Putin’s government has been centralizing the energy market, putting all that black gold under government control.

Georgia, a pro-western US ally, has been working with its central Asian neighbors to build some natural gas and oil pipelines to eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. This would undercut Russia’s control of Asian oil.

For the last few months, any headlines that are not about the high cost of gas are focused on the US presidential race. Now, for the next couple of weeks, every self-respecting journalist in the world is holed up in China covering the Olympics. You could say we’re all a bit preoccupied.

If I was a power-hungry leader of a first-world country and I wanted to punish a tiny little neighbor of mine for mucking around in my power structure, my first concern would be media coverage. If a bunch of bleeding heart western journalists started broadcasting video of my tanks crushing this third-world annoyance, there would be all sorts of outcries, political pressure would abound and those saps over at the UN would start spitting out non-binding resolutions like crazy. I can’t have that. So, I’d wait until all the world’s journalists (at least the good ones that anyone will listen to) are completely preoccupied and unable to combat my state controlled media reports.

If, somehow, the word did get out, and the West got wind of my little sand kicking exercise, I would make sure the world knew that the little guy started it (“The aggressor has been punished…”) and then I would graciously offer the little pip-squeaks a cease fire.

Of course, the conditions of that cease fire would have to include that the little guy’s military would have to stay exactly where they were. No retreat and regroup. No fortifying weak spots. Just freeze. Then, I could run a couple dozen tanks right up to whatever target of opportunity I could find and blast the blazes out of it. No media means no video and no video means I can deny the whole thing as sympathizer propaganda. (“A Western news photographer” is a pretty poor eye witness. Easy to dismiss.)

Some pundits are waxing quizical over Russia’s apparent back-stepping. They look to internaltional pressure, economic threats, etc., to say that Putin has been “forced” to back down. That’s straight up bolshevik. Putin did exactly what he wanted to do. He gave the little nerd a big, puffy, black eye and now he just has to mutter an unsincere, “sorry,” and walk away. Nerds with big, puffy, black eyes tend to be more careful in the future about crossing the big bully.

Georgia is not destroyed, but they have been punished and that’s all Putin needed. He’s set a precedent. If you mess with me, I’ll black your eye and it’ll be over before the teacher can do anything about it. I may get a detention, but you’ll still have a black eye. And don’t think for a minute that all of Russia’s little neighbors (all former soviet republics, by the way) got the message loud and clear.