"If Ukraine's leadership moves from a pro-US position to a more cautious balancing of relationships with Washington and Moscow, the result will be a symbolic setback for the Bush administration. But if the Georgia debacle prompts the leadership of Azerbaijan “Cheney's first port of call last week “to reconsider its own alignment, that could bring down 15 years of bipartisan US strategy: their effort to pump Caspian Sea oil and gas to the West without transiting Russian territory. Georgia may be the key transit link in the pipeline that connects Baku with the Turkish port of Ceyhan “and, also of the proposed Nabucco pipeline that will carry natural gas to a prime Western European hub in Austria“ but Azerbaijan is the source of that oil and gas. The Russians are dangling commercial carrots in front of President Ilham Aliyev, hoping to persuade him to sell his gas to Gazprom, rather than to the West."

"When Moscow was reeling in the 1990s, moving closer to the US may have seemed wise for those on Russia's border. But with Moscow resurgent and the Georgia campaign highlighting the inability of the US to project power onto Russia's doorstep, these leaders may deem it sensible to hedge their bets.

"The reality encountered by Dick Cheney on his swing through the Caucasus and the Steppe was far removed from the triumphalist talk of US global leadership that the Republicans (and the Democrats, too) still love to bandy about. The era of US global dominance is fast ebbing, and in a multipolar world, smaller countries with resources have more to gain by trading off relations with different blocs than by committing themselves entirely to a single power. As the Republican Party's message-makers appeared to sense last week, a growing number of traditional US allies may be concluding that their best interests are not served by being too closely identified with Washington."

It has been famously said, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray."