Once started, such a conflict would not have been limited to sea. Had an actual order to that effect been given to the Ukrainian Navy, a clash at sea between Russia and Ukraine would have been inevitable. That local war could well have spiraled into a regional conflict if the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Viktor Yushchenko had reinforced by his order the decree signed by the President Yushchenko about compulsory inspections of the Russian warships crossing the Ukrainian maritime boundary on their way from Sevastopol. Moscow’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states was clearly an attempt to prevent another act of aggression by Georgia, which had received Washington’s direct support. In those weeks, President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin were both speaking of a radical turn for the worse in international relations, and of Russia’s readiness for another confrontation with the United States.
Comparisons to “August 1914” seemed ominous but not at all exaggerated. Out of the blue, two decades after the end of the Cold War, there was a distinct smell of a hot war in the air. One of them was a great nuclear power, the other an ally of the United States – the world’s only remaining superpower. The war of 2008, which began as a local conflict, quickly overgrew into a war between two countries. Tuchman gave a brilliant portrayal of how the great powers were dragged into a military conflict, even against the inclinations of their leaders. Kennedy was reading during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “The Tanks of August,” the title of this work, is a clear reference to “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman, the famous book about the events leading up to the First World War. Moscow, Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, 2010.
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