A new cold war ? An interesting article: Ahh, now we can see why US/UK is so ignorant http://en.rian.ru/world/20080814/116039560.html
Just a few battalions of soldiers shooting at each other and he said a new balance has come into place? Thats overstating things a little bit. Russia does have the potential to be a strong and dominant regional power but not a super power. Another arms race may see the same results as what the former Soviet Union faced.
emm, its not about the amount of forces used, its about US not being in this conflict like in Iraq, Pakistan, Afganistan & Kosovo Although they sponsor georgian army, someone well said, Georgia is a US proxy.
I doubt USA will be directly involved, but they may well bribe some nearby countries to send troops. Unless it is a major incident I doubt USA and Russian will engage in any warfare directly.
You probably don't know that Gasprom controls almost 50% of EU natural gas deliveries. And that Russia is the world's 2 OIL exportor. Keep in mind that Russians can decide at any time to the some "maintenance" on those gas and oil pipelines. $4.00 a galon in US is a lot of money. I can assure you that more than 90% of the businesses have lost 30% or more of their business. If Russia decides to double up the OIL prices and make it $8.00 a galon. I am pretty much sure she can do it. Russia will just reduce the OIL and N. Gas supplies. And guess what's gonna happen with the US, EU and the world economies? Russia has a very, very big power and it will be growing faster than you envision. That's why some in US want to break up and weaken Russia and be the only dominant player in the world. (Which we have all seen is really bad for the world.) If US didn't abuse her powers, she would be much stronger. But now under Bush US is weakened like never before.
Surprisingly, I agree with what you said. If there's one country that is strong enough to lock horns with the U.S., it's Russia. While we are at it, I also think China could be a serious threat to any nation if it wants to.