At first glance, the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008 seemed little more than the stuff of adventure-book fantasy: a reawakened empire going to battle against an old viceroyalty over a mountainous principality of negligible strategic value to either side. But it reality, it was an attempt to bypass established channels of conflict resolution and unilaterally change the boundaries of another UN member state. For future historians, the South Ossetian crisis will mark a time when Russia came to disregard existing international institutions and began, however haltingly, to fashion its own.
King, C. (2008). The Five-Day War: Managing Moscow after the Georgia Crisis. Foreign Affairs, 87, 2.
