The fighting between Russia and Georgia over the separatist enclave of South Ossetia appeared to ignite in a sequence of improvised if macho moves, fuelled by overblown rhetoric on both sides, overbidding by Tbilisi and overreaction by Moscow. But Russia – in this conflict manifestly led by the prime minister Vladimir Putin rather than Dmitry Medvedev, his successor as president – needs to consider very carefully where its wholly disproportionate action is going to leave Russia’s standing in the world.

It may well be the case that Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, made a serious blunder and thought he could seize back control of South Ossetia, lost in 1992 after the break-up of the Soviet Union led to the fragmentation of some of its former republics. It could be, as he claims, that Tbilisi was responding to provocations by Russia’s allies in the rebel province. Either way, he miscalculated.