What is the war between Georgia and Russia about? Ghia Nodia, theminister of education in Georgia, wrote in his first openDemocracyarticle (“The war for Georgia: Russia, the west, the future”,12 August) that the conflict - “unexpected and anticipated at the sametime” - that “Moscow wants to teach Georgia a lesson for Tbilisi's openand defiant wish to become part of the west; it wants to send a messageto the United States and Europe that it will not tolerate furtherencroachment on its zone of influence; and it wants to make clear toother countries in its neighbourhood (Ukraine first of all) that theyare in Russia's backyard and should behave accordingly.” The mainobjective of Russia’s action in “Georgia proper”, he writes,”is regimechange”.

Now, in a follow-up contribution (“Russian war and Georgian democracy”,22 August), Ghia Nodia argues that Georgia’s institutions havedisplayed resilience and demonstrated their integrity in withstandingthis Russian ambition.

The threat to Georgia, he writes, means that “the moral andpsychological aspect of the war is no less important than theterritorial one”. He acknowledges that an accentuation of existinginternal political strains in Georgia will be part of the war’sfallout, but contends that overall Georgia can be said to have won a“moral victory”. The lessons are for far more than Georgia alone, hesuggests.

This is a contribution to openDemocracy’s and openDemocracy.net/Russia's extended and continuing analysis of the August 2008 war, which includes articles by (among others) Neal Ascherson, Zygmunt Dzieciolowski, George Hewitt, Ivan Krastev, Evgeny Morozov , Donald Rayfield, and Thomas de Waal.