I believe that anyone who tries to argue that they aren’t surprised, concerned, and upset about the recent blustery behavior of Russia in the execution and aftermath of the war in Georgia is probably not being honest. Not many people thought it would go this far. The disproportionately undiplomatic handling of the situation by Moscow reached a fever pitch when President Dmitry Medvedev announced that “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War,” surprising even those of us who believed that Russia would seek to protect its war gains and advance its national interests by slowing opening up diplomacy. Instead, Russia has declared war on its most important customer, seeming to have temporarily forgotten that the entire nation depends on selling resources to the West, while simultaneously infuriating China with the recognition of breakaway states. The result has been catastrophic in terms of Russia’s national interests, and finally we are beginning to see a very important gap appear between the personalistic power and wealth of the siloviki (as represented by Putinist capitalist authoritarianism) and what’s good for the Russian public. For so many years, similar to the effect achieved in Castro’s Cuban Revolution, these two interests were practically conceptually indivisible, thanks to tight media control and very effective simulations of normal civic activities (controlled elections, fake grassroots movements like the Nashi). Now the public and the wider world is getting its first glimpse of the fractures between the government’s actions and actual interests which Russia should be pursuing – finally we are seeing that this group of former KGB officers is actually doing a very poor job guiding the country’s foreign policy, seemingly more interested in their Cypriot bank accounts and oil trading shares. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has also caught on to this appearance of the gap, commenting to the FT that “They are opening up a Pandora’s box of questions that will be extremely difficult to answer. If you are interested in the stability of the Caucasus – and Russia is more interested in that than anyone else – you should be very careful with borders. . . They have fought two wars in Chechnya. (…) The Russians are effectively opting out of the WTO process. They are imposing sanctions on themselves.”