This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 25th, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Russia-Georgia conflict is the culmination of decades of Russia being treated like a Cold War loser. The Ted Galen Carpenter, the Cato Institute's Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, comments.

Tensions have been building between Russia and the United States and the West generally for a good number of years.

Russia felt that when it was very weak in the 1990s, the United States and its NATO

allies pushed Moscow around repeatedly with regard to NATO expansion,

with regard to showing utter contempt for Russia's longstanding interests in the Balkans with the NATO response

both in Bosnia and then later the NATO war against Serbia to detach the

province of Kosovo from Serbia.

Russia was simply too weak to do much of anything except offer anemic protests,

but when Putin came to power he began trying to rebuild Russia's strength,

he has done so rather successfully, and he was also the recipient of good luck.

Russia with oil at $120 a barrel

is in much better shape economically than Russia with oil at 15 or $20 a barrel.

And the same is true for a number of other commodities.

The revenue flows into the Russian government are quite extensive at this point,

much larger than they were a decade ago, and the Putin government moved to rebuild, to some extent at least Russia's military

strength. There have been indications now for several years that Moscow is

becoming much more assertive. It is not willing to tolerate being treated as the

defeated power in the Cold War anymore. This action in Georgia is the culmination of that kind of change in Moscow's attitude and policy.

Even in his early days in office, Putin gave clear indications that he wanted Russia to be treated as part of the West what happened?

Russia wants to be treated as part of the West but largely on its terms.

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