In fact, Pentagon and military officials say Russia held a major ground exercise in July just north of Georgia's border, called Caucasus 2008, that played out a chain of events like the one carried out over recent days.
The structures of the Lesser Caucasus, of the Talish Mountains, and of the Dzhavakhet-Armenian ranges likewise originated from folds uplifted from the Alpine geosyncline.
The years of war and a new nationalist mood in Russia in which people from the Caucasus are often singled out for discrimination have sown a deep distrust of Russia.
A22 Distrust in Chechnya The years of war and a new nationalist mood in Russia in which people from the Caucasus are often singled out for discrimination has sown a deep distrust of Russia, especially among the younger Chechens.
"These people aren't called the cretins of the Caucasus for nothing".
If the Turks can improve relations with Armenia, including opening the border, they could play a more constructive role in the Caucasus than the Russians have ever done.But both Turkey and the three Caucasus countries will need encouragement.
"People felt there was an alternative to the armed struggle," says Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, who covers the north Caucasus at the International Crisis Group.
Monteleone first travelled to the Caucasus in 2001, as part of a wider investigation of Russia and its citizens' relationship to power.
Russia made a similar mistake, going back to the time of Boris Godunov, when she took on the responsibility of helping out Georgia and Armenia in the Trans-Caucasus, and thus got entangled in the interminable Caucasian war of the 19th century.
If war begins, it may ignite the Caucasus, Sergei Artuniov, head of the Caucasus department of the Moscow institute of ethnology, said.
Both mtDNA and Y-chromosomal analyses yield high similarities between European Jews and Caucasus populations rooted in the Caucasus (fig. 7) in support of the Khazarian hypothesis.
