S. Ossetia does not exist at the moment. The people are gone. It is easy to resettle them into N Ossetia, which is within the Russian border. Russia has had a long-term strategy of having separatist enclaves in other countries; they tried it in Poland I believe and one of the Baltic Countries. Russia was told no. The Russian under the pretext of protecting their people put military and security resources in the area to intimidate the host country.

Short term Russia controls the enclaves, but under negotiations I think the police state that existed in S. Ossetia with 70% of the residents paid by the Russian government will be gone.
Koklaity the S. Ossetia leader is more criminal than politician and is a known thorn in Russia’s side. He was tolerated as a ploy against Georgia. However with this fiasco, I expect the Russian will quietly deep six him after a while. Not too soon, so it is not obvious but Russia will need a scapegoat and he is elected.

Secretary Rice may be PO enough to not allow Russian control of the territory any longer or she may get rolled. She tends to get rolled, but Russia was her specialty and she is angry at Russia’s attitude and ploys trying making war crimes an issue against the Georgian President. But I think we have learned from the Baltic’s to not allow festering wound be left alone, to open them up and drain the infection. The radical hot headed Ossetian’s and the Russians were the infection. In Abkhazia the infection is worse.

But Abkhazia is contiguous area and S. Ossetia was not. It was a patchwork of S. Ossetian’s villages and Georgian villages. It created a lot of cross-raiding and ethnic cleansing to get rid of competition populations. Russian had usually mixed populations but it causes a lot of problems.

S. Ossetia was the cause and will not be allowed to go back to status quo.