Some of you are probably wondering why I spend so much time covering Georgia and its breakway provinces. Part of the reason is that I think Georgia is a bellwether for the future direction of Russian foreign policy. What happens or does not happen there, to my mind, will be a key indicator of what Putin will be able to do in the near future.

"Tbilisi," my friend Alex Rondeli told me last summer, " is the fulcrum of the Caucasus. Who controls Tbilisi, controls the Trans-Caucasus." And I think he is right.

Currently there is a great deal of sparring going on between the US and Russia there. The BTC is soon to come on line. Saakashvilli is agitating for the return of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He's staked his presidency on it.

The region is critical. Can Russia keep Gerogia divided? If it can, it will continue to dominate the Caucasus. If it can't, we might just see even more Russian retrenchment. The consequences of more Russian retrenchment will affect US policy in the region as well. Might we be getting sucked into a really big and really serious vacuum?

The region bears watching.