The current rift between and Russia and the West over Georgia is certainly serious, but opinion is divided about its long-term implications for global security.

Much depends on whose lens one uses to view the conflict. Do Russian actions in South Ossetia and Georgia constitute security-threatening expansionism? Or is it just Russia showing it's once again a powerful country that refuses to be pushed around?

"I don't mean to sound dramatic here, but I think this is the most dramatic foreign policy event since Sept. 11," James Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation told CTV Newsnet on Wednesday. He was speaking to Russia's use of force to push Georgian troops out of South Ossetia, a breakaway province -- and to push into Georgia itself.

"This will fundamentally change how countries think about how they're going to provide security in the decades ahead."

Mark MacKinnon, a Globe and Mail reporter and author of "The New Cold War," told CTV.ca that this issue has the potential to "set a whole new direction for the West and NATO in terms of relations with Russia."

Doing nothing significant essentially tells Russia it has a right to influence former Soviet countries like Ukraine and Georgia, he said.

However, if the West goes the confrontation route, "I think they will find that this is one point where Russia's really not going to back down," he said.

Georgia did attack South Ossetia at the start of this current conflict, which began on Aug. 7, MacKinnon said. The Russians believe they're in the right and that the West is being hypocritical, he said.

"Without getting into right and wrong," MacKinnon said Russia signalled by issuing passports to South Ossetians that any military action by Georgia in South Ossetia or Abkhazia, another breakaway province, would be met with force.

"That's why I'm bewildered by the Georgian decision," MacKinnon said, adding he thinks Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili seriously misjudged the nature of how much help he could expect from the West. "Nobody wants to die for South Ossetia," he said.

Waldemar A. Skrobacki, a University of Toronto political science professor, compared the situation in Georgia with Serbia and Kosovo, the Albanian Muslim-dominated former province that declared independence in February.

"If it was good for Kosovo to become independent, why would it not be good for South Ossetia to become independent?" he told CTV.ca to illustrate the Russian view.

South Ossetia broke with Georgia in 1992, not long after the dissolution of the old Soviet Union. Abkhazia formally declared independence in 1999. No United Nations member nations have recognized those regions as independent states.

The U.S. almost immediately recognized Kosovo over Russia's objections, Skrobacki noted.

There are other ways in which the West has brushed off Russian concerns, most notably with respects to a missile shield base in the Czech Republic and negotiations to base missiles in Poland, he said.

Georgia, the energy game and geopolitics

MacKinnon said since the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Russians have been plotting against Saakashvili -- who wants his country to join NATO.

"They see him, with some justification, as sort of a Western-installed puppet, somebody who is always going to be an enemy and who is in a crucial strategic spot for them," he said.

Georgia hosts pipeline routes the West specifically built to move oil and natural gas out of the Caspian Sea basin and get around Russia's attempt to gain a stranglehold on energy supplies to Europe, he said.

Russian nationalism and energy concerns drive policy decisions in that country, MacKinnon said, but he added that energy also drives U.S. interests in Georgia.

Russia would love to see Saakashvili replaced by a pro-Russian ruler who, if needed, could interrupt energy flow to the West in a crisis, he said.

That is a worry for the West, but the Russians also look suspiciously on Western intentions. Numerous former Soviet-bloc countries are now NATO members. Ukraine and Georgia would like to join the alliance. The U.S. has been cultivating its relations with Kazakhstan, an energy-rich former Soviet republic in central Asia.

"There's a feeling NATO's been on the offensive for years ... so this is about reversing the losses," MacKinnon said.

Putin, the real ruler of Russia, thinks this is a perfect place he can make a stand against the U.S. and NATO. "(Russia) has the cards and they're playing them," he said.

MacKinnon said the theme of his book is that a new Cold War has been underway for some time.

From the Russian perspective, "they really do see America as treating them as an enemy eight years ago when (U.S. President) George Bush came to office. And after years of being knocked on their back foot, they said, 'if you're going to be hostile, here's hostile,'" he said.

In his statement Wednesday calling for Russia to pull out of Georgia, Bush said Russia's actions there are putting its integration in the wider world community at risk.

"These threats ring empty," MacKinnon said. The U.S. has kept Russia out of the World Trade Organization. Russia even once expressed interest in joining NATO, but that never happened.

"I think Russia's given up trying to integrate with the West," he said, saying all pro-Westerners have been pushed out of the Kremlin in the past eight years.

However, people should watch Russia's interaction with Europe as this current crisis works out. While the Russians have given up on the U.S., "they do want to be European," he said.

If any countries can moderate this situation, it will be soft power coming from France and Germany, MacKinnon said.

Carafano said if NATO -- which will hold an emergency meeting of alliance foreign ministers next week -- doesn't respond strongly to this incursion, "then NATO is just flat dead."