Miliband ratchets up the rhetoric against Russia

There is a risk that David Miliband could be talking us into a small war as he ratchets up the rhetoric against Russia on his visit to Ukraine. He has called for the "widest possible coalition against Russian aggression". This means full Western support if Russia pulls on Ukraine the same trick it has on Georgia - a grab for territory to protect the endangered Russian minority.

The language and mood of the Western allies in Nato and the EU is shifting from containment of Russia to confrontation. The main powers - Germany, France, Britain and the US - are pulling their junior partners together in a way they weren't only last week. France, as the current president of the EU, has called a summit next Monday.

The growing sense of confrontation, and possible collision, has not in any way been discouraged by the Russian regime - quite the opposite. Both Vladimir Putin and Dimitri Medvedev have been breathing defiance. "We are not afraid of anything," President Medvedev told journalists summoned to his summer retreat yesterday, "including the prospect of a new Cold War."

He said Russia had been forced to act in Georgia to protect its own. If it means cutting ties with Nato and the World Trade Organisation, Prime Minister Putin has declared, so be it. In fact, Britain is already counselling abolishing the Nato-Russia Council, as Russia has done nothing through it to make Europe and the world any safer.

Foreign Secretary Miliband's specific charge that Russia's recognition of the independence of the two Georgian enclaves is "unjustifiable and unacceptable" is absolutely right. "It takes no account of the views of the hundreds of thousands of Georgians and others who have been forced to abandon their homes in the two territories.

This is in direct violation - in letter and spirit - of  the Helsinki Final Act (1975), the founding document of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, of which Russia has been a member from the first. The Act specifically says borders should not be altered by violence, and minorities should have full legal and political protection.

There is little doubt that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are more than halfway to being annexed by Russia. One of the clues has been the stationing by Russia of specialised railway troop units inside both enclaves for some time now, their prime role being the maintenance and building of track.

Russia's leaders believe the battle of wills with the West will not come to blows. The West, they believe - on the past fortnight's showing - may huff and puff, but has neither the will nor the specific means to blow down the new Russian security structure.

Nor does Moscow think the West will do very much if it exerts rights of protection over its co-nationals in Moldova and Ukraine – and this could prove astonishingly short-sighted.

The minority rights card, which Russia has played so hard in Georgia, will not always go in Moscow's favour. It could start a gunpowder trail of insurrection and violence throughout the region. In three generations from now the Russians themselves are expected to find themselves a minority in their own land – as their own population shrinks by 800,000 a year, and those of the Asiatics, many of them Muslim, rise.

In the shorter term, Russia could soon discover that it has a huge problem with a stranded Black Sea fleet, currently based at Sevastopol, a port it leases from Ukraine. Units of the fleet are now occupying Poti in Georgia, and the flagship 'Moskva' has just put to sea from Sevastopol. In effect, the fleet is trapped in its own waters by Turkey's control of the Bosphorus. Already Nato has a naval task force of nine warships in the Black Sea, including ships from America, Poland, Spain, Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria.

Putin and Medvedev might heed the warning of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist: "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare." ·