A look at the map and your gas credit card bill shows why.
South Ossetia is claimed by Georgia, the former Soviet republic that cast its lot with the United States and the West to the eternal irritation of Moscow. The breakaway province has been under Russia's sway for years.
Georgia sits in a tough neighborhood, shoulder to shoulder with huge Russia, not far from Iran, and astride one of the most important crossroads for the emerging wealth of the rich Caspian Sea region. A U.S.-backed oil pipeline runs through Georgia, allowing the West to reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil while bypassing Russia and Iran.
The dispute makes the Bush administration the middleman between a promising ally it wants to help and the powerful former adversary next door whose help it needs.
Washington praises democratic development in Georgia, delights in its contribution of combat troops for Iraq and acknowledges valuable intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation.
Moscow's cooperation is vital to numerous Washington aims in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere.
"For all those reasons and the fact that Georgia has demonstrated that it is a close ally, we cannot simply sit by and say `so be it, what does South Ossetia mean to us?'" said Janusz Bugajski, director of the new European democracies project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Georgia as a whole means quite a lot."
The pipeline that crosses Georgia can pump slightly more than 1 million barrels of crude oil per day, or more than 1 percent of the world's daily crude output. The 1,100-mile pipeline carries oil from Azerbaijan's Caspian Sea fields, estimated to hold the world's third-largest reserves. Its potential vulnerability was already in the spotlight after it was sabotaged this week, apparently by Kurdish separatists.
Most of the oil is bound for Western Europe, where gas prices are even higher than the $4 and more a gallon that U.S. consumers are now paying. With only so much oil to go around, what the pipeline carries affects prices elsewhere. The United States also hopes it will be a model for other development projects that could have a more direct effect on the U.S. market.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on the phone Friday morning, appealing for calm in South Ossetia, a patch of craggy farmland that is home to about 70,000 people
- fewer than live in Youngstown, Ohio. In a statement later she reiterated U.S. commitment to Georgia's "territorial integrity."
President Bush discussed the violence with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, while the presumptive Democratic and Republican candidates to replace Bush issued worried statements. Tanks rolled as Bush spoke.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte called on Russia to declare an immediate ceasefire, withdraw all combat trops from Georgia and return to the status quo. "These attacks mark a dangerous and disproportionate escalation of tension, as they occur across Georgia in regions far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia," he said.
