“This reminds me all too much of other recent conflicts that have torn our continent apart, particularly in the Balkans,” said Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, yesterday. He was speaking before Georgia reportedly ordered its forces to cease fire and offered to negotiate with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. But Mr Kouchner's words are an ominous portent for the conflict; and as the former chief UN administrator in Kosovo, he would recognise the signs.

These are not only the dismaying images of civilians fleeing from a city under bombardment.They also include Russia's determination to pursue national aggrandisement at the expense of small nations. In 1993, when Boris Yeltsin urged the United Nations to consider Russia as the guarantor of peace and stability in the former Soviet republics, a senior American official asked what was wrong with a “Russian Monroe doctrine” recognising Moscow's lead role in regional affairs. The answer is that Russia evidently interprets its regional interests as allowing it to violate internationally recognised borders.

The first instinct of Western diplomats is to urge compromise and negotiation. And there are numerous criticisms that can be levelled at President Saakashvili of Georgia. To launch an assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, was a model case of Talleyrand's dictum: worse than a crime, it was a blunder - and an inexcusable provocation to Moscow. Mr Saakashvili is no model democrat: in May's elections, observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe verified cases of intimidation of his political opponents. And in numerous global issues, Britain and its allies require support from Russian diplomacy and seek a rational accommodation with Russian interests.

But the attack on Georgia is something else. Russia has plainly involved itself in the internal politics of Georgia. Moscow's support for the independence of South Ossetia might instructively be compared with its wider attitude to independence in the Caucasus. When Chechnya rebelled, Russia responded with a brutal war of suppression, motivated in part by a wish to keep control of the energy pipeline running through the republic. Russia is concerned also at Georgia's control of the pipeline running from Azerbaijan to Turkey, which offers Europe an alternative source of energy to that provided by Russia.

Western diplomacy should certainly urge negotiations over the separatist enclaves in Georgia. But there is a danger in merely splitting the difference in this conflict. There should rather be one overriding and consistent message given to Moscow, and that is “no blood for oil”.

Georgia reasonably seeks close relations with the West. It also sees the Baltic states as a precedent for other former Soviet republics to seek membership of Nato. The neo-imperialism practised by Moscow is a clear incentive for Georgia to persist with that strategy. Russia cannot be seen as a plausible arbiter of disputes in the region when it fails to acknowledge the legitimate goals of other states. Western governments, like everyone else, do not want conflict in the region. But there are costs to sending out muted or mixed messages. Russia's conduct is unconscionable. It should be warned that it risks international pariah status unless it withdraws.