For most of the week she had seemed to be presiding over yet another fiasco for American foreign policy, yet Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, looked surprisingly chirpy as she toasted Polish officials at the signing of a new defence deal in Warsaw on Thursday.

Her hosts provided a bottle of Georgian wine for a dinner with Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, and Rice leapt at the opportunity to express solidarity with the victims of Russian aggression in the Caucasus.

Despite widespread criticism of America’s failure to curb Moscow’s advance and its apparent lack of options for a punitive response, Washington appeared quietly confident that Russia’s short-term gains in Georgia would turn into a long-term diplomatic headache for Moscow, which the US may be able to turn to its advantage.

“I don’t think this is a new cold war,” Rice declared after signing an agreement to deploy part of America’s long-range missile shield on Polish soil. “It’s a difficult time but I think we shouldn’t overstate the depth of the difficulties.”

Her confidence was based in part on the continuing refusal of Russia’s former communist neighbours to be cowed by the Georgian conflict - Poland, Ukraine and Georgia have all shown readiness to continue cooperating with the West - and partly on the US State Department’s assessment that long-term Russian economic interests will force Moscow to negotiate eventually.

Yet several US analysts warned that Moscow still holds the upper hand in any future diplomatic showdown. There may be no return to cold war-era nuclear threats of what used to be known as MAD - mutually assured destruction - but East-West relations seem certain to stay in cold storage for a time.

“The events of the past two weeks have been a disaster for US foreign policy,” declared Daniel Benjamin, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Russia’s invasion of its neighbour is a clear demonstration that the US-led effort to integrate postSoviet Russia into the West has failed.”

Johannes Linn, his Brookings colleague, agreed there was a risk that “a cold war mentality will strengthen on both sides . . . the Georgians’ hope to integrate quickly with Europe and Nato . . . has been, at best, set far back”.

Frederick Kagan, a prominent military analyst who has been described as one of the intellectual architects of the US military “surge” in Iraq, added: “We are de facto in an escalation game with the Russians that they appear to be winning.”

Experts on Russia noted that a weapons-buying trip to Moscow last week by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria may be a harbinger of future conflict. Washington’s need for Moscow’s cooperation in the international war on terrorism could easily be confounded if Russia starts shipping weapons to Syria, Iran, Venezuela or any other antiAmerican state.

With its United Nations security council veto, Moscow can also obstruct Washington on a variety of issues from nuclear proliferation to the Middle East peace process. It has already vetoed sanctions against Zimbabwe, to the dismay of both Washington and London Kagan believes that Moscow is trying to drive a wedge between America and Europe and that Vladimir Putin, the prime minister who is still regarded as the ultimate source of Russian power, is banking on European distaste for confrontation to ensure that Moscow gets its way. After a Nato foreign ministers’ summit last week failed to produce significant measures, Moscow’s ambassador derided the meeting as “a mountain that gave birth to a mouse”.

US foreign policy hawks are already sniping at Europe for failing to enforce an agreed ceasefire in Georgia. Sally McNamara, a senior Europe policy analyst at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, mourned the departure of Tony Blair from Downing Street and denounced Gordon Brown who, she said, “has shown little interest in foreign affairs and has made no significant contribution regarding the crisis in Georgia”.

She added: “By allowing Russia to contravene the ceasefire, the EU has sent Russia the message that the worst it can expect is a slap on the wrist and that its actions will likely go unpunished.”

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