The Economist's Cookbook

... the war in Georgia that is.

Right so, as the Olympics go on and everyone continues to rack up medals, there is a little war going on in Georgia, and no I don't mean the gang wars that happen in Atlanta. I mean this Georgia.

Here is a link to a very detailed map of the oil pipelines in eastern Europe/Eurasia. (NOTE: Please Right-click and "Save As" on that link, it's a large PDF map.)

Allow me to elaborate:
Here is a general map (the orange portion is Georgia)
Yes I know the countries are not labeled. Directly North of Georgia is the Russian Federation.

Let's take a closer look shall we?
I cropped and rotated this in Photoshop to give a similar view of the country as the map above.

If you looked at the PDF map I have linked above, you'll see this is simply a blown-up version of that map. The dark green lines are oil pipelines, the more thick the line, the larger the pipeline. The red line with yellow hashes through it is a natural gas pipeline under construction.

This is not about national determination or South Ossetia seceding from Georgia, this is about Russia playing power politics to regain control of former provinces (formerly held by the USSR) which have everything to lose if Russia gets control of those pipelines. Most of them have some oil and it plays an important part of their economies. Losing access to the Georgian pipelines will severely hamper their countries.