The Bear is back from hibernation

As the US internet report Stratfor observes, what Russia has done in Georgia is on a new order of confidence and indifference to world opinion. Putin did not want to confront NATO directly, but he did want to confront and defeat a power closely aligned with the US. Given that the US is absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he judged correctly that the US was in no position to intervene anywhere on the Russian periphery.

Russia will now be more confident and self-assured with its status as a great power velikaya derzhava. This promises greater tension - perhaps serious tension - between Russia and the West. America's relations with Russia are now at the most serious level of disagreement in the past 25 years. Even so, US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates makes it clear that he does not see any prospect for the use of American military force.

Moscow will seek to reassert Russia's natural sphere of influence in the "near abroad", where some 25 million ethnic Russians live. Russia will seek to establish Russian dominance in its neighbourhood, especially in Ukraine and the Baltic countries. If this means clashing with NATO, it will be prepared to use its energy supplies as a lever or even threaten the use of force.

Russia's weakness for the past 17 years is an aberration that is about to be rectified. The new Russia will be assertive in its foreign policy and aggressive in its neighbourhood. Moscow is no longer prepared to allow the shift in the military balance on its borders to go unchallenged.

Those theorists who have been proclaiming that future wars will not be between states over territory and will not involve conventional conflict have been proven wrong by Russia, as have those who assert that the major threats to world order no longer come from rivalry between great powers.

The implications of all this for Australia is that an authoritarian Russia, as well as an authoritarian China, is on the move.

And they both perceive America to be a weakened and distracted power. That should have important implications for our forthcoming defence white paper.