Beware the August holidays

Are we going to get another summer crisis?

As the Economist points out

WHEN the people who run the Western world go on holiday, bad things happen in eastern Europe. Last August Russia invaded Georgia. Over Christmas its gas spat with Ukraine left millions of European consumers shivering (from nerves, if not real cold). Easter (on the western Christian calendar) brought violent protests against ballot-rigging in Moldova.

So what is on the agenda for August 2009?

A new war in Georgia is always possible. Crimea remains a combustible mixture of incompatible military and ethnic interests. The Kremlin’s relations with the once-docile regime in Belarus are uncommonly icy.