The visit was aimed at bolstering Georgia’s ambitions to join NATO, which are supported loudly by the US but appear overwhelmingly opposed across the rest of the alliance. The elephant in the room was the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.

In that brief war, Georgia attacked Russian forces in the secessionist enclave of South Ossetia. The result was massive Russian retaliation, which destroyed much of Georgia’s military and saw both South Ossetia and Abkhazia declaring formal independence from Georgia.

The US has refused to recognize the new republics, and even today Obama reiterated his support for Georgia’s “territorial integrity,” including reclaiming both of those territories. Saakashvili has vowed to reclaim them by any means necessary, but both have reached security deals with Russia which make such a reunification virtually impossible.

The security arrangements also stand in the way of Georgia’s NATO ambitions, as the alliance is never going to agree to admit the nation given the current situation on the ground. Both sides were careful not to mention the war in today’s talks, but it will cast a big shadow over all dealings with the Georgians going forward.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, for his part, vowed to continue his “struggle for liberation,” which is the official euphemism for rolling back the secessions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and reintegrating them into the Georgian nation-state.

Temur Iakobashvili, his government’s Minister for Reintegration, touted the Georgian government’s achievement of managing to avoid international recognition for either of the enclaves, and said his government’s next goal was to get the rest of the world to declare them “occupied territories,” on the grounds that Russian soldiers are backing up the republics’ claims to independence and preventing Georgia’s military from reannexing the regions.

Beyond Russia, the secession of the two enclaves is not generally recognized, but in the wake of the UN court’s opinion on the legality of Kosovo’s secession, South Ossetia and Abkhazia too may have gained an air of legitimacy, albeit one clouded by the diplomatic row between Russia and NATO. The United States has pledged to use its position in the United Nations to prevent the two enclaves from ever being recognized internationally.

The court seemed to be making an effort to make the ruling as broad (or perhaps vague) as possible, insisting that there was nothing in international law that could be interpreted as a “prohibition of declarations of independence.”

But while the eyes of everyone in Kosovo and Serbia were on this ruling, the impact could be even more broadly felt across the world, as a number of other secessionist movements could cite the ruling in their own defense.

Edwin Bakker of the Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations termed the ruling “bad news to a number of governments dealing with separatist movements,” adding that it could damage the long-standing assumption that territorial integrity of current nations should be maintained in all situations.

Secessionist movements in Spain, in Kashmir, in Kurdistan, and indeed in Kosovo itself, where a Serbian enclave seeks separation from the new NATO-backed government, could be effected. So too could a number of other movements the world over.

But perhaps the biggest winners will be South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as nations which use this ruling as justification for recognizing Kosovo would have serious difficulty explaining how those two republics, which also seceded in 2008 after the Russo-Georgia War, are in any way a different case, except that it was Russia, not NATO, which guaranteed their separation from their former suzerain power, after a messy clash.

ICJ President Owada Hisashi declared that there was no part of international law that was meant to be a “prohibition on declarations of independence.” Serbia had refused to recognize the secession, as had a number of other nations with prospective separatist movements.

Though Kosovo’s declaration of independence is comparatively recent, the nation has been separated from Serbia in practice since 1999, and continues to be occupied by NATO troops to this day, though the exact purpose of the occupation at this point remains unclear at best.

And while the ruling has Kosovo officials crowing about their victory and may well give them ammunition in their quest for international recognition, the ruling is a knife that cuts both ways, and it could have an even bigger impact elsewhere, in nations whose secession is even less recognized internationally.

For while the US and NATO have been on the Kosovo secession bandwagon for years, in no small part because it came as the result of a NATO invasion of the region, a virtually identical situation exists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two other republics that declared their independence in 2008.

But in those later cases they declared independence from US-ally Georgia, and the foreign military that enabled it was the Russian military. In this case, the US and NATO members have angrily rejected South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s secessions, and the US has vowed to use its power to ensure that neither is ever recognized internationally.

Even within tiny Kosovo, the ruling could have a secondary effect, as an ethnically Serb portion of the region has sought to secede from the seceders. The international community is fighting against that secession at this point, but it must be asked: if Kosovo can secede, why can not a part of Kosovo do the same thing?

Of course there is no real mystery surrounding the war at this point, as the European Union has issued reports in excruciating detail of the early hours, in which Georgian troops attacked the South Ossetian city of Tshkinvali and Russia responded by destroying much of Georgia’s military.

But in the wake of the war the redrawn borders, or rather the lack of official recognition for borders which had for all intents and purposes been redrawn years prior, remains a sore point. Two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, had been trying to secede from Georgia for years, and Russia formally recognized this secession in the wake of the August 2008 war. The US has refused to acknowledge the new nations, though they had both been de facto independent for years prior to the war.

And it is these two republics that remain at issue, and are the source of Clinton’s claim of “occupation.” Georgian President Saakashvili had promised to use “any means necessary” to reconquer the two enclaves, and with the US pumping military aid into the Georgian government one of the first acts of the newly elected Republics was to ask Russia to sign defense pacts, which they promptly did.

The deals cemented a Russian military presence in both enclaves for the long term, but also provided both republics with a means of survival against a near term threat of invasion. Clinton’s condemnation is in keeping with the US policy not to recognize the new nations’ rights, though in the long run it appears Georgia has no chance of re-obtaining them through military means, and the policy will only serve to be a sore spot in future relations.

The permanency of their de facto independence is still very much in doubt, as the US has promised to use its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to ensure that the international community never recognizes the move. Russia is still hoping to get more nations on board but so far only Nicaragua has recognized the two.

Since the war the two regions have signed defense pacts with Russia, which has dramatically increased the number of Russian troops in the regions. Georgia has vowed to reclaim them as provinces in the future, and has attempted to enforce a naval blockade on Abkhazia’s coast.

So far the blockades, which include threats to arrest anyone who goes to either region without the Georgian government’s permission, have had little impact but to drive the two regions further into reliance on neighboring Russia. The Russian state oil company set up a new subsidiary in Abkhazia only today, a sign that Russia is eying a long-term role.

In a major speech in the city of Gori, which was briefly occupied by Russian forces during the war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili publicly condemned Russia as “invaders” and vowed to defeat them “by getting closer and closer to the European Union.”

President Saakashvili accused Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of being “determined” to kill him, but the accusations didn’t end there. The Georgian government issued its official report, which blamed Russia for starting the war with a massive invasion, a case of dramatic historical revisionism considering the clash was only 12 months ago. A high profile Georgian blogger even accused Russia of being behind last week’s outages of Facebook and Twitter.

The resentment swings both ways, of course, and anti-Georgian sentiment in South Ossetia seems as high today as it did last year, when the Georgian military shelled South Ossetia’s capital of Tshkinvali. Even if the Saakashvili government manages to somehow expel Russia from the breakaway enclaves, that resentment is going to make ever reasserting its own control over the regions next to impossible.

A spokesman for the European Union monitoring mission in the region said there was “no indication that Georgians have fired across the South Ossetian” boundary, adding “there were also no indications that mortar fire landed” on the Georgian side of the border.

The accusations were just the latest in a growing string of accusations, including claims just days ago that Georgia fired on a Russian observation post and a claim that Russian troops snuck into a Georgian village to move the border. Monitors likewise were unable to confirm either of these, but the growing tensions have led to the Russian military being placed on high alert.

The turmoil is rising just days before the one year anniversary of the brief 2008 war between Georgia and Russia, which led to South Ossetia’s formal declaration of independence, though this has not been recognized by Georgia. Tensions between Georgia and Russia have lingered ever since, but seem to be reaching a post war high in the past few days.

Russia’s Defense Ministry says that Georgia has launched a series of mortars and grenades at an observation post in South Ossetia, and likened it to the events that led to the 2008 war, warning its soldiers reserved the right to respond. Georgia denied this, and said the Russianv criticism showed it was a threat.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s Interior Ministry is accusing Russian troops to sneaking into the village of Kveshi and moving the South Ossetian border, drawn in the 1920’s, a few hundred meters in an attempt to gain a strategic advantage. EU monitors say there is no evidence that any such thing happened, though South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity has expressed hope that they could eventually claim some of that land as part of their territory.

Claims of provocation by one side or the other are common, such as last week when South Ossetia’s Interior Ministry claimed Georgian troops had kidnapped a policeman. But a year after the war as Georgia still hopes to reclaim South Ossetia and Abkhazia as its own, the prospects for renewed conflict seem to be growing, and at an alarming rate.

The issue, as it was last year, is Georgia. A US warship is in the Georgian republic today for joint military exercises, an uncomfortable reminder of US support for the Caucasus nation after August’s brief war with Russia. Just down the shore in Novorossylsk, Russian warplanes are conducting an exercise of their own.

Meanwhile, President Medvedev has made a trip to neighboring South Ossetia, a breakaway nation that formally seceeded from Georgia after the war, with Russian backing. The US State Department condemned the visit, saying it was not helping to establish stability in the region.

The US still refuses to recognize the independence of South Ossetia or fellow breakaway republic Abkhazia, and says they should be returned to Georgian control. The Bush Administration promised to use the US veto in the UN Security Council to keep the nations from ever being recognized internationally.