His hope to bring the ex-Soviet republic into NATO may also be under threat, a senior Western diplomat said, as sceptics will use the current crisis to argue Georgia is far from a good candidate for membership.

"This situation escalated the way it did because of miscalculations, especially on the part of Saakashvili," said Nick Grono, deputy president of the International Crisis Group, a think tank in Brussels.

"I don't know if they thought the international community and Russia would be occupied with the Olympics or what, but there was utter miscalculation," he said.

Georgia has long sought to regain control over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Their loss during wars in the early 1990s dealt a heavy blow to the national psyche and Georgia's lack of control over its entire territory held it back, both economically and in its efforts to join NATO.

But analysts said Saakashvili's decision to send troops into South Ossetia, which Russia had always pledged to defend, may have been a critical mistake.

The decision was "not been a smart move" as Russia had been determined to provoke a war with Georgia over the rebel regions for months, said Svante Cornell, Deputy Director of the Central Asia Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Programme in Stockholm.

Tensions over the two rebel regions had soared in recent months after Moscow announced it was boosting ties with the separatists.

"I believe there'll be some damage as people question whether or not he needed to do the things he did," Cornell said.

A senior Western diplomat said the crisis may also have given ammunition to some within NATO who have opposed membership for Georgia. Opponents have said that with two unresolved conflicts on its territory, Georgia was not yet ready to join NATO.

A NATO summit earlier this year refused to give Georgia a Membership Action Plan (MAP), which would have put it on the fast track to membership. Georgia had been hoping that NATO members would reconsider the decision at a summit of foreign ministers in December.

"There are some people who are saying that now we should move faster (on membership)," the diplomat said. "But those who are sceptical will see this as another argument against NATO membership."

He agreed that some people will also be questioning "whether mistakes were made, whether they underestimated the power of the Russians."

Analysts said the most obvious and immediate impact of the conflict would be on Georgia's economy and infrastructure.

Until a week ago Georgia was seen as an oasis of economic reform in a desert of post-Soviet nepotism and corruption, and was on its way to becoming the darling of the international investment community.

Georgia's economic growth stood at more than 10 percent in 2006 and 2007, despite sanctions imposed by Moscow on key industries. Three five-star hotels are under construction in the centre of Tbilisi and Western-style boutiques and malls have mushroomed throughout the city.

But continued economic growth is now very much in doubt, analysts said.

"The Russians are destroying the infrastructure in parts of the country and that will cost millions to repair. Plus, there's a world economic crisis that will affect our eventual recovery," said Georgi Margvilashvili, an analyst at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. "On top of that, Russia will probably impose more economic sanctions to further hurt the Georgian economy."

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