To many, the brief war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 seemed like it came out of the blue. However, Asmus argues that the conflicts' root cause was not the future status of Abkhazia or South Ossetia but Georgia's desire to go West and Russia's determination to stop it.  He says war was also part of a broader Russian move to stop NATO enlargement once and for all and to change the rules of a European security system that Moscow has concluded no longer served its interests.  Russia's challenges, Asmus says, represent another step in the direction of a new world disorder in which Western values, norms, and influence are being eroded steadily.  A Little War that Shook the World goes back to the 1990s to examine where things started to go wrong with Moscow and what, if anything, the West could have done differently.  It is a look at the lamentable breakdown of relations between Russia and the West and a provocative account of the first East-West post-Cold War military conflict.