YEREVAN, Georgia – The first thing I did when I learned CNN was sending me to Tbilisi was pull out a map. Not only had I never been to Georgia, but to make matters more difficult I was flying into neighboring Armenia.I would have to drive the six hours from Yerevan, Armenia, across the border into Georgia. The Russians had destroyed the military airfield near the airport and no airline was flying.

When I landed in Yerevan my driver didn't speak English. Not a word. He had no idea how to get out of Yerevan, nor for that matter how to get on any road heading north. He was Georgian, and kept using the wood ‘boom.' Always a positive sign. We stopped maybe 15 times in an hour asking for directions before being righted and set on our way.

There's nothing on the drive but mountains and little towns, hundreds that can't have more than $5,000 worth of money being thrown through them. The road is like something from a horror novel, coming down to one lane at times beside a cliff with a huge drop-off (a little yellow sign showing this is coming: which is supposed to save you from your crazy driver).

If you're planning a family road trip – I'd avoid the entire area.

But none of that was actually in my head. I was thinking about the map – and where I was geographically. I knew once I got to Tbilisi there were going to be tens of thousands displaced – thousands dead and dying. The checkpoint at the border told me that. I knew that would be the part we could show people on video.

But I was geographically in what has become potentially the prime piece of real estate on the globe.

450 miles separate the Black Sea from the Caspian Sea from West to East. I was driving through the center of it from South to North. This tiny spot of land is only a bit larger than the UK and separates Russia from half of the world. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia separate Saudi Arabia and the surrounding gulf countries, Iran, Iraq and Syria from giant Russia.

Partly because of exactly what was happening now – a giant Russian invasion of Georgia, it's been nearly impossible to get more than a handful of pipelines up and running. The second longest one in the world (pumping 1.2M barrels a day) was hit, set on fire – and shut down for more than a week.

The media hits hard on the Middle East, how its conflicts are all oil related. The thing is; I work in the Middle East, and I know I'll be back here in this tiny, but important sliver of land... and I'm sure that not so ironically, the taps on the pipelines will be off then too.