Georgia, post-revolution

In recent months, [Eduard] Shevardnadze had given new drilling and pipeline concessions to Russian firms.

He should have recalled the fate of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which, like Georgia, was a U.S. client and recipient of American aid until it turned down a major pipeline deal with an American oil firm and awarded it to a Latin American consortium.

Shevardnadze was no democrat.

He rigged elections, used goon squads to silence opponents, survived two assassination attempts and ran Georgia like a medieval fief.

...Shevardnadze kept Georgia independent by deftly playing off the Americans against the Russians, both of whom had designs on the little nation.

But his luck finally ran out.

Washington sent high-level emissaries to warn Shevardnadze not to do anything that threatened the proposed oil corridor.

When he went ahead with Russian oil deals, Washington denounced the Nov. 2 Georgian elections as rigged, which they were, although it also turns a blind eye to rigged elections in useful allies like oil-rich Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan, etc.

Cash and anti-Shevardnadze political operatives from the U.S. poured into Tbilisi to back up the president's American-educated principal rival, Mikhail Saakashvili. The rigged election ignited mass protests by Georgians fed up with corruption and crushing poverty. Saakashvili forces stormed parliament and drove out Shevardnadze, who resigned after the army and police refused to defend him.

...Russia will try to limit U.S. influence in Georgia and extend its own by stirring the pot and finding new Georgian allies. Washington will shore up its man in Tbilisi, Saakashvili, and may send Special Forces troops under the pretext of the faux war on terrorism.

The entire Caucasus is near a boil. The sharply increasing rivalry between the U.S. and Russia for political and economic influence over this vital land bridge between Europe and the oil-rich Caspian Basin promises a lot more intrigue, skullduggery and drama.  article