Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region, located at the crossroads of the Western Asia and Eastern Europe. It is bordered by the Black sea to the west, Russia by the north, Turkey and Armenia to the south and Azerbaijan by the southeast. The capital city of Georgia is Tbilisi, and the population is almost 4 million. It is a semi-presidential republic with the government elected through a representative democracy. Georgia was occupied by the Soviet Russia in 1921, and became the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and part of the Soviet Union. After gaining independence in 1991 post-communist Georgia suffered from civil unrest and economic crisis most of the 1990a. This lasted until the Rose Revolution of 2003 after which the new government introduced democratic and economic reforms. Georgia is a member of the Council of Europe and the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. It contains two de facto independent regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russia Georgian War. Georgia and a major part of the international community consider the regions to be part of Georgia's sovereign territory under Russian military occupation.
Firstly what happened before the Rose Revolution and who was in power? At that time the president of Georgia was Eduard Shevardnandze. At first Shevardnadze had good reason to support and foster such freedoms. On return¬ing to Georgia from exile in 1992, he needed support for his struggle with paramilitary “warlords.” Independent media and other organizations were permitted to function to create political space and pressure the warlords. After this objective was fulfilled in 1995, Shevardnadze aspired to cultivate his democratic image abroad. Before 1998, Shevard¬nadze’s regime consolidated an unjustified reputation among many western observers and governments as a success story of post-Soviet democratization. Shevardnadze’s regime most probably could be placed somewhere between authoritarian and post-totalitarian. Economic pluralism in Georgia was certainly greater than in a classic autocratic regime, while the political leadership was oligarchic. An at that time there was a great Russian influence over Georgian Politics and Economy. It was becoming impossible for Shevardnadze to maintain his image as a democratic reformer. When the government tried to shut down Rustavi-2 (one of the leading television channels), many reformers left Shevardnadze’s Citizens Union of Georgia party and formed opposition parties. Furthermore, the government’s inability to confront corruption prompted suspension of International Monetary Fund programs in Georgia in 2003.
The mass protests that eventually led to President Shevardnadze’s resignation continued for twenty days, from November 3 to November 23, 2003. Early reports on the official election results placed Shevardnadze’s For a New Georgia bloc first, followed by Saakash¬vili’s National Movement. Opposition leaders Mikheil Saakashvili, Nino Burjanadze, and Zurab Zhvania met with Shevardnadze. Their brief talks produced no tangible results, and the president commented pointedly: “I do not intend to resign at the demand of individual politicians and a few dozen young people waving flags. If there were at least a million people, it would have been different.” Within just a few days, national petitions con¬tained 1 million signatures demanding Shevardnadze’s resignation and calling for the election results to be overturned.
On November 17 more than 50 000 gathered at Freedom Square in central Tbilisi, and 3 000 held hands to form a human chain around the state chancellery. Many in the crowd wanted to push forward and try to go in, but the apparent readiness of Special Forces units to use force. On the evening of November 20, a convoy of cars stretching for kilometers and carry¬ing thousands of people arrived from western Georgia. The next day more than 100 000 gathered in Freedom Square to pressure all the opposition parties with more than 7% of the votes not to enter parliament. This effort was not successful, and protesters had to consider other ways to disrupt the illegitimate parliament’s first session. Eduard Shevardnadze resigned the evening of November 23.
The United States has followed its successful regime change in the strategic Caucasian nation of Georgia with a series of moves aimed at pressing its advantage over its major rival in the region, Russia. On December 2, nine days after Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as president of the former Soviet republic, his US-backed successors joined with the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, to publicly criticize Russia and demand that it remove its troops from Georgia and another former Soviet territory, Moldova. The open conflict between Washington and Moscow occurred at the annual summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Washington’s aggressive stand toward Moscow coincided with the announcement that US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld would visit the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Rumsfeld’s visit is more than a show of US support for Georgia’s new rulers. It follows rumblings about possible military confrontations between the new regime in Tbilisi and the breakaway provinces of Abkhahzia and South Osettia in the north, and Adjara in the south.
From the early days of the Clinton administration, Washington invested enormous political and diplomatic capital in the construction of a pipeline that would connect the oil fields of Baku, in Azerbaijan, to Western markets, while skirting the territory of both Russia and Iran. This made Georgia all the more critical, since such a pipeline would have to run through that volatile, backward and ethnically torn country. The leading groups and individuals involved in the drive to unseat Shevardnadze were financed by US government-linked institutions, and given training by these and other Western sponsors on how to mount “revolutions” like the ouster of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. During Soviet times, all transportation routes from the Caspian region were through Russia. The collapse of the Soviet Union inspired a search for new routes. Russia first insisted that the new pipeline should pass through its territory, then declined to participate. Many observers interpreted the Russian maneuvers for the war in 2008 and helping South Osetia an Abkhazia to gain independence was an effort to intimidate investors or perhaps, to pressure Azerbaijan to pull out of the project. A number of well-placed figures continue to view the pipeline as reflecting a U.S. effort to project influence into the region. Particularly troubling was Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov’s statement in September 2002 that the United States was attempting “to crowd Russia out of regions in which we have historic interests.” It is precisely such statements that provide the grounds for interpreting Russian threats regarding Georgia as, in fact, directed against the pipline
To conclude I want to say that Georgia is a small country which is fighting for its freedom, but in today’s world a small country cannot be on its own. So Georgia is stuck between two largest political powers Russia and the US, both having a great interest in Georgian Territory and trying to take control. In my opinion in case of both sides Georgia as a country itself will lose. The Russian use more aggression, while the US uses more diplomatic ways to influence Georgian Politics. So there is a hard choice for the Georgian people, to be with Russia which is related with Georgia with the religion which both countries have the same and the history which we share or take sides with the Western part of the World which more democratic, gives hopes, but the culture is very different and in some cases even unacceptable for Georgian people. Two greatest powers are having a hidden war for control where countries like Georgia struggle the most.