ABSTRACT
Georgia is among the most headline-making post-Soviet states. In the 90s it was led by one of the patriarchs of perestroika, the former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. It is the country that launched the wave of post-Soviet ‘coloured’ popular revolts against rigged elections with its 2003 Rose Revolution, which made the then US President George W. Bush call it a ‘beacon of democracy’. But it is also the one post-Soviet country that had the most wars – two secessionist wars in 1992-1994 with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, with an intra-Georgian civil war in the background. Then on 8 August 2008, the day when most headlines were supposed to announce the opening of the Olympiad in Beijing and symbolize China’s rise to global power status, Georgia managed to steal the headlines with a new war in South Ossetia. The war sent shockwaves through Europe and resulted in the worst crisis between Russia and the US, NATO and the European Union.
