Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the origins of the conflagration beginning with the process of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. It then follows the relationship between Georgia, its breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Russia over the sixteen years between the establishment of Georgian independence and the war. Swedish researcher Niklas Nilsson details the transformation of the Georgian state from reactive and ineffective under Shevardnadze to proactive and demanding under Saakashvili. Nilsson shows how the Georgian government pushed relentlessly to change the status quo in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Backing its position with numerous United Nations resolutions, the new government in Tbilisi refused to accept Putin's steadily mounting steps to control these territories and looked instead to the Euro-Atlantic community to back Georgia's claims to sovereignty.