INTRODUCTION

Georgia's August 2008 war with Russia put an end to a string of spectacularly unexpected successes for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. It might have been unrealistic for Saakashvili to think that Georgia could defend itself in South Ossetia against the might of the Russian armed forces. Yet Saakashvili had already surmounted a number of challenges previously thought to be insurmountable. In the fall of 2007, it was unrealistic for Saakashvili to think that he could efficiently extricate himself from a political crisis that arose after his forcibly dispersing antigovernment protesters; in 2004 and 2006, that he would be able to establish an armed Georgian presence in the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and in 2004, that he could force without bloodshed the retirement of regional despot Aslan Abashidze.

Indeed, despite the considerable vulnerabilities of Georgia's ancien régime, even the Rose Revolution that catapulted Saakashvili to power in November 2003 was unexpected. The opposition to Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze entered the 2003 parliamentary election disunited, promising the regime an opportunity to play parties off each other and prevent them from forming an effective resistance movement. The nature of the electoral contest – an election to parliament in a presidential system – also did not offer much hope for radical change. The election was mainly about defining the process and actors for the 2005 presidential election, a race in which Shevardnadze was constitutionally barred from taking part.