Letter From Tbilisi: Georgia's Confidence Game

The tallest building in downtown Tbilisi is the former Intourist hotel, built during the Brezhnev era to host foreign visitors and later used to house Georgian refugees from the war in Abkhazia during the 1990s. Today the 16-story building is in the middle of a multimillion-dollar renovation and will reopen later this summer as a Radisson hotel. Its grandeur, however, is something of a mirage. The hotel dominates a skyline largely filled with ambitious construction projects in seemingly permanent states of half-completion -- glitzy, unfinished monuments to what might have been.

Ever since the Rose Revolution brought Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to power in 2003, the country has presented itself as a democratic, free-market oasis stuck on the edge of the post-Soviet world. For much of the West, particularly the United States, Georgia was an ally and a friend to be nurtured and protected. This dynamic reached a dramatic crescendo last August when Georgia and Russia fought a brief war over the breakaway province of South Ossetia -- a moment when John McCain, then a U.S. presidential candidate, boldly declared, "We are all Georgians."

But in the year since, the fallout from the war -- which has left Georgia with tens of thousands of internally displaced refugees -- has turned the country's machismo into a sense of defeatism and left it increasingly estranged from its Western friends, most especially the United States. Georgians -- who greet one another with a variation of the phrase for "victory" -- are growing tired of conflict and distrustful of their leadership. Support has grown for the country's opposition, a disparate collection of Western-educated reformers and former allies of Saakashvili who are disaffected by his heavy-handed rule.

After a moment of dominating international headlines last summer, Georgia is now figuratively -- and literally -- a rump of its former self. Russian forces occupy two breakaway provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia's economy has slowed considerably after its double-digit growth in 2007, and the country's Ministry of Finance predicts that it will contract another 1.5 percent this year. Foreign investment has fallen by almost 75 percent since early 2008.

Meanwhile, Russian tanks are stationed less than a hundred miles from Georgia's capital. Ahead of President Obama's visit to Moscow this April, a rumor circulated around Tbilisi that Russia would send its tanks across the South Ossetian border and into Georgia proper. Although the rumor turned out to be false, many Georgians remain convinced that Russia might re-invade any day now. This may not just be paranoia: Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based analyst of the Russian military, who, in June 2008, predicted last summer's war, has said that there is an 80 percent chance Russia will invade again this summer. The Kremlin remains determined to remove Saakashvili from power, Felgenhauer has argued, and the area's difficult terrain and severe climate make a military offensive after September less likely.

Ultimately, a battered economy and fluctuating oil prices may, at least for the time being, put a break on Russia's military adventurism. But this still leaves Georgia feeling increasingly isolated, especially because its main benefactor abroad, the United States, has promised "to reset relations" with Russia, a country whose prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has called for hanging Saakashvili "by his balls." Then, in a speech last month before the Georgian parliament, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden delivered a stern message, criticizing Georgia's current regime for failing to follow through on its democratic promises of the 2003 Rose Revolution, and stating that its lost provinces could not be taken back by military means. Ahead of Biden's visit, Georgia was hoping for military hardware, U.S. monitors along the border with Russia, and promises of protection; instead it received a dose of tough love.

A cooler relationship between Georgia and the United States may, in fact, be closer to the historical norm than the intensity and closeness seen during George W. Bush's presidency. The two countries' ties are more tactical than strategic, defined by pipeline politics and a shared suspicion of Moscow. As those issues shift, so too may the U.S.-Georgian relationship. "The idea that there is this undying bond between the United States and Georgia is overstated," said Lawrence Scott Sheets of the International Crisis Group.

Still, the lack of an emotional connection with the Obama administration has left Georgia feeling somewhat out in the cold. Unlike most world capitals, Tbilisi was silent the night of Obama's victory last November. Prior to the U.S. election, a minister in the Georgian government drove around town with a "McCain" license plate. Georgia's leaders saw McCain as more supportive of their quest to join NATO, and they appreciated his tough talk toward Russia. (He was fond of saying what three letters he saw in Putin's eyes: K-G-B.)