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 (OSCE), held in the Dutch city of Maastricht.

The American delegation and others persuaded Moldova-s president to reject a Russian plan to station Russian troops in a breakaway region of Moldova until 2020. Powell went on to call on Russia to withdraw its troops from Georgia, and warned Moscow against supporting separatist leaders in several rebellious regions within Russia-s Caucasian neighbor to the south.

Georgia's interim president, the former parliamentary speaker, Nino Burdzhanadze, came out of a meeting with Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, and denounced the Russian leader, complaining that Moscow was "not ready to start new relations with Georgia."

Washington's aggressive stand toward Moscow coincided with the announcement that US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld would visit the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on December 5. 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.

Last week, Russian president Vladimir Putin hosted talks with the leaders of the three provinces in Moscow, and Aslan Abashidze of Adjara said he was counting on Russian troops based in the Black Sea port of Batumi to repel any aggressive actions from Tbilisi. Abashidze has refused to recognize the new regime, closed Adjara's borders with the rest of Georgia, and threatened to boycott Georgian parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for January 4. These elections will be little more than a formality, as the US-backed forces that seized power over the weekend of November 22-23 have coalesced around the current mayor of Tbilisi and most prominent leader of the insurgency, Mikhail Saakashvili.

Earlier in the week, President George Bush telephoned acting Georgian president Burdzhanadze and promised to intervene, if necessary, to uphold Georgia's "sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity," in the words of a US National Security Council spokesman. Thus, Rumsfeld's visit has the character of a blunt warning to Russia and suggests a strengthening of the American military presence in Georgia.

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.

Rumsfeld is only the most high-profile of scores of US State Department, Justice Department, Treasury and Pentagon officials who are flowing into Georgia in the aftermath of the coup. Delegations are also on their way from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions.

The representatives of international capital and the US government are secure in the knowledge that they will meet with a friendly response. The forces that collaborated in the campaign of demonstrations and protests that ultimately forced out Shevardnadze are squarely in the camp of Washington, and enthusiastically embrace the "free market" economic policies promoted by the Bush administration and Wall Street.

The made-in-America pedigree of these "democrats" and "revolutionaries" goes further than mere political and ideological affinities. 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.

The three most prominent political figures in the new ruling clique -- Mikhail Saakashvili, Nino Burdzhanadze and Zurab Zhvania -- are all former members of Shevardnadze's inner circle. Their revulsion against the corruption and high-handed intrigue that characterized the former leader's rule is of recent vintage, as is their passion for democracy.

Mikhail Saakashvili, the heir apparent to the Georgian presidency, is a 35-year-old graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Columbia University Law School in New York. As Shevardnadze-s minister of justice, he oversaw a purge of Soviet-era judges in the mid-1990s -- a drive that was reportedly coordinated by the US Embassy in Tbilisi and assisted by the American Bar Association.

In recent months, Saakashvili distanced himself from his former political mentor. In local elections last summer, he ran as an oppositionist and was elected mayor of Tbilisi.

Nino Burdzhanadze, the 50-year-old speaker of the parliament, broke with Shevardnadze last August over the departure from Georgia of the US-based energy giant AES Corp. The American firm sold its operations in the country to a Russian state energy company at a substantial loss.

Zurab Zhvania is a former ecology activist who was coordinator of Shevardnardze-s mid-1990s "reform" team.

Saakashvili placed himself at the head of protests that were launched following parliamentary elections held last November 2. The official results, which recorded a victory for Shevardnadze, were widely seen to be fraudulent. (There seems little doubt that the regime resorted to vote-rigging and ballot-stuffing, but the public perception of a stolen election was enhanced by exit polls showing a victory for the opposition parties. These polls were funded by US agencies and American-backed non-governmental organizations; they were broadcast on Rustavi 2 TV, a Western-backed oppositional media outlet.)

When Shevardnadze attempted to open the new parliament on November 22, he was met by a demonstration of tens of thousands outside the parliament building demanding a recount of the vote. Saakashvili headed a crowd of several thousand students, organized under the slogan "Kmara," or "Enough," who forced their way into the parliament building and compelled Shevardnadze to make an undignified exit. Saakashvili, brandishing a rose to symbolize the peaceful character of the overthrow, pronounced the Shevardnadze regime dead.

The following day, supporters of the opposition took over the State Chancellery. Burdzhanadze declared herself acting president and announced new parliamentary and presidential elections to be held in 45 days.

Shevardnadze reportedly called on the military to put down the rebellion, but was rebuffed by the minister of defense. At this point, the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, traveled to Tbilisi in an attempt to broker a compromise that would leave Shevardnadze in power. When the opposition leaders rejected this proposal, Ivanov prevailed on Shevardnadze to step down, so as to avoid civil warfare. The 12-year president complied on the evening of Sunday, November 23.

The overriding factor in Shevardnadze's fall was Washington's withdrawal of support for its long-time crony. Relations between the Georgian president and the US had cooled over the previous several years. Russia's financial collapse in 1998 had fueled concerns in Washington over the ability of Shevardnadze to insure stability in Georgia, whose economy remains highly dependent on its huge neighbor to the north. US backing for Shevardnadze eroded further following the installation of the Bush administration.

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