The Ruins of an Empire : Will Georgia ever emerge from Russia's shadow?(Brief Article)(Illustration)

The place looked as if a storm had hit it. In the wreckage of a former Soviet military base, about 40 kilometers east of Tbilisi, Gen. Gia Uchava recently welcomed a team of U.S. Special Forces trainers to their new home away from home. Gesturing toward a gutted control tower above an abandoned firing range, the Georgian Army officer apologized for the Vasiani base's woeful state of disrepair. The Russians had ransacked it when they pulled out last year, he explained. The departing troops hadn't only hauled away weapons and other portable gear. They had cut power lines and stripped wiring, plumbing and everything else they could sell as scrap. Then they had trashed what was left. "They are very pissed off that we now have good relations with the West--especially the U.S.," Uchava said.

If Russia's troops were unhappy before, just wait. The American newcomers were only an advance team. In the next few months, Washington intends to put as many as 150 trainers in Georgia and provide $64 million in military aid--almost four times the former Soviet republic's annual defense budget. Up to now, Georgian security forces have been hopelessly outmatched by smugglers, arms traffickers and Islamic extremists. Chechen rebels and Qaeda-linked fighters enjoy free run of such areas as the notorious Pankisi Gorge. The U.S. aid is meant to help clean out the terrorists, and the program seems to have Vladimir Putin's blessing--at least for now. The Russian president is in no position to prevent it anyway. Besides, the U.S. presence may reduce the threat of Islamic separatism on Russian soil.

But many Russians, including top-ranking military officers, hardly share Putin's equanimity. To them, the U.S. program is an unnerving demonstration of the West's rising influence in a region that effectively belonged to Russia for 200 years. When Russian news services broke the story of the deployment of U.S. trainers in Georgia, opinion polls in Moscow registered the worst drop in pro-U.S. sentiment since the war in Kosovo. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Kosovan bluntly told the ITAR-Tass news agency: "The presence of American divisions in Georgia should worry any Russian soldier."

The Americans are treading as lightly as they know how. No one can disguise the West's interest in the republic's strategic value. But U.S. officials insist that the trainers are stationed in Georgia only temporarily. Two years from now, when the program officially ends, Georgia should have some 2,000 well-trained troops in four ...