It was 10 years ago that Mikheil Saakashvili, then a 35-year-old U.S.-trained lawyer, led a march on the parliament of Georgia that overturned a corrupt and autocratic regime in that post-Soviet Caucasian state and inaugurated a liberal democratic surge in Eurasia. The "Rose Revolution" was followed a year later by Ukraine's "Orange revolution"; the brash and charismatic Saakashvili soon became Georgia's elected president and a symbol of pro-Western change, as despised in Moscow as he was admired in Washington.
A decade later, the wave has receded. Recently Ukraine, led by the same thuggish pol who had been ousted by the Orange revolt, backed away from an association agreement with the European Union and embraced Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. It followed Armenia, which succumbed to Putin's heavy-handed pressure earlier this fall. Only Moldova and Saakashvili's Georgia are now pursuing deals with the EU and the embrace of democracy and free markets they require.
As for Saakashvili, he's back where he started in the United States, having ended his second presidential term last week, a year after his party suffered a decisive defeat in parliamentary elections. He's out of favor at home and in Washington, which in the Obama era no longer pays much attention to Georgia or other post-Soviet countries.