NECESSARY DISTINCTIONS

To take just the case of Georgia, the U.S. government was worried enough to send former secretary of state James Baker in the summer of 2003 to give Eduard Shevardnadze an ultimatum on electoral arrangements, which the Georgian president accepted but then circumvented. [...] in the two months preceding the 2003 parliamentary election, a number of delegations of Georgian political-party, business, and NGO leaders trooped to Washington to beg for greater U.S. activism. [...] even after the disputed election and subsequent mass demonstrations, some political parties were still so sure that Shevardnadze would ultimately have his way that they cooperated to create a quorum in the fraudulently elected Parliament.