TBILISI: Of all the countries that emerged from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia has followed the most chaotic path – a long, lurching march of high expectations and abysmal disappointments, of crude rogues and polylingual sophisticates, of peace pledges and bloodshed.

Each of the three leaders of independent Georgia came into office as a seeming acolyte of Western values, but soon came to be seen by many as a demagogue; two were driven from office in uprisings and the incumbent says his opponents were preparing the same fate for him.

Monday’s emergency European Union summit in the wake of August’s Georgia-Russia war may focus largely on what – if anything – the EU will do to punish Russia. But it can also be seen as a straw poll of what the bloc thinks of Georgia, which so avidly wants to join.

If the EU leaders are looking to history as a guide, Georgia may not find much warmth.

Conflict is a central piece of Georgians’ identity, from the gleaming swords and daggers displayed by sidewalk curio merchants to tourist guides’ ritual mention that Tbilisi has been sacked about 40 times in its 1,500-year history.

“Historically this was the fate of Georgia; we had numerous invaders and unfortunately this continues in the 21st century as well,” Deputy Defence Minister Batu Kutelia said on Saturday at the funeral of a general killed in the August war. “We do hope that no more of these types of heroes will be needed for Georgia in the future.”

Georgia, however, has difficulty with the art of compromise.

President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power after leading the massive “Rose Revolution” street demonstrations of 2003, which culminated in a crowd storming parliament and chasing President Eduard Shevardnadze from the building.

Shevardnadze, once respected in the West for his work as Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost-era foreign minister, had become a protector of corrupt profiteers and a runner of rigged elections. Still, he was an improvement over Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who abandoned his Nobel Peace Prize-nominated human rights work to become a nationalist hard-liner and was violently deposed two weeks after the USSR went out of business.

Saakashvili, in turn, scored his first major domestic victory by goading and pressuring Aslan Abashidze, the leader of the Adzharia region, until he snapped, blew up all his province’s land links with the rest of the country and fled with his beloved dogs to Russia.

In 2006, Saakashvili went on the offensive again, sending in troops to take a remote piece of the separatist region of Abkhazia.

The West may have looked askance at those moves, but Saakashvili, with his fluency in languages, his degrees from Western institutes and reforms that pushed the country’s economy into vigorous growth, still seemed a comforting figure. That changed late last year when he imposed a state of emergency and temporarily shut down independent news media in response to mass protests.

Although Georgia has been successful in portraying itself as the victim of Russian aggression in the recent war, at the outset a Georgian general made it very clear that it had sent its forces into South Ossetia to restore its territorial integrity.

If Georgia is hoping the war with Russia will lead it into the EU’s full embrace, it may have to settle instead for a peck on the cheek. Anne-Marie Lizin, part of a Belgian parliamentary delegation investigating the war’s aftermath, told reporters in Tbilisi that at Monday’s summit the EU is likely to consider war-recovery aid for Georgia and possibly visa-free travel, but indicated nothing more was in the cards.

Georgian officials have called for the EU to form a monitoring mission for the trouble zone and Russia has shown signs of willingness to at least discuss the concept. But there’s no indication whether such monitors would induce Russia to pull out of its controversial “security zones” on Georgian territory.—AP