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Welcome to Rewind & Reconnoiter. Each week, we’ll ask one of our authors to look back at an article they’ve written for War on the Rocks in light of a current news event. Did their argument hold up? Read more below to find out.***In 2017, Batu Kutelia, Shota Gvineria, and David H. Ucko wrote “America’s Vital Interest in Georgia: The Case for Engagement” for War on the Rocks, in which they argued for greater U.S. engagement with Georgia as a reliable economic and military partner with which to counter Russian influence in the region. In response to Georgia’s passing of a “foreign agent” law and Russia’s reinvigorated offensive in Ukraine, we asked to them to look back on the article.Read more below. In the article “America’s Vital Interests in Georgia: The Case for Engagement,” written in 2017, you argued that Georgia is a reliable partner for the United States that provides economic, military, and intelligence value through a mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries. Over the past seven years, how has the relationship evolved?   The evolution of the U.S.-Georgian strategic partnership should be seen through the prism of a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. Regrettably, U.S. policy largely followed William Ruger’s original suggestion, meaning reduced engagement in the Black Sea region in general and Georgia in particular. As we warned, Russian President Vladimir Putin capitalized on America’s relative absence to upend the rules-based international order, most forcefully in Ukraine. In Georgia, meanwhile, Russia has followed a two-prong strategy of land-capture and state-capture. Our article sought to expose this process, which was evident already in 2017 and might have been arrested through greater engagement. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a wakeup call, if such was needed, as to Putin’s agenda. Ideally, this war of aggression would have reinvigorated U.S.-Georgian