Amid widespread reports of electoral corruption, Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili has tightened his grip on power. Following yesterday’s election, Saakashvili’s United National Movement party looks to have secured 62 per cent of the popular vote.

It is hard to know how true the accusations against Saakashvili are. But clearly Georgia’s leader is no model democrat, despite his popularity among western pols. Last year, for example, he sent in riot troops to beat down what appeared to be peaceful protests in Tbilisi.

Yet all three main U.S. presidential candidates unequivocally– even aggressively–support Saakashvili and back him in his war of words with Russia. Why?

The Western establishment, in its determination to see Georgia as a “pro-western democracy” struggling against Russia’s dark “autocracy”, seems happy to ignore the possibility that Georgia’s regime is itself quite murky, even–heavens forbid–undemocratic.

Further proof that, where international diplomacy is concerned, democracy is in the eye of the beholder.