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The West is goading Georgia Tbilisi has been ensnared by Nato hypocrisy

Is this Maidan 2.0? Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images

Is this Maidan 2.0? Giorgi Arjevanidze/AFP/Getty Images


November 2, 2024   7 mins

Food. Churches. Chacha. This is what Georgia has long been known for. But now this ancient country, flanked by the mountains and the sea in the heart of the Caucasus, is the battleground in a new Not-So-Cold War. Due to its strategic location — it shares a large border with Russia to the north — the country has found itself caught up in the geopolitical power play between the West and Russia. And just like the Euromaidan revolt in Ukraine a decade ago, Georgia’s domestic politics have been framed in Nato circles as an existential fight. On one side sits the Georgian Dream, the allegedly pro-Russian ruling party, in power since 2012. On the other sits the opposition, avowedly pro-Western and pro-EU.

Little wonder, then, that last week’s parliamentary elections have turned into a global event. As predicted by the polls, Georgian Dream won by a wide margin, securing over 53% of the vote. The four major opposition coalitions together managed less than 40%. There is no reason to believe that the vote was fixed: despite raising some concerns about pressure on voters, biased media coverage and an environment of political polarisation, independent observers found no evidence of electoral fraud, let alone of Russian interference.

Yet that doesn’t fit the geopolitical mood. Desperate to finally shut Russia out from its near abroad, there seems to be no line Western politicians and their allies in Georgia are unwilling to cross to achieve their geopolitical aims — including ignoring basic liberal principles and even overturning the will of the people wholesale. Dovetailed with ominously similar moves across the Black Sea in Moldova, meanwhile, and Tbilisi may not be the last capital to suffer.

Even if Georgia’s elections were almost certainly free and fair, the opposition has refused to accept defeat. They’ve accused the government of “stealing” the election as part of a “Russian special operation”. By Monday, thousands of pro-EU demonstrators had rallied outside the Georgian parliament. For its part, the opposition can count on a powerful ally within the Georgian state: the country’s staunchly pro-Western president Salome Zourabichvili.

Born in Paris, she’s spent most of her life working as a French diplomat, including as the country’s ambassador to Georgia. Yet despite only becoming a Georgian citizen in 2004, Zourabichvili was nonetheless confident that victory belonged to the opposition. “I do not accept this election,” she said. “It cannot be accepted, accepting it would be accepting Russia into this country, the acceptance of Georgia’s subordination to Russia.” Even more remarkably, Zourabichvili claimed that whether Russian interference could actually be proved didn’t matter. What was important, she said, was “what the Georgian population knows, feels and sees”.

If the roles were reversed, Western governments would rightly laugh off such claims as unhinged. Instead, they’re echoing her claims: Joe Biden expressed “alarm” at the election, while Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Charles Michel, president of the European Council, have both called for a probe into alleged irregularities.

Senior parliamentarians across the bloc have made similar noises. They’ve claimed that “these elections were neither free nor fair”, arguing that “the European Union cannot recognise the result” and demanding “personal sanctions” against government officials. Displaying a zero-sum mentality, typical of this new Cold War, they added “this election was about Europe or isolation, democracy or authoritarianism, freedom or Russification”, implying that Georgia was headed in the wrong direction. For his part, Boris Johnson has suggested that Georgian democracy was “stolen by Putin’s puppet government in Tbilisi”.

It’s hard to overstate how irresponsible these claims are. Consider, after all, what happened the last time Western governments forced a country geographically, politically and culturally split between Russia and the West to make a binary civilisational choice between the two. That was Ukraine — and look at the blood-stained consequences there. First: a Western-supported coup against a democratically elected government. Then: civil strife in the Donbas and outright war with Russia.

This is precisely the outcome that Irakli Kobakhidze and his Georgian Dream party are trying to avoid. The prime minister rejects the West’s “pro-Russian” labels, arguing instead that he’s just being pragmatic. Given his homeland’s history, size and geography, Kobakhidze says it makes no sense for Georgia to fully move into the Western sphere of influence, let alone sever ties with Russia altogether, or even worse adopt a confrontational attitude towards the latter. Indeed, the government has stressed the importance of having “normal, peaceful relations” with Russia.

“Given Georgia’s history, size and geography, it makes no sense to fully move into the Western sphere of influence.”

Georgia has good reasons to play it safe. Economic data shows that increased tourism and trade with Russia, alongside strengthened ties with China, have played an important role in boosting the economy, which grew by 7.5% last year. Perhaps most crucially, though, his party’s imperative is avoiding war — that is, becoming a second front in Nato’s proxy war against Russia.

Claiming that Kobakhidze is merely a pro-Russian stooge simply reflects the West’s disconnect from reality, or outright bad faith. Though the war in Ukraine has certainly opened a rift between Georgian Dream and Brussels, the party has equally been clear that it’s eager for integration with Europe. This is certainly more than rhetorical: the party enshrined pursuing EU and Nato membership in the Georgian constitution, and submitted an application for EU membership in 2022. All Kobakhidze has requested in return is that Brussels plays “by Georgian rules” as Tbilisi journeys towards the promised land in Belgium.

In short, then, Georgian Dream’s geoeconomic platform can be summed up as follows: focusing on economic growth and preserving internal stability by maintaining friendly political and economic relations with both the West and Russia, and the wider non-Western bloc, while avoiding being drawn into external conflicts. Taken together, then, Kobakhidze’s hard-nosed approach can plausibly be compared to another Western bête noire: Hungary. No wonder Orbán was the first EU leader to travel to Tbilisi and congratulate Georgian Dream on its victory. “Nobody wants their own country to be destroyed and involved in war”, the Hungarian leader said. “Therefore, we understand the Georgian people’s decision to choose in favour of freedom.”

To quote Orbán, many Georgians seem happy not letting their country become a “second Ukraine” — while also pursuing a “multipolar” agenda elsewhere, notably partnering with China to build a strategic port on the Black Sea. Unfortunately, it seems like the West has other plans. Indeed, Washington and its allies seem to be applying the same playbook to Georgia as they did to Ukraine. Just as in the lead-up to the 2014 coup in Kyiv, they’re first denying the legitimacy of the elected government, accusing it of being a Russian pawn. From there, they’re using Western-funded “NGOs” to mobilise the pro-EU minority against the government, while also pushing for sanctions. If the government still doesn’t yield to the pressure, they’ll try to move to the next phase: unrest in parliament and on the streets; a hoped-for police crackdown; and ultimately the toppling of the government and the appearance of a friendly pro-Western alternative.

Certainly, influential Western foreign policy think tanks are already predicting exactly this scenario. In a recent article, the Atlantic Council argued that “Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary election has entered its ‘Maidan’ phase” — and that Western governments must “support the Georgian people in both the immediate period ahead and the longer term”. The Nato establishment’s aims couldn’t be clearer.

Yet in the event, fomenting a Ukraine-style “coup” in Georgia may prove challenging. That’s partly because most Georgians are determined to avoid this outcome, and partly because Kobakhidze has been “coup-proofing” the country for some time. In May, for instance, the government passed the “Transparency of Foreign Influence” law, mandating that any NGO receiving 20% or more of its funding from outside sources must register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power”. The EU and US accused the bill of being a sign of Georgia’s “democratic backsliding” and “Russification” — and even imposed sanctions. Protests followed, some of which were joined by Western politicians, only fuelling the country’s political polarisation.

Yet as the Georgian government rightly points out, variations of its so-called “foreign agent” act already exist across the West. No less striking, there’s plenty of evidence that NGOs do play a nefarious role in the country’s politics: it’s just that they pursue pro-Western agendas. For one thing, there are the raw numbers. Though reliable data is hard to find — itself part of the problem — there are roughly 30,000 NGOs in Georgia. That’s a huge number for a country of less than four million people. Then there’s the question of funding. Most of Georgia’s charities are financed by the US, EU and other “philanthropic” institutions, notably George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

And while these varied organisations officially focus on innocuous topics such as democracy and human rights, it’s no secret that Western governments use them to push their own interests, up to and including regime change. Western-funded NGOs, for example, played a key role in fostering several “colour revolutions” in the early 2000s. That mostly involved non-violent protests, swiftly leading to pro-Western changes of government: especially in post-Soviet states like Ukraine (2004-5), Kyrgyzstan (2005) and even Georgia itself (2003).

It’s telling in this regard that Victoria Nuland, the former US diplomat who played a key role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine, has just joined the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED): one of the key players in the NGO-isation of US foreign policy. No wonder Bidzina Ivanishvili, one of the main founders of Georgian Dream, recently described the NGO class as a “pseudo-elite” nurtured by foreigners, and one basically embarrassed by its own country. It’s surely revealing too that Georgian opposition politicians are often interviewed with EU, US and Nato flags in the background.

It’s clear, in short, that the moral panic over Georgia’s “foreign agent” law had little to do with democracy. Rather, as the historian Bryan Gigantino puts it, Western countries fear the rule would strip them of “important leverage” in the country’s domestic and foreign policy. Samantha Power, head of USAID, essentially admitted as much when she said that the law “gravely threatens Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic future”.

This is perhaps the most hypocritical aspect of the Western narrative about somewhere like Georgia. Whatever Russia’s “foreign influence” — and it surely exists — the West’s is far greater. More to the point, it’s perfectly natural for a country like Georgia, straddling the border between Europe and Asia, to exploit the ongoing “multipolarisation” of global politics and boost its own autonomy. Given the West’s own tumbling influence, meanwhile, ham-fisted attempts to forcefully disrupt this process will only push Georgians even closer into the arms of Russia and China.

And while Tbilisi’s future remains undecided, this is far from just Georgia’s problem. After all, something similar is now happening in Moldova. There, too, recent elections revealed a deeply divided electorate. No less important is the role of Western and Western-funded NGOs in that country. For example, various deputies of the pro-Western ruling party, and even the current president of Moldova, have previously participated in Soros Foundations programmes. Combined with the potential for similar trouble elsewhere in the post-Soviet sphere, and it’s clear that the Georgian Dream could yet become a nightmare right across the region.


Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago

Thanks for a very informative article.

El Uro
El Uro
1 month ago

I’m deeply sorry, Thomas Fazi, but your words “the 2014 coup in Kyiv” reflect your fundamental misunderstanding of the historical differences of the relations between Russia and Georgia and between Russia and Ukraine.
Forgive me, but you are no smarter than those Western politicians you criticize, they just believe in their dogmas, and you in yours.
.
I believe that my comment will be deleted in order to save your pride, but your understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian war only reveals your phenomenal ignorance on this issue.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

Misunderstanding? How so?

El Uro
El Uro
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

He claimed that there were 30,000 NGOs in Georgia, and all of them failed to change the election results, but at the same time he claims that the same NGOs (in much smaller numbers) staged a successful coup in Ukraine. If this is logic, then it is the logic of an idiot. Fazi, claiming to be an expert, apparently never bothered with the history of the relations of the Russian Empire and the USSR with Georgia and Ukraine, never asked himself why the Germans were met with flowers in Ukraine, why after WW2 the resistance to the Soviets in Ukraine continued until the early 1950s. And of course, like any socialist, he deprives nations of the right to subjectivity; leaders and foreign forces lead them along the roads of history.
.
In this sense, Fazi is an ordinary left-wing journalist, a living illustration of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

Indeed – an entire Waffen Schutzstaffel division was raised in Galicia, and they have many an unspeakable “battle honour” to their colours, which relevant sectors of modern Ukraine’s lopsided political spectrum still celebrate with pride. After WW II, the remnants of this fine unit were shipped to Canada, where they continue to live their patriotic traditions, as was celebrated in the Canadian parliament not so long ago.
After WW II, these principled soldiers murdered over 100,000 Poles, Jews, and Soviet commissars, an effort vigorously supported and funded by the CIA. Granted, the Soviets eventually broke the back of this covert war, thanks to a British traitor, Kim Philby.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

I read this article again and I still can’t see any basis for your position. That the NGOs haven’t changed the election results in Georgia yet doesn’t seem to be an argument against their inferred interference. The NGOs may not have successfully interfered in the Ukrainian election itself but there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t try to disrupt the results, which it appears they did.
I would assume NGOs would try to influence elections as much as they could get away with. I don’t see any reason to doubt this. Why would they not? They have no reason to want a closer relationship between any country and Russia.
The rest of your comment regarding Ukraine’s past, in relation to Georgia, I don’t understand either.

Mik Che
Mik Che
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

You are talking about Western Ukraine, which was indeed with the Nazis. Meanwhile, southeastern Ukraine was originally part of the Crimean Khanate and then voluntarily joined the Russian Empire to escape Turkey. While Western Ukraine changed hands from Poland and Austria-Hungary to Russia and back again.
The Soviet government united these different parts into one country to reduce the influence of western Ukrainian separatism, but as we can see this project was unsuccessful and the south-east is returning to Russia.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

Another internet expert telling us to ignore the documentary evidence and instead listen to an anonymous expert because he says he knows atuff.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

He’s no “expert” in any sense.

El Uro
El Uro
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Look at my comment above and note that I have never done an analysis of the English-Irish-Scots relationship here. Ask Fuzzy to do something similar and he will explain it all to you with delightful self-confidence and give you a ton of “useful” advice.
BTW, I never pretended to be an expert. An expert is Fazi!

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The ‘documentary evidence’ was nothing of the kind.

Duane M
Duane M
1 month ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

The documentary evidence is here: https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/georgia/579376 . Article headline: “Georgia’s elections marred by an uneven playing field, pressure and tension, but voters were offered a wide choice: international observers”.

From the OSCE report: “The international election observation mission to the parliamentary elections in Georgia totalled 529 observers from 42 countries, composed of 380 ODIHR-deployed experts, long-term, and short-term observers, 60 parliamentarians and staff from the OSCE PA, 39 from PACE, 38 from the NATO PA, and 12 from the EP.”

The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) is distinctly oriented toward the West, not Russia or the East, which explains the subjective qualifications in the headline (uneven playing field, pressure, and tension) while the broad conclusion supports that the elections were open and free (voters were offered a wide choice: international observers).

But if you don’t like those apples, feel free to offer your own alternative facts.

Duane M
Duane M
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

If Mr. Fazi has demonstrated a misunderstanding of the color revolutions (and I believe his analysis is right on target), please be so kind as to illuminate us with the facts and arguments against him.

Because, all I see in your comment is special pleading with no supporting argument. I’m sure you can do better than that.

El Uro
El Uro
1 month ago
Reply to  Duane M

Read above, please. Maybe, I’ll try to write more expanded comments later.

David Clancy
David Clancy
1 month ago
Reply to  El Uro

still waiting …..

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

If only so much concern was being focused on what the American ruling party is up to for the election next week.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Good view.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago

More NGOs, and Victoria Nuland to boot. That’s a marriage made in hell. NGOs are a pernicious and dangerous threat to democracy. They impose themselves between the electorate and the state. I find it hard to believe they are doing anything benevolent in Georgia.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Plus, the sheer numbers! If the author is right, 30000 in a population of just 4 million suggests something is badly amiss, and can’t be comprised of ‘home grown’ influences.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

And look at the outright strangeness of Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan, a neocon who abandoned the Republicans under Trump’s anti-interventionist influence to fly to Democrat interventionist like Biden and Harris … and embedded himself at the Washington Post, resigning in a rage when Bezos, as its owner, declined to have Editorial publicly endorse Harris. Quite the mad couple. Folie a deux hard at work there.

Mik Che
Mik Che
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Nothing good. There is evidence that at meetings in these NCOs there are lectures on “How to overthrow the government”, “How to build barricades” and the like. In other words, they are preparing armed coups. It does not look very democratic when they are trying to take away the votes of the majority by force. That is, to deprive the majority of the right to democracy.

mike otter
mike otter
1 month ago
Reply to  Mik Che

Well thats what they are doing right here, right now – since the regular polls opened half an hour ago

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 month ago

There’s no reason to believe the vote was fixed.
Apart from the fact the President says it’s corrupt, all international observers have alleged corruption and all exit polls showed a comfortable win for the opposition.
It’s one thing to be critical of the west, it’s quite another to then blindly believe all the nonsense that comes from competing regimes because of it

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

“all international observers”…they’ll all be unbiased, entirely independent and funded by benign wealthy individuals and organisations not looking to profit from a conflict fomented by them…lol.
Bezos is absolutely right. Whether the Western MSM will ever change back to true journalism seems doubtful. Actually “back to” is probably wrong anyway…

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 month ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

Whilst the west certainly has its flaws, I still trust it much, much more than I do the likes of Putin

B Emery
B Emery
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

That’s naive.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Actually, Putin was busy and was not available for the monitoring job.
The monitors were provided by the OSCE, NATO, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council. Especially the NATO observers complained about the polarised atmosphere in which the vote took place – grotesquely, considering that Ursula von der Leyen had threatened Georgia with sanctions if they dared to vote the wrong way.
All, if grudgingly, acknowledged that the vote was overall OK.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

I think the only real thing people have left is mistrust in what they’re being told.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

Having scepticism is a healthy thing, you shouldn’t automatically believe what others tell you. However in my opinion too many on here don’t have that, they’re simply contrarian whereby they’re that desperate to appear different to the “sheeple” they’ll automatically dismiss anything reported by mainstream news sites and uncritically parrot whatever is posted by opposing regimes, even if that message is total b***ocks.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

You’re probably right. Though my comment wasn’t so much about subscribers but the public in general. I think their faith in institutions, which in many cases is just a blind faith, has been steadily eroded by the behaviour of all sides, so bad has the media and politics become. The current dispute in this election is over a comma. That’s how bad it’s become.

B Emery
B Emery
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

‘However in my opinion too many on here don’t have that, they’re simply contrarian whereby they’re that desperate to appear different to the “sheeple” they’ll automatically dismiss anything reported by mainstream news’

That’s very judgemental and rather a sweeping statement.
Do you find a contrarian attitude upsets your sheeple sensibilities?
Would you prefer a board of parrots.
Would you prefer to read comments that all say:
Russia is bad.
The west is good.
Let’s all get on our idealogical western High horses and impose our western values on the planet, let’s save every single country from bad people and autocrats, even if it bankrupts us, or costs thousands of lives, or the people don’t necessarily want ‘saving’ .

Have some contrarian evidence to those claims, unfortunately for you, this is from a respectable website so you can’t scream conspiracy theorist and stupid contrarians:

‘But Western politicians, journalists, and NGOs have cynically, and in a way, willfully ignored the wider economic picture, and have instead spun up the election as an existential struggle between Europe (European Union) and Russia. There is so much nuance here that needs to be examined and is not.

For one, study the vast amount of credible economic data and you’ll uncover the unpalatable truth that Georgia has been a net loser from closer EU economic ties thus far. And that the war in Ukraine, which the EU is helping to bankroll, has halted progress on key economic priorities in Georgia, including reducing unemployment.

Taking a step back, Georgia has become an economic dynamo since 2012 through its sovereign endeavors. This small, proud nation with a population of 3.1 million, ranks number 7 in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index, ahead of the UK and every EU country except Denmark.

Average economic growth has been a throaty 5.2%, 6.2% percent if you subtract the pandemic contraction in 2020. GDP per capita has increased by 79%. According to the World Bank, poverty reduced from 70.6% to 40.1% between 2010 and 2023, through sound macroeconomic management. There’s still more work to do to get it lower.

Georgia’s economic growth performance has largely been driven by domestic investment. As a percentage of GDP, investment has averaged a brisk 26.6% per year since 1996, compared to the EU (21.8%) and the UK (18.8%).’

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/georgia-elections-eu/

So the ruling party has actually done quite a good job. If you bother to read the article it explains that the economy was a big factor in the voting, there is another article on their website at the moment that explains nobody should be jumping to conclusions about the vote being rigged yet, until the full osce report is released. It also explains that although corruption was a problem, there would have to be evidence of rigging on a very large scale because the vote share for the ruling party was so high.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

That’s fair.

David Clancy
David Clancy
1 month ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Billy Bob I think many people are sick of, and offended by, the lies and propaganda being spread by their own governments and a supine, if not willing, media. Alongside the carnage that’s taking place, that could have been ended by good faith negotiations. Just one example: did it never strike you as odd that speeches or statements by the likes of Putin and Lavrov are almost never reported, and where they are, actual words, let alone vision, are never used? Odd, when apparently we’re not at war with Russia.
Oh, and the one about Russia blowing up their own gas pipeline, when it was actually Ukraine, almost certainly trained by the UK.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago

Neither Moldova nor Georgia (nor Ukraine) are of strategic importance to the US. Even if those countries were to be completely absorbed into Russia, it would make no difference to the security of the US.
On the other hand, each of those countries is of strategic importance to Russia – not in the sense that Russia must “have” them, but in the sense that Russia cannot afford to let them be dominated by a declared enemy.
Throughout history, statesmen who understood the limits and limitations of power have welcomed prosperous, stable neutrals. Neutrals don’t consume the empire’s budget, and offer lucrative opportunities for trade. On the other hand, once empires expand beyond a productive core and absorb elements that consume budget, the empire is doomed.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Russia can perfectly well let those countries belong to a western orbit. There would be no impact at all. The US would be dragged into the next stage expansion of Russia, which is endemic to Russia’s political being.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

I’ve played civilization also.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 month ago

Peace is all very well, but how are arms manufacturers going to keep profits growing without new wars?

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago

Ukraine chose the west of its own accord. Even Yanukovich wanted the EU trade association agreement, which Putin scuppered, forcing Yanukovich into a Russian trade deal which triggered the Maidan movement. Therefore it was Russia that caused the 2013-14 crisis in Ukraine.
EU leaders have called for scrutiny of the Georgian election result, given there are suspicions of election fraud.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

Let’s not rewrite history. Yes, Yanukovich wanted an association agreement with the EU, but when he saw the text of the association agreement the EU offered, he balked.
The EU required that Ukraine cut off all trade with Russia, which was Ukraine’s market for its industrial output; due to a difference in standards, that output could not be sold in the EU. On the other hand, Ukraine’s other export, agricultural produce, would be severely curtailed. Yanukovich could see that the association agreement as drafted would be a disaster for Ukraine, and argued for a three-way agreement to accommodate continuing trade with Russia, but the EU categorically refused.
And so it turned out…

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Yanukovich turned overnight after talks with Putin.
The EU did not require ‘all trade’ with Russia to be cut off, though Ukraine would have had to conform to EU production standards and then trade with Russia via the EU (which don’t forget before the war of 2022 listed Russia as a major trading partner).

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Everyone should read the TAA, half of whose 250 pages is devoted to controls over agricultural exports. Ukraine would also lose the below cost gas from Russia. All the EU had to do was allow Ukraine to have trade agreements with other countries.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  Anna Bramwell

There’s some logic in what you say, but the EU works the way it works. It didn’t desire the Maidan crisis – which just reflected the schism in Ukrainian society over the east/west question. Ukraine was always going to head west, which is a much more attractive orbit than Russia as we see day after day now.

David Clancy
David Clancy
1 month ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

What does that mean: ‘ the EU works the way it works’? Doesn’t mean it’s OK.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  David Clancy

Much of Russian policy towards Ukraine hasn’t been ‘ok’ either, don’t forget, even before the latest round of barbarism.
The EU approaches trade association agreements in more or less the same way whoever is the counterparty which reflects its internal rules. It listed Russia among its largest trading partners before the 2022 invasion.

Andrew
Andrew
1 month ago

Amusingly, some of the key findings about the Georgian election by the joint observation mission would have comparable application to the U.S., among other western nations.

Mik Che
Mik Che
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew

Elections in the United States? Is it when they don’t ask for ID at polling stations and anyone can vote as many times as they want? It’s a farce. In any other country such elections would not be recognised by the West as democratic.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Question here. I’m curious how a pro-NATO person became President of Georgia but the parliamentary vote is overwhelmingly pro-Russia or pro-autonomy.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The Presidential election wasn’t rigged is your answer

Mik Che
Mik Che
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It’s simple, Georgia wants to go to Europe but doesn’t want to quarrel with Russia. So a European president is ok, but parties associated with Saakashvili (who attacked South Ossetia and got a harsh response from Russia) is a red flag.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
1 month ago

An excellent piece. I suspect the author might be right about the West’s attempt to destabilise the country failing, and I certainly hope so. I have no idea if there were irregularities by either or both sides in the recent election (as there will be by the Democrats on a massive scale in the US on Tuesday) but states should stay out of each other’s affairs (with the UNSC, not the US, NATO or some combination of Western countries, having a reserve power to intervene).

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  Michael Clarke

Shame Russia doesn’t observe such restraint

David Gurevich
David Gurevich
1 month ago

Whether the elections were fixed or not Demparty-style, the author neglects to mention that Russia is occupying a big chunk of Georgian territory in North Ossetia, to say nothing of pseudo-state like Abkhazia. It does not take fake ballots to keep Georgia in Russian orbit; a mere reminder of the war of 2008 is enough – then the West happily ignored the Russian all-out aggression.

Martin Johnson
Martin Johnson
1 month ago
Reply to  David Gurevich

Let us remember that Russia attacked Georgia in 2008 only after NATO formally pledged full membership to both Ukraine and Georgia, thereby severely restricting Russian access to the Black Sea in the event of a military confrontation.

This after more than a decade of expanding NATO in Eastern Europe, contrary to assurances given in 1990-91 that enabled German reunification.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin Johnson

Correction – in 2008, it was Georgia which attacked the Russians in South Ossetia. After the war was over, the EU commissioned an enquiry, and the result was unequivocal: Georgia attacked, not Russia.
Dubbya encouraged Saakashvili to “let’s you and he fight”, and Saakashvili committed the error to believe Dubbya when Dubbya promised to back Georgia. As so many US “allies” have found out, when the going gets tough, the US tiptoes away.
After teaching Georgia a brutal lesson, Russia withdrew again to its former positions. Saakashvili fled the wrath of his people and gave a brief guest performance as governor of Odessa, and is now serving his sentence back in Georgia.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin Johnson

The *verbal* assurance was short term only, which Gorbachev confirmed. Putin made no objection to the expansion of Nato before Ukraine and Georgia came into the frame. Had NATO not taken in the new members they would either now be under Russian control, as in the bad old days, or possess nukes.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  David Clancy

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/
Gorbachev: “The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years.”

David Clancy
David Clancy
1 month ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  David Clancy

https://www.csis.org/analysis/twq-myth-no-nato-enlargement-pledge-russia-spring-2009
Russia isn’t a great respecter of its treaty commitments let’s not forget. Also useful to bear in mind what Russia did to the new NATO members in the 1990s when considering the context of all this.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
1 month ago
Reply to  David Gurevich

Do you mean South Ossetia, which declared independence from Georgia in 1991-2, along with Abkhazia? Surely North Ossetia was already in Russia. It was Stalin who split up Ossetia and handed the South to Georgia. For some reason, in 2008 Georgia decided to shell South Ossetia. Russia launched a two week police action against Georgia, who then withdrew from SO, which they had occupied since 1991.

Martin Johnson
Martin Johnson
1 month ago

To look at a map is enough to show how ridiculous is a “Euro-Atlantic future” for Georgia.

Unless I missed it, the author neglected to mention what happened to Georgia in 2008 when the NATO commitment to include Georgia was made official.

The western FP establishment is run by a bunch of midwits who seem to think it is still 1953 and every country is Iran. And by their actions they make enemies out of mere competitors or even potential supporters, and create the international problems that they say vex them.

Hell, they even manipulate the politics of friendly countries like Israel and NATO countries when there is no strategic threat, they just have personality or esthetic issues over internal affairs.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin Johnson

1953 Iran? When the US and the UK instigated a coup again Mohammed Mossadegh, the popularly elected prime minister of Iran, and installed in his place the Shah and his murderous Savak?
Just like Kiev in 2014, when the US egged on the far-right Right Sector to topple the popularly elected President of Ukraine, and installed in his place a hand-picked stooge supported by the murderous Azov bunch?

Micael Gustavsson
Micael Gustavsson
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

What hand picked stooge? There were free elections in the spring of 2014. ( Notice that the so called “right sector” got absolutely nowhere in those elections).

Gayle Rosenthal
Gayle Rosenthal
1 month ago

The EU has messed up the political landscape in so many ways, including ongoing attempts to censor free speech in MY country, the US, where it has absolutely no business interfering. The EU is always suspect in my mind. And it should be suspect in the minds of Georgians too.

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
1 month ago

Absolutely agree.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Personally, I think this article overlooks Putin’s quest for hegemony.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Personally and given my background academically, I fully expect that the current Russian leadership is interested in Georgia and I have read some respectable reports that Russian intelligence services were involved in the campaign. I’m not sure what the late Eduard Shevardnadze would think of the current situation.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 month ago

Thomas is spot on, once again.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago

His anti-western bilge never misses.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 month ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

Why should a realist critique of Western neo-liberal/neo-con foreign policy be seen as ‘anti-Western’? If it leads to better policy, it would be ‘pro-Western’.

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago

Russia has no need to ‘control’ Georgia or Ukraine, the soveriegnty of both of which it has resognised by treaty.
This follows from Putin himself saying on many occasions to domestic audiences that Russia’s nuclear capacity keeps it safe from invasion. Indeed, no power wants to invade Russia anyway, but it’s nuclear weapons would make that suicidal, especially its tactical weapons which would not necessarily imply mutually assured destruction.
The West proceeds on the basis that it is no threat to Russia, which doesn’t seem unreasonable.

David Clancy
David Clancy
1 month ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

Totally reasonable. Unless you look from the Russian point of view. Or think about how the US would react to Russian military in Canada. Or Cuba. They’re still punishing Cuba, 60 years later. It’s this hypocrisy, these self-interested double standards that Russians, and others, hate. Can you see that?

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  David Clancy

See later reply

Dash Riprock
Dash Riprock
1 month ago
Reply to  David Clancy

It seems my earlier reply to this may have been taken down.
‘How the US would react’ to a Russian military presence in Canada or Cuba is a very large, open question, but if it came to blows, one imagines it would involve targeted strikes rather than invasion.
Another valid hypothetical is what would Russia do it if it were ‘given’ Ukraine and Georgia by the west. The next set of democratic former USSR/satelite countries would surely be next for disruption and subversion.
There is very little equivalence between Russia and the US as hegemons, and Russia will usually lose out to the US, being something its former colonies want to escape for obvious reasons. Russia is aggressive. The US is a magnet. But Russia knows NATO wouldn’t ever attack it.
Ultimately Russia will democratise, hopefully before it is too late to save it from collapse. The Ukraine war may be a catalyst.

David Clancy
David Clancy
1 month ago
Reply to  Dash Riprock

The Monroe Doctrine is a United States foreign policy position that opposes European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It holds that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers is a potentially hostile act against the United States.[1] The doctrine was central to American grand strategy in the 20th century

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 month ago

Mr Trump can declare what he likes but the spotlight should be placed on very real, fresh neocon ventures. This bankrolling of Georgian independence is an extension of American neoconservative strategy in the east of Europe.

Geoffrey Smith
Geoffrey Smith
1 month ago

While holidaying in Georgia earlier this year, I was surprised to see an office in Tbilisi’s Liberty Square called the “NATO-EU Information Centre”. I was not previously aware the EU was openly aligned to expanding NATO into countries bordering Russia. When googling information about Georgia, beneath a symbol resembling the NATO star, I saw an AI-generated entry saying: “The European Union (EU) is physically connected to Georgia by the Black Sea, which forms the country’s western border … It’s generally considered part of Europe.” This dubious claim fits so conveniently with the NATO-EU narrative I find it impossible to discount the possibility this also explains its origins i.e. pretending to inform, it’s really propaganda. Georgia borders Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and is 757 miles from Bulgaria, the closest EU country which is on the other side of the Black Sea.  If the EU wants to conclude a trade treaty with Georgia, it can do so without Georgia having to become an EU member, and without any overlap with NATO’s dangerously aggressive agenda for the region. Whether the Georgian election was honest may need to be further considered in light of evidence yet to come, but it cannot be assumed that a vote suggesting reluctance to join the EU indicates bad faith, or that the election was rigged. If Georgians want to live as an independent nation and co-exist amicably with their neighbours, getting the best of both worlds without feeling forced into one of two hostile camps, their will should be respected. And perhaps seen as a model to be followed.

Laurence Levin
Laurence Levin
1 month ago

What angers me is that we learn nothing from our failures. The color revolution in Ukraine led to a war with over a million dead and half the world on Russia’s side. So we are going to try to repeat this in Georgia? How many will die there because we double down on our mistakes.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 month ago

I think it is possible to criticize the west whilst not being blind to basic geopolitical realities and indeed the agency of Western opponents. We wouldn’t actually like to live in any of those countries. Much of the “post-liberal” Right fail this task much of the time and Thomas Fazi, a Marxist lest we forget is it exactly the same camp. (Why do we think believing this evil garbage is acceptable while for example national socialist theory would not be?!).

“A Western-supported coup against a democratically elected government Then: civil strife in the Donbas and outright war with Russia”. This is deliberately outright misleading.
It is at the very least simplistic to say there was a “coup” in Ukraine in 2014. There were street protests where many of the protesters were killed by government goons and eventually the pro-Russian president fled. On that basis the entire government post 1688 of England and then Great Britain would be illegitimate! And the “outright war” has been launched by Russia, not by the West. This is not a minor detail. Russia also did invade Georgia not so very long ago! The very selective use of this terminology shows the bias of a commentator.

The West has many faults but we can analyze discuss them and perhaps put them right. None of that applies in the Major adversaries of the West