The Saakashvili paradox
This is a guest post by Salomé Zourabichvili
A year ago, Georgia was the place where for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian troops marched into an independent country. They demonstrated to the world that Russia had recovered power and the will to exert it. And for a few days, the world was wondering where the Russian army would stop.
A year ago, Georgia was the first place where the EU, through its acting president, Mr Sarkozy, managed to broker a cease fire that, despite its many flaws, still holds now. The EU demonstrated that peace in Europe was a concept worth defending and where the EU could make a difference.
A year ago, the United States, represented by an outgoing administration, reacted relatively passively, allowing European nations to take the lead in facilitating the dialogue between Georgia and Russia. The question is whether our European friends and allies will take a lead in rebuilding Georgia’s shattered democracy one year on.
A year ago, President Saakashvili managed after 6 months of protests, demonstrations and disputed elections to shut out the opposition claiming that the defence of Georgian independence was at stake. Georgia lost a fifth of her territories and suffered an economic collapse but the regime managed to cling to power.
What has changed today? In appearance nothing; tension is back at the border, daily provocations might trigger an escalation; now as then, nobody knows to which side to attribute the responsibility of this confrontation; and again the question arises: could a new war erupt in the heat of summer in this remote part of Europe?
However, despite appearances, many things have changed: the relationship between the US and Russia is no longer compared to the cold war as it was at the end of the Bush administration. The Obama factor has produced some effect already – the Russians know that they have more to gain from the “Restart” button than they would from a new conflict. His Moscow visit has not solved things, but it has raised possibilities that neither side would want to shatter yet.
The Russians have got all they wanted and maybe more: the borders have moved deep into Georgian territory making their leverage even more pregnant. They have recognised the separatist entities of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and have thus used the ultimate threat against Georgia. It is less probable that they would like to conquer more Georgian territory and have to occupy a hostile and fiercely independent country. They would have more on their hands as they cannot decide what to do with those “very new” independent states that nobody wants to recognise and that they are unable either to totally absorb or to relinquish.
As for the idea that Prime Minister Putin or President Medvedev might go to war in order to finish the job and get rid of President Saakashvili, it is an argument for Saakashvili, by Saakashvili.
The reality is different, for there is a “Saakashvili paradox” that reads as follows: having lost much of his legitimacy within and most of his international credit outside, he is the Georgian leader the Russians hate most, but also their best objective ally.
He has managed to give Russia everything they want: NATO membership for Georgia has moved from a feasible project to a distant possibility; 20% of our territories have been lost and seem for many to be lost for ever. The Georgian economy has, through an opaque privatisation process, been transferred mostly to Russian hands and western investment is more of a myth than a reality. Finally, as Freedom House and others have demonstrated Georgia has moved from the promising democracy of the Rose Revolution to an increasingly authoritarian state that can no longer exert a positive role model on Russia.
Ironically, President Saakashvili is the most helpful leader the Kremlin could wish for.
For the President, the threat of war is the last resort to raise European interest and American support for ‘small Georgia’ by making it appear as a victim of its big and imperial neighbour, while hiding the failures of its democratic process.
The threat of war is one of the last cards that an illegitimate regime can use to force the opposition to a demonstration of national unity and get a temporary popularity boost.
The prospect of war can be handy for Russia too. President Medvedev could be tempted to deliver nationalist propaganda to a population that is going through a deep economic and social crisis.
Now, unlike a year ago, there is no rationale for a war; for it cannot achieve any of the real objectives of either country. But now as then, two undemocratic regimes can use mutual belligerence for political profit.
Of the two, Georgia pretends to be democratic. It wants to be considered as a part of the European family. But it should be made clear to President Saakashvili that time has come to stop playing with fire and blackmailing friends. Time has come to deliver a pluralistic, open government as the only guarantee of peace and stability. Our best defence against Russia is democracy.
When Vice President Biden visited Tbilisi last month he set several tests for the regime to realise the democratic ideals of the Rose revolution – from media freedom to the rule of law.
But just days ago, some opposition supporters were kidnapped, beaten and shot with plastic bullets in a horrific attack. They are certain it was because of their political views. It was carried out by men driving in a vehicle belonging to the police. The lack of a credible investigation raises suspicions as to whether it was carried out on the orders of the government.
This is just the most recent example of the human rights abuses by the regime, despite the promises of a “new wave of democracy” by our President. Keeping the pressure on Mr Saakashvili to reform will require support and pressure from all our allies – in the United States and Europe – just as they supported us a year ago.
Salomé Zourabichvili is a Former Foreign Minister of Georgia and leader of the pro-European opposition party “The Way of Georgia” Her party’s website is at http://thewayofgeorgia.org but those who cannot read Georgian can see Georgian opposition content at http://georgiamediacentre.com
Comments
| 10 August 2009, 9:15 pm |
I’ve just come back from a few weeks holiday in Georgia and heard other disturbing eye-witness accounts of police beatings during the Biden visit.
I didn’t meet a single Georgian with anything complementary to say about Saakashvili.
| 10 August 2009, 9:35 pm |
I have no idea of passer-by’s politics and I am sort of assuming he/she has some, but the comments are a classic of the school that gave us “class against class” and the “great proletarian cultural revolution” – ideas are completely stripped of their “relative autonomy” and everything can be explained away by some essential monetary/materialist point.
Of course this is also always combined with extreme personal vituperation.
One can feel little doubt that passer-by would have been an enthusiastic chekist had (s)he ever had the chance.
On the other hand (s)he might just be English and suffering from that nation’s usual psychosis about the French.
| 10 August 2009, 10:03 pm |
Well here’s an idea with relative autonomy. In every crisis of the Capitalist System its the poor that go to the wall. Now ,a, why don’t you go and find another autonomous idea that makes a difference. When your house is repossessed perhaps meditating on the system of social values will provide you with a place to live. I had no idea that this middle class idealistic drivel was still doing the rounds. Still evaluating everything ‘On the one hand…on the other hand’. Finding social class in a text book but not beyond the end of your nose.
| 10 August 2009, 10:11 pm |
Babeouf your so-called “Marxism” negates struggle. Want an autonomous idea? Arguments about whether to cross a picket line or not – will that do?
| 10 August 2009, 10:26 pm |
“A year ago, Georgia was the place where for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian troops marched into an independent country.”
Wrong on two counts. The Russian troops were already in South Ossetia there as peacekeepers. Russian troops have marched into other countries as peacekeepers in the Balkans
| 10 August 2009, 10:45 pm |
a, no it won’t. What your autonomous idea has become is a set of autonomous beings who are involved in an act of social exchange. Your example is the perfect negation of your own idea. Here the idea of crossing a picket line is bound by the situation of the agents and by their interactions. The content of the idea follows from their history, their social positioning , power and the psychology that appropriates it. At least it did when I argued on picket lines. Your ideas turn ’struggle’ from a description of a human act into a fetishistic nonsense.
| 10 August 2009, 10:50 pm |
Babeouf, typically for people with your politics you are arguing against a straw man. Go back and read my OP again. I tlak about “relative autonomy”.
Funnily enough though I happen to regard things such as “history, their social positioning , power and the psychology” as not wholly deterministic.
And, yes, I’ve been on a picket line too.
| 10 August 2009, 11:18 pm |
You regard things as not wholly deterministic so does anyone who uses notions of probability. So what. Apply probabilities to the outcome space determined by your ideas. Apply probabilities to the flow of your ideas. Apply probabilities to the development of your ideas. Have they now become autonomous? Or is it that you want to introduce an X factor that takes the drudgery from the material world. .And on the picket line presumably you argued for something concrete , offered something concrete, support that exemplified itself in a ritual act. The picket line, a challenge to an ordering of power. An ordering that is something autonomous.
| 10 August 2009, 11:20 pm |
Interesting post, thank you Mrs. Zourabichvili and Gene.
| 11 August 2009, 12:06 am |
Russian troops have marched into other countries as peacekeepers in the Balkans
Yes, but they were there with the agreement of the country’s government. The Russian peacekeepers in this case were more like those sent to Czechoslovakia or Hungary.
Can any of the partisans of the Ossetian people’s independence able to tell me what efforts they are making for the freedom of North Ossetia?
| 11 August 2009, 1:33 am |
There is something wrong with Salome’s screed here. It is all about taking down Sakashvilli, and nothing in support of Georgian democracy and liberalism. I am extrememly suspicious of these activists who have nothing to offer but how some guy who was voted into office is abusing it. He may well be abusing his position, and that should be exposed – but if you dont have a solution (e.g. to Russian encroachment) then just keep quiet and let those who can govern, govern.
The fact that the opposition can run their own media outlets says a lot about the state of Georgian democracy. Maybe you should visit Armenia or Azerbaijan and see the difference.
Instead of eating at the roots of democracy – try to be constructive and see how it can be helped — When you play hardball, vengeful, and senseless with any regime on a personal basis – then you will be hit back pretty hard – no matter what the matter is. Do not gamble with Georgian democracy for petty interests and inflated egos. You will lose it, and you have nobody to blame but your own pettiness.
| 11 August 2009, 4:56 am |
‘I am extrememly suspicious of these activists who have nothing to offer but how some guy who was voted into office is abusing it.’ – I’m not sure I get your meaning.
| 11 August 2009, 9:04 am |
Hasan, Russian troops were in S Ossetia and Abkhazia as part of a Joint Peacekeeping Forces group along with Georgian troops. This was agreed with the Georgian government of the day in the mid 1990s.
| 11 August 2009, 2:36 pm |
This was agreed with the Georgian government of the day in the mid 1990s.
The alternative was full-scale invasion, ethnic cleansing being already under way against local Georgians. Not purely like Czechoslovakia and Hungary, I grant you. Throw in a touch of Afghanistan and Poland.
| 11 August 2009, 3:53 pm |
I would say the situation was totally unlike 1956, 1968 and 1979 in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Afghanistan respectively when the USSR invaded to prevent the Communist government changing to one possibly less Moscow friendly.
Georgia started the original armed conflict in 1991 as it did a year ago. Russia couldn’t let the situation get out of hand as most of the SO refugees went there.
North Ossetia-Alania appears to be happy that it is a Republic within the Russian Federation.
| 11 August 2009, 4:21 pm |
What proof do you have that the Georgian state started the armed conflict? Given that Russia’s defenders are so keen on the concept of national sovereignty, particularly when individual human rights are in the equation, why did they move into a sovereign country?
I would say that the “intervention” is quite similar to that in Afghanistan in that what resulted was precisely a government more favourable to that of Moscow. It’s how imperialism works.
North Ossetia-Alania appears to be happy that it is a Republic within the Russian Federation.
Indeed. Russia has presided over their campaign of extermination and expulsion of the Ingush. Mind you, the Chechen people can tell you all about what happens when people get silly ideas like self-determination when it’s not exactly determined by Moscow. Of course they’re now all blissfully happy.
| 11 August 2009, 4:32 pm |
One year on from Russia’s 9/11, when would-be genocidists came to get Russian-speakers with Russian passports. In the name of the neoconservatives’ godless and rootless pseudo-West of stupefaction, promiscuity and usury, they were determined to exterminate the Slavic (and thus pre-eminently Russian) front line of the True West that is the Biblical-Classical synthesis in Christ and His Church.
Such is the neocons’ hatred of those who hold to the True West, that they actively support “militant Islam” (there is no other kind) against us everywhere from Bosnia, to Chechnya, to Kosovo, to Iraq, to Nagorno-Karabakh, to any number of other places, including the whole of Western Europe in the form of mass immigration from the Islamic world. No wonder that the Kuwaitis, the Emiratis and the Twin Towers-bombing Saudis are so generous with their cash.
Russia’s victory over a President “elected” with ninety-seven per cent of the vote will go down as the point at which the global fightback really began, accelerating when Barack Obama beat first Hillary Clinton and then John McCain (who had wanted as his National Security Adviser a man who in the Georgian interest had committed treason against the United States). Alas, there are still a few outposts. Georgia is one, though we may trust not for much longer. And Britain is another, with no electoral hope of improvement.
Russia won, be in no doubt about that. It is inconceivable that either Abkhazia or South Ossetia could ever again be run from Tbilisi, as they have only ever been during the Soviet period. It is obscene that anyone should suggest such a thing; that sanctity should attach to lunatic borders imposed by Stalin, of all people. Once Straight Left, always Straight Left. For that matter, it is scarcely more credible that Ossetia will not be reunited soon enough, within the Russian Federation. (There is no comparison with the ethnically Russian populations in the Baltic States, although they are certainly badly treated, and that urgently needs to be addressed.)
That Abkhazian or South Ossetian independence is recognised “only” by Russia is like saying that it is recognised “only” by America, or “only” by China. As long as you have any one of those three, then anyone else is nice, but not necessary. Likewise, without at least one of those three, you might as well be recognised by nowhere at all.
Yes, ethnic Georgians were displaced, and that is more than regrettable. They know whom to blame, though. And there were eighteen thousand of them. The number of displaced Ossetians was thirty-eight thousand, who were lucky that displacement was all that happened to them, since the idea had been to wipe them out.
But they were not wiped out.
And nor will the rest of us be wiped out, either.
| 11 August 2009, 4:41 pm |
Are you asking for me to provide proof or a source telling you what I told you? Also are you refering to 1991 or 2008?
Has Russia overthrown the government of Georgia by invasion? No.
| 11 August 2009, 5:06 pm |
Nor did Russia want to, PJD. She only wanted to rescue her citizens from potential genocide, and to free them from borders imposed by Stalin, borders which had in any case meant nothing in practice for the best part of a generation.
| 11 August 2009, 5:30 pm |
David Lindsay,
I have (very) great respect for many of the stances that you take on domestic, and broader philosophical/moral/religious matters; and indeed broadly share many of these stances.
But on foreign policy – as exemplified in this thread: and it pains me to say it; you are just being silly.
(Quite apart from anything else, I have lost count of how many events one of Mr Putin’s thuggish friends have opportunistically as “Russia’s 9/11″. But in any case, first, Beslan, or second, the Nord-Ost seige, would have a better claim in the direction of such a title than anything that happened in South Ossetia at the behest of the Georgian state last year.) I speak in no sense as a defender or supporter of the regime of Mad Misha Saakashvili.
And “genocide” (even presuming that the Georgian military apparatus had either the capacity or intention of organizing such thing, both of which were and are clearly not so). Gamsurkhadia was clearly a lot worse than Saakashvili (or even Okruashvili) on the rabid nationalism stakes – but even he didn’t come close to intending or inciting that. You cheapen the word by throwing it around so.
Hmm, I seem to recall that on the first day of the conflict Sergei Lavrov as Russian foreign minister claimed that “2,000 Russian citizens” had been killed as part of the “Georgian-instigated genocide”. IIRC the total death toll of the ENTIRE conflict was put at something like 300 (of whom around one-half were military).
The Georgian regime are not the good guys (nor are they skilled politicians: the fact that , as this article is one of many pieces of evidence, almost all of those who supported Saakashvili when he came to power now oppose him), but…the military and amoral cynicism of a Russian regime whose attitude is to me still best summed up by Putin’s comments regarding Moshe Katsav (”We hear he raped 12 women. We all envy him, we all admire him”) – is really not something to support; nor it is a body whose propagandistic & lying views one should seek to propagate.
And I’m afraid these references to “Russia’s 9/11″ “genocide” and “rescuing her own citizens” (with no questions as to how that citizen was granted…) are just that: Russian propaganda for a ruthless and amoral regime.
| 11 August 2009, 6:56 pm |
“with no questions as to how that citizen was granted”
It doesn’t matter.
But it is worth reiterating that Russian-speaking South Ossetia is only in Georgia because Stalin put it there, and has not been run from Tbilisi, despite the best efforts last year, since the fall of the USSR. Why give Stalin the last word? Why wish to revert to Soviet arrangements?
The Russian “regime” certainly bears comparison with the Georgian one in terms of democracy or corruption. And it is not “amoral” – it has even reintroduced the teaching of Christianity in schools.
| 11 August 2009, 9:39 pm |
And it is not “amoral” – it has even reintroduced the teaching of Christianity in schools.
The equation of Orthodox Christianity as practised by the hierarchy as morality is one of the most laughable statements I’ve seen on HP.
Why give Stalin the last word? Why wish to revert to Soviet arrangements?
Well, if you have trouble with Stalinist nationality policy, perhaps you’d like to review your support for Yugoslavia’s wholesale importing of them.
Mrs. Zourabichvili has no morals and should be the last person on earth to talk about anything political. Check it for yourself : she is a Frenchwoman and has originally worked as a civil servant for the Quai d’Orsay. When she started her political career in Georgia, she continued to be paid by the French Foreig Ministry, although she had formally stopped being an employee and was working for and in a foriegn governement! Mrs. Zourabichvil has taken the money as long as she could, until the scandal became public. Now, would you please shut up, Salomé?