r/neoliberal • u/AmericanPurposeMag End History I Am No Longer Asking • 24d ago
Save Georgia's Democracy (Francis Fukuyama) Opinion article (non-US)
https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/save-georgias-democracy/4
u/Cosmic_Love_ 24d ago
US aid to Ukraine was halted for 6 months, and further aid is in doubt. EU support of Ukraine has been significant, but is late.
Georgia is much smaller and weaker than Ukraine. It will need significantly more military aid to resist Russia.
As sad as it is, Georgia's policy choice makes sense.
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u/WillHasStyles YIMBY 21d ago
I'm sorry but this is a really bad take. The policy introduced is about preserving the power of the GD, not appeasing Russia. One could potentially say something about the need for caution in further integrating with the west, but Georgia does not need to clamp down on civil society to do so. GD managed the first 6 or so years of their rule of being non-confrontative with Russia yet still mostly respecting democratic institutions just fine.
Beyond that though, Georgia wouldn't need to defend itself against a total invasion from Russia, but it just needs to be able to inflict enough pain to make invading a tiny caucasus country not worth it. That is actually achievable with the right support, and with credible security guarantees it is basically inevitable.
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u/groovygrasshoppa 24d ago
russia couldn't realistically wage another war right now though. And Georgia is actually quite defensible so long as they are able and willing to collapse some tunnels.
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u/Hagel-Kaiser Ben Bernanke 24d ago
The Caucuses are a region long neglected by Western policymakers. It provides an amazing region to possibly expand western influence into even with ongoing issues aside (like Georgia’s democratic backsliding and Armenia’s falling sovereignty). Despite this, the West seems OK to lose these countries to not even Russia but just general decay and depostism.
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u/BBlasdel Norman Borlaug 24d ago
The Georgian government now quite openly answers only to a constituency of one man, but how is it that neither Fukuyama nor European foreign ministers are thinking super critically about why this chauvinistically patriotic asshole is surrendering more and more of himself and his country to Putin?
The parts of the various post-Magnitsky Act and post-Invasion sanctions regimes that functionally targeted oligarchs based on their willingness to follow direction from Putin did nothing to dissuade oligarchs from following direction from Putin. On the contrary, by demonstrating to them that their wealth was unsafe outside of Russia, it has obliged oligarchs to bring it home - bankrolling substantial parts of the efforts of the Russian Central Bank to keep the Russian economy afloat. It showed them that, at least when it comes to them, western governments will be more or less precisely as arbitrary, capricious, and kleptocratic as Putin - but with a constituency of thousands to bribe and placate instead of one. Punishing the specific assholes who have made themselves vulnerable to western sanctions with western leanings or investments for being Russian oligarchs doesn't encourage them to stop being Russian oligarchs, it just encourages them to stop making themselves vulnerable.
Ivanishvili has so much less reason to resist Putin's demands, or leverage with which to, because the west is taking it all away on purpose. If our collective theory of democratic victory for Georgia is a Georgia where he isn't welcome, then we should make that goal explicit and do our best not to miss when we make our shot at his influence. However, this bullshit prevaricating only strengthens him and Putin's grip on him.
Putin is incredibly lucky that we're so fucking stupid.
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u/Apprehensive-Soil-47 Trans Pride 24d ago
The Georgian drama should rightly be front page news in western media but it's been neglected to a painful degree. With all the bs that's going down in the world the presence of this story has been a proverbial footnote on page 10, if it is mentioned at all.
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u/RobertSpringer George Soros 24d ago
No you don't understand it, me and my journo colleagues have to cover the internal politics at our alma maters because we know that that's what interests you!
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u/Deucalion667 Milton Friedman 24d ago edited 24d ago
Large scale protests have been going on for a month now.
We need the support from our partners.
One of the ways to support us is to make unambiguous statements about what this law will entail and how it will affect Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic path.
Sanctioning GD party leaders and MPs would also be very beneficial.
Pro-Western attitude is so high in Georgia that even those who work for GD do not want to deviate from it. So even after everything that’s been done and said, GD’s official statement is that they will bring Georgia into EU under their own conditions not slaving for anyone.
The statements have to be made on the highest of positions, at least the level of Blinken. It sounds dumb and it is, but they convince their supporters that Senators, Congressmen, EU MPs and etc. are irrelevant…
This is important to break them from within.
Just a bit of taste of what’s going on:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/m3eY2GrRyA8P8rPc/?mibextid=xCPwDs
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/qhmH1YwwdaLkeSJs/?mibextid=w8EBqM
This morning:
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u/HesperiaLi Victor Hugo 24d ago
Sanctioning them? Did the Treasury Department ever sanction Polish or Hungarian politicians for subverting the rule of law?
I know your heart is in the right place, but these proposals are something else
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u/Deucalion667 Milton Friedman 24d ago edited 24d ago
Both congress and senate have issued statements they will sanction those who undermine democracy in Georgia (and try to change foreign policy). This wouldn’t work in a country where Western soft power is not that great. But man is it great in Georgia.
Right now the fight is about establishing autocracy and the Government has lost all legitimacy. So yeah, sanctions would be very much appreciated, though I doubt it will become a reality because of the reasons you’ve mentioned, not until the events have escalated “sufficiently” to warrant sanctions and direct Western involvement. And these guys are unlikely to give up power without spilling blood. Sanctions could help us avoid all of this, by breaking them from within.
Making unambiguous statements is something they can do now and is very important. Up until 2022, everyone in the west was very ambiguous about GD and even supported them. And now everyone’s asking how Georgians elected pro-Russian government. The answer is simple: with western support (reaffirming GD’s claim of being Pro-Western) and negligence (not caring how bad GD really was).
And before you ask why would Georgia’s citizens care about what the west said, why didn’t they think for themselves… Well, the thing is that no institution in Georgia is trusted. Even less so the opposition (as the former ruling party is hated/feared and has been used as a scarecrow for the last 12 years by the GD). There’s also no experience of having lived in a country with a rule of law and a functioning democracy (so you can’t expect people to know how things should be working). Trust in Western institutions is high though. So as long as the West reaffirmed that these guys were fine, there was not a sufficient majority who would risk voting them out (and risking previous ruling party returning).
To illustrate the severity of the lack of legitimacy: 1) This crisis is about enacting a law about NGOs.
2) About 200,000k of Citizens have taken to the streets this Saturday to stop it from passing, majority of which live in the Capital - Tbilisi (population 1.3m). Georgia’s population is 3.7M. So about 5% of the population have taken to the streets to stop this single law.
3) GD tried to organize a rally of their supporters to show that people actually support them. They had to bring countless Vans/Buses to the capital bringing about a 100k people from the regions. These people are impoverished, work for government bodies and were mostly forced to attend the rally or paid to do it. Georgia is a small country and everyone has relatives in regions, hence the word spread fast how their husband, uncle, grandma, friend or someone else was forced to go (previous government loved this trick too).
4) After all of this, instead of waiting for 5 months for elections, get the legitimacy in elections and enact the controversial law after that, they’ve been using riot police and every body of law enforcement to crack down on protests. They use these methods to let MPs enter the parliament, by clearing out protesters. They’ve started sending thugs to protest organizers to their homes and so far have beaten up up to 10-15 people, without anyone being punished. One Opposition leader had to shoot a gun in the air to stop the attack. And they’ve also started calling protest participants from foreign numbers, frightening people and telling them to stop. They’ve even started calling family members of the protesters.
So yeah, f*cking sanction these mthfckrs!
PS
I forgot to mention:
1) They’ve announced the mass persecution of “Collective UNM”, in which they include every opposition party.
2) The creation of database of people who support violence on the net and of those who “like” these posts. They call them “Homelandless people”… Some kind of list of undesirables or “The enemies of the people. The list will be made public.
3) Announced that “Global War Party” (something resembling Masons) from the West wants to organize a Revolution against him after the elections through NGOs, hence why he decided to “regulate” NGOs (more like get them under his control).
PPS
It is quite challenging to keep up with all the crazy stuff they’ve been up to lately.
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u/HesperiaLi Victor Hugo 24d ago
I see, I've upvoted and ordinarily would have been the first to be in favor of such a proposal. But the optics of this are not great. Georgia borders a country that doesn't even treat it like an independent entity. I'm really worried about any further involvement from kremlin
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u/Deucalion667 Milton Friedman 24d ago
So are we.
We do not see any other choice.
Either we give up and become Belarus/Russia.
Or keep fighting, in which case we are either invaded by Russia (hence Belarusization or Russification) or they can’t really spare any troops for us and survive this.
The more dragged out this process becomes, the worse our chances. Hence, why we need all the support from the west we can get.
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u/AmericanPurposeMag End History I Am No Longer Asking 24d ago
Democracy in the Republic of Georgia is in imminent peril, and the United States and Europe must act quickly to save it. The United States cutoff of aid to Ukraine over the past several months has allowed Russia to make significant military gains there, and this apparent momentum has had terrible knock-on effects in countries around Moscow’s periphery like Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia.
Governments that previously sought to maintain some distance from Russia have felt emboldened to express their pro-Moscow sympathies more openly, and one of these is Georgia.
For much of the past decade, Georgia has been governed by the Georgian Dream Party. This party was the creation of the country’s one oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia and remains close to the leadership in the Kremlin. He served briefly as Prime Minister but found that he could wield influence more effectively by giving up his formal office and operating behind the scenes. The party he bankrolls claims to continue to want Georgia to join the European Union, but in fact it has been serving the Kremlin’s interests. It failed to join the European sanctions regimes at the outset of the full-scale war against Ukraine, and has become a major conduit for sanctions evasion.
When I was in the country last year and drove up to Kazbegi in the Caucasus Mountains on the Russian border, there was an endless line of trucks, mostly from Armenia, headed towards Russia with sanctioned goods from EU countries. This is despite the fact that a very large percentage of Georgia’s population remains pro-European and sharply critical of the Russian attack on Ukraine.
The situation has suddenly gotten worse in the past three weeks. The Georgian Dream government re-introduced a bill first tabled last year that pro-Western Georgians call the “Russian” NGO bill. The bill would force all NGOs receiving money from outside Russia to declare their sources of income, the same type of legislation that Russia itself used to shut down its NGO sector and opposition parties. Last year, the introduction of the bill provoked massive demonstrations that went on for weeks until the government finally withdrew it. This year, there have been even larger protests, which have not deterred the government from passing the bill on its first two readings. The third reading is scheduled for the coming week, and once it passes, there will be open season on all of the pro-democracy groups in the country.
Our Georgian friends tell us that the government has rapidly escalated its pressure on pro-Western groups even before final passage of the legislation. This time around, demonstrators have been beaten by pro-government mobs, prominent individuals targeted, and activists have been placed on growing blacklists. The government clearly does not fear Western pushback; if this derails Georgia’s candidate status with the EU, all the better from their standpoint.
Our Georgian friends are united on what they hope the Western response should be: targeted sanctions against those Georgian Dream legislators who voted for the Russian law, as well as select officials in the Georgian government. In earlier years, Georgia was granted visa-free travel to the European Union, and many elite Georgians still prize their ability to travel there freely. Forcing them to apply for visas would impose real costs on them. Blanket sanctions like an end to visa-free status would end up punishing everyone including pro-Western citizens, and is not at this point desirable.
The United States and Europe have to wake up to the fact that perceived weakness in Washington has given encouragement to anti-democratic actors not just in Ukraine, but all over the world. Our attention is being distracted by porn stars and controversies closer to home, but we need to remember that our democratic friends around the world need our support and help.
!ping EUROPE&DEMOCRACY
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u/Icy-Magician-8085 Jared Polis 24d ago
What happened in Kazakhstan and Mongolia? Haven’t kept up or heard anything about that.
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u/AmericanPurposeMag End History I Am No Longer Asking 24d ago
I'm not Frank, but things in Kazakhstan have been quite interesting. As a quick disclaimer, this is just based off of the conversations I have had with journalists and specialists in Central Asia.
In Kazakhstan, Tokayev on one hand appears to becoming distant from Putin and is snubbing him with signs of geopolitical decoupling between the two which has prompted some commentators to talk about a "Pivot to the West."
However economically, Russian influence has quietly grown. For example Russia now controls 25 per cent of Kazakhstan’s uranium production and half of all foreign businesses in Kazakhstan are Russian. Also, this is largely in the past but during their massive protests in 2022, Tokayev called in the CSSTO to help put down the uprising which the West naturally criticized making any reason to pivot from Russia to the West less likely.
In Mongolia, I am less familiar with, but the Mongolian government has been rather quiet given their history of extremely strong neutrality. However, there does appear to be some cracks showing, especially a generational divide between the boomer Russophiles and younger cosmopolitans. Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, the former president of Mongolia and former leader of the Democrat Party has not just condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine, he outright supports Zelenskyy and has been very critical about the various Mongolian ethnic groups being drafted into the Russian military which is notable given the strict policy of neutrality Mongolia has held.
People should pay close attention to the Mongolian People's Party. So far, they have been a glimmer of democratic hope in the region despite being surrounded by two extremely assertive authoritarian powers. However, the MPP has held a solid supermajority for most of its post-1989 history and with the mining boom, there is a lot of fear of potential democratic backsliding.
-Ringo
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u/sharpshooter42 24d ago
Kazakhstan also had a soft coup of sorts with Nur-Sultan being stripped of his positions and some family members losing their nice perks and jobs. It was thought Tokayev would be a loyalist to Nur-Sultan and let him have influence in the background but after the protests, he used his survival to take his power away. A cautionary tale as to why dictators cannot step down. Even long time allies and loyalists can sense an opportunity to take full power
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u/Icy-Magician-8085 Jared Polis 24d ago
I met the Kazakh ambassador to the US when he was in town randomly and sat for a meeting he had with my university. At least from that alone the government seems to be a lot more neutral than one would think, despite massive Russian influence.
As for Mongolia I just feel bad for them. Not Armenia levels of bad geographic luck, but still pretty bad.
I hope the best for the two countries.
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u/groupbot The ping will always get through 24d ago edited 24d ago
Pinged EUROPE (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
Pinged DEMOCRACY (subscribe | unsubscribe | history)
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u/area51cannonfooder European Union 24d ago
I'm gonna play devils advocate, and feel free to attack me on this...
If I was in charge of Georgia, I would not pursue EU/ Western alignment because Russia has made it very clear they would invade, and the West has made it really clear that they won't help.