Against Saakashvili, Not Georgia
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The title of James’ post on Georgia, responding to Freddy’s post from earlier in the week, pretty well sums up my response to this line of criticism from Jonathan Kulick. There are several problems with Kulick’s view of why Americans and NATO should stand up for Georgia, beginning with the strange idea that “freedom and democracy” have something to do with the current regime of Saakashvili. Unless and until friends of Georgia can begin to acknowledge that Saakashvili is consistently doing great harm to Georgian interests and to the prospects of sustainable representative government in that country, they will continue to be viewed by Georgia’s neighbours, skeptics of NATO expansion and more than a few European governments as willing dupes for unwise, unjustifiable policies aimed at Western hegemony in the Caucasus rather than the well-wishers of the Georgian people that they claim to be. In point of fact, neither I nor any of my colleagues treats Georgia as a “whipping boy.” I have profound sympathy for the suffering land of Georgia and its people, as I have stated time and again. It is Saakashvili and his hangers-on that I criticise and I wish the U.S. would stop lending such unstinting support to such an unworthy character for a country that is, as Kulick correctly states, “not obviously central to American interests.” In fact, it is not even tangential to American interests, which is all the more reason why Washington should have no hand in propping up someone like Saakashvili to the detriment of ordinary Georgians.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
3 Responses to “Against Saakashvili, Not Georgia”
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You’re the one conflating Saakashvili and Georgia, not I. Whatever you think of him or his rule, there’s very little disagreement between him and his political opponents–or within the Georgian body politic–on NATO, relations with Russia, and a western orientation.
Opposition-party leaders all make the rounds of Brussels and DC, making the case that they *they* will better be able to guide Georgia into Euro-Atlantic structures. None are asking for American disengagement.
I’ve read your past posts on Georgia, and it’s an imagined land and people for which you claim sympathy.
Have I ever claimed that his opponents were asking for American disengagement? No. It’s no surprise that there is a consensus. Small countries that see the possibility of gaining a powerful, more distant patron are going to pursue that relationship, especially if they think it will ward off the influence of a powerrful neighbour. There was not a great deal of dissent in other countries that have since joined NATO in the last three expansions, either, but that doesn’t mean that expanding NATO made any sense in any of these cases. The incorporation of Georgia into NATO seems to me to be substantively bad for U.S. interests and our relations with Russia, and I don’t see much advantage for Georgia except to extend to them a security guarantee that will not be fulfilled when the time comes. It is being held out as a carrot to them so that Washington can pursue a dubious policy of projecting power into the Caucasus.
I have sympathy for the Georgians. It’s just that I don’t allow my sympathy to override common sense when talking about U.S. foreign policy, and I don’t mix sympathy for their situation together with agreement with policy views that strike me as madness. When I hear from self-appointed friends of Georgia about Saakashvili’s misrule, then I’ll begin to take them seriously.
[...] Posting will be light today, but James has updates on the very important story coming out of the Caucasus. For as long as I can remember, I have warned that Saakashvili was reckless and dangerous, and with his bid to force re-integration of South Ossetia he provoked the inevitable Russian backlash. You would think that someone who has been complaining for years that Russia is using the separatist states as nothing more than proxies would not then go ahead and launch an attack on one of the proxies! But that is exactly what he did, and everyone should remember that it was Saakashvili who created the current crisis.  [...]