Georgia: the dream turns bad, but this is no time to disengage

Back in 2008 when NATO leaders met for their summit in Bucharest, Georgia was riding high. President George W. Bush had just visited the country and had been impressed by the warmth of his reception, in contrast to demonstrations in western Europe against his intervention in Iraq. He noted Georgia’s strong attachment to western values, its free and vibrant media and the vigorous market and economic reforms being implemented by the then pro-Western Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili. Above all, he thanked Georgians for their major military contribution to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan where Georgia, a NATO partner but not an ally, was the third largest troop contributor and the first in terms of ratio to population. With its vibrant civil society and history of struggle for independence (in 1922, after the collapse of Tsarism, and 1991 after the end of the Soviet Union), Georgia seemed to have made a definitive societal decision to anchor itself in the West. Accordingly at Bucharest, it received the promise that it would be invited to join NATO at an unspecified future date. Ukraine was given the same commitment. Later, Tbilisi submitted its application to join the EU as well.

Yet the Bucharest Summit did not have a happy ending for Georgia. A few months later, in August 2008, Russia invaded the country and consolidated its hold over two rebel provinces – Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This was a comparatively easy military operation for Moscow, as Georgia had sent a substantial part of its army to Afghanistan to show its pro-Western credentials to NATO, leaving the country in a precarious defensive position. Moreover, Moscow had stationed ‘peacekeepers’ in Abkhazia and South Ossetia soon after Georgia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, ostensibly to separate the different parties taking up arms and to protect the Russian speakers in these two provinces from what it claimed was repression at the hands of the majority Georgian population. But after the invasion of 2008, Russia significantly increased its troop presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, forced the remaining Georgians to leave and proceeded to recognise the two rebel provinces as independent states; although almost no other country has followed suit (Venezuela, Syria, Nicaragua and Nauru being the only ones to do so). Moreover, Moscow pursued ‘borderisation’,  a policy of attempting to move the border demarcation lines further into Georgia by stealth. The Russian invasion of Georgia led to NATO freezing its dialogue with Russia in the NATO-Russia Council for a short period, but no significant sanctions against Moscow were adopted. Some Western diplomats even blamed Saakashvili for the Russian invasion, alleging that he had provoked Moscow by his strong anti-Russian rhetoric and had actually fired the first shot as part of a Georgian attempt to regain control of South Ossetia.

Yet after 2008, NATO certainly had a headache in working out how it could effectively defend Georgia as a future NATO member state given that the country had been partitioned by Russia and was in any case distant from the rest of NATO territory on the far side of the Black Sea. This predicament presented the allies with the challenge of how to retrain and reequip a Georgian army, largely configured for expeditionary missions, for territorial defence while figuring out how to rush NATO forces across Turkey and the Black Sea to reinforce the country in crisis or conflict. A NATO-Georgia Commission in Brussels to conduct political and security consultations, and a liaison office and training centre in Tbilisi,  were set up for this purpose. While defence experts debated the merits and risks of NATO membership, Saakashvili turned in a more authoritarian direction, getting his police to raid media organisations in Tbilisi, and losing the elections in October 2012 to the rival Georgian Dream party led by the Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. The former president subsequently went into exile to escape prosecution on corruption charges claiming that these were politically motivated by his opponents. He ended up as a Ukrainian citizen and in charge of a Ukrainian city before falling out with his new host country as well. Yet, Georgia Dream initially stayed on the same pro-NATO and EU course as Saakashvili’s United National Movement, despite trade sanctions imposed on the country by Moscow impacting its wine and agriculture exports and Georgians living and working in Russia. As Tbilisi continued its institutional and economic reforms, ambassadors at NATO HQ were often heard proclaiming that Georgia was already sounding and acting “just like an ally”. Georgia also presented some strategic arguments to highlight its importance to the West: as an energy corridor allowing the EU to access oil and gas from the Caucasus and Central Asia, bypassing Russia, a source of hydro-electric power and a stabilising presence and bridge builder in a Caucasus riven by tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

A decade later, it all looks very different. Georgia has just held its national elections, presented by many Georgians as make-or-break in terms of the country’s future strategic direction: towards Europe or towards Russia. Georgian Dream has been declared the winner by the country’s Central Election Commission with 54% of the vote. The counting of votes by Georgians living abroad may yet have a bearing on this figure, but it is certainly not in line with the initial exit polls announced on Georgian television channels which pointed to a victory of the opposition.  International election observers sent by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Parliament and the National Democratic Institute were quick to point to irregularities in the voting, such as the intimidation of public sector workers and poorer voters dependent on government welfare. Some voters claimed that they had been offered payments of $110 to vote for Georgian Dream. Pushing back, the Central Election Commission maintains that only 11 irregularities were identified in the 3,000 polling stations across the country. Subsequently, and under pressure, the Central Election Commission has ordered a recount in 14 electoral districts selected at random. Yet the opposition is crying foul, speaking of massive electoral fraud, ballot stuffing and of a “constitutional coup”. It is not yet clear how the opposition will respond. Presenting clear evidence of fraud that swung the election towards Georgian Dream and invalidated the real result will no doubt be key in mobilising protest on the streets and garnering international support. Already the President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, who was originally nominated by Georgian Dream but has long broken with the party, has denounced the Russian interference as part of a special Russian operation and called for protests against the government for election fraud. The main opposition parties that formed a coalition for the elections will also need to stick together in the aftermath as they did for the campaign itself. They may well boycott the new parliament. The President too, although occupying a largely ceremonial position, will need to be the rallying figure for the opposition. The problem here is that winning the election was always going to be a big ask for the opposition, given that Georgian Dream has been in power for 12 years and has taken over many of the levers of state power and patronage. It also clearly has majority support (as much as 90% according to the polling results) in rural areas where local subsidies and welfare payments feature much more prominently in voter priorities than NATO or EU integration. In Tbilisi by contrast, its support hovered around the 40% mark. Most outside observers and many Georgians themselves expected some electoral shenanigans by Georgian Dream given the increasingly heavy-handed and anti-liberal way that it has governed the country in recent years. Yet if it emerges that Georgian Dream has practiced fraud on a major scale, and yet continues in power unrestrained, the Brussels institutions and diplomats across the transatlantic community will conclude that Georgia is not only a fragile democracy but no longer a democracy at all. Its unanchoring from the West could then become definitive.

This would indeed be a tragic outcome for a country where 80% of the population supports EU membership, no matter how distant, and whose constitution commits the country to EU and NATO integration. Georgian Dream has long insisted that it is still committed to this goal (and even thinks that 2030 is an achievable target date), but that it has to be part of a balanced relationship with its neighbour to the north, and military occupying force, Russia. Georgian Dream ministers, visiting Brussels and other western capitals, have long complained that their policies are misrepresented and misunderstood. For instance, that Saakashvili, who returned to Georgia in 2021 from Ukraine, was sentenced to a six-year term for abuse of power, and subsequently alleged that attempts have been made to poison him in prison was properly tried in a fair judicial process according to a verdict from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Be that as it may, the European Parliament has passed resolutions calling for his release. Another argument is that the government has continued to align Georgia’s institutions and economy with EU standards, following the requirements of the 35 individual EU negotiating chapters. When it comes to addressing EU priorities, the government has developed a list of statistics to demonstrate that Georgia is in the global top 50 rankings when it comes to respect for the rule of law, fighting corruption, combating crime and bribery and countering terrorism. In some areas, such as fighting crime and government integrity, it even claims to be in the top 10 in Europe and a leader in the Black Sea/Caucasus region. Georgian diplomats are at pains to point out that the government has aligned itself with innumerable EU foreign policy declarations as well as UN, OSCE and Council of Europe documents and resolutions. Where it has been reluctant to do so, it claims that this is not to give Russia a case for advocating self-determination in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In the area of security, these diplomats point to the deployment of Georgian troops in the Central African Republic a few years ago as part of the EU’s training mission. The Georgian government has played down the importance of recent legislative moves such as the law against foreign funding of NGOs, claiming that the law applies only to NGOs receiving more than 20% of their overall funding this way, and that the measure is designed mainly to keep out Russian money. It portrays the law as an administrative rather than a criminal measure. Furthermore, it says that no police raids have subsequently been carried out or that NGOs have been closed down or their assets seized. This said, in recent days, the police has raided the homes of two researchers from the Washington-based Atlantic Council and the Tbilisi office of the US tech firm, Concentrix. The key argument of the government is that continuing differences between Brussels and Tbilisi only benefit Russia. Moscow has denied interfering in the elections with its usual menu of disinformation activities and under-the-table funding. Ivanishvili’s close links with Russia, where he lived for several years and made his fortune, have only increased suspicions of collusion with Moscow. Ivanishvili served as Prime Minister for only a year but since then, he has been the very visible backseat driver of the Georgian government. Certainly Putin’s camp has made no secret of its support for Georgian Dream. Sergei Naryishkin, Director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, directly called on Georgians to vote for “healthy, patriotic forces”.  News of Georgian Dream’s victory was greeted instantaneously by Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia Today, as a correct vote, claiming that all Georgians were the winners. It was unwise of Russian officials to make these statements as it has only increased the conviction of the Georgian opposition that Russia had been involved in meddling.

Yet the sincerity of Georgian Dream’s western orientation has been undermined by its actions. The law on the foreign funding of NGOs was pushed through the parliament despite massive street protests lasting for months and the rejection of the opposition. It seemed modelled on a similar law passed by the Russian Duma. And this despite the strong messages from the EU as to the consequences for Georgia’s relationship with Brussels. Last July, Georgia’s EU membership process was put on hold by the Commission; as well as the UK suspending its bilateral security dialogue with Tbilisi. Insult to injury was added by another law restricting the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. Georgian Dream has conspicuously refused to align itself with the NATO and EU support to Ukraine in its resistance to its Russian invasion. Although the government claims to have provided humanitarian aid to Kyiv, it has refused to impose the Western sanctions against Moscow, and has portrayed its neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine  conflict as a sort of political triumph. During the election campaign, posters appeared all over Georgia showing, in one half, images of a destroyed Ukraine in black and white, and in the other half, images of a prosperous, peaceful Georgia in technicolour. Reappearing for the campaign, Ivanishvili described the opposition as part and parcel of the West’s “Global War Party”, implying that an opposition victory would make Georgia suffer the same terrible fate as its neighbour across the Black Sea. Election rhetoric is, of course, one thing, but Georgia Dream’s policy of balancing between west and east has been taking a decidedly pro-Moscow tilt. Not only has the EU refused to open negotiations with Georgia, in contrast to Ukraine and Moldova, but all the current discussions on Ukraine receiving an invitation to join NATO have not had any parallel when it comes to Georgia becoming a NATO member too. Allegations that Georgian Dream has turned a blind eye to Moscow using Georgia as a transit country to obtain sanctioned goods has not helped in this regard. This said, the alliance has not so far cancelled its 2008 Bucharest commitment.

The democratic backsliding of Georgia is serious enough when it comes to the strategy of NATO and the EU to project security and stability to their Eastern Neighbourhood, a project already severely compromised by Russia’s destruction of Ukraine and occupation of 20% of its territory. But the timing has been made even worse by the recent elections and referendum in Moldova, where the runoff will be held next Sunday, 3 November. In the first round of the elections, the pro-EU President, Maia Sandu, emerged as the leading candidate with 42% of the vote, but well short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff against her main rival, Alexandr Stoianoglo, of the pro-Russia PSRM party, who came in on 26%. Of concern is the fact that the candidates finishing third, fourth, fifth and sixth all represented pro-Russia parties with the next pro-EU candidate only coming in in seventh place. At the same time, a referendum to anchor the goal of EU membership in the Moldovan Constitution produced a wafer-thin majority at just over 50%. This was a surprising result given that opinion polls for several years have shown a strong level of support for the EU. Moldova is different from Georgia in that it has a government which is pro-EU (although Moldova is not seeking NATO membership), and that it has opened membership negotiations with the European Commission. Yet there are similarities too in the current situation; one is the role of oligarchs and private wealth in political life. Moldova has to deal with Ilan Shor who once was involved in Moldovan politics with his populist Shor Party, but has since been living in Moscow after being arraigned in Moldova on corruption charges, particularly the theft of €1bn from the National Bank. He has poured money into the anti-Europe campaign in the country, as has Russia, according to multiple sources. Voters in rural areas have emerged from polling booths asking where they can collect the 1,000 roubles promised to them for giving their vote to pro-Russian politicians. Like Georgia, Moldova has suffered sustained Russian disinformation campaigns and well-funded pro-Russian TV channels and social media influencers. It is equally a territorially as well as politically-divided country, with Russian forces occupying the breakaway region of Transnistria since Moldova’s independence in 1991. The urban-rural divide is also pronounced. If President Sandu is reelected on Sunday, the EU will heave a sigh of relief, as it did two weeks ago after the close referendum result. But it will not be easy for the EU to proceed with EU integration with a deeply divided society, where the EU is contested by a significant part of the population and pro-Russian forces can win the elections at any moment and apply the brakes. The situation in Serbia is not so very different but there the firm grip of President Alexander Vučić (who has recently pivoted closer to Europe and refused to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan last week) means that he can pull the nationalist forces behind him towards the EU, if he so decides. As a result, Ukraine is now the only country in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood where the political forces are overwhelmingly oriented towards the West, an orientation made only stronger by Moscow’s brutal aggression against the country. Paradoxically, the loss of territory inhabited by Russian speakers in the Crimea and Donbas regions will make Ukraine more Ukrainian, albeit still with many Russian-speaking citizens, but no longer with separatist entities that could have paralysed the Ukrainian Constitution and provided a blocking minority at the service of Moscow in Kyiv’s attempts to move closer to the EU; though saying this is certainly not to suggest that Ukraine is not entitled to regain its full territorial sovereignty under international law which has been violated by Russia on three occasions since 2014. Yet, we must also recognise that this eventuality would at least initially recreate the same kind of divided society as we see in Georgia and Moldova. But at least the Russian-occupied and controlled enclaves and the old pro-Russia Party of the Regions of former President Viktor Yanukovych would disappear.

Because the Georgian opposition itself has characterised last Saturday’s election as “make-or-break” for the country’s European future, it may well be tempting for diplomats at the EU and NATO to follow the same line and sadly conclude that Georgia has been lost to the West and should henceforth be dropped from the Euro-Atlantic integration process.  But this would be a grave mistake, and a betrayal of the four opposition parties within the country and the vibrant civil society that, like its counterpart on the Maidan in Kyiv back in 2014, has consistently turned out to make its wish for a European future clear. Georgian Dream also claims that this is its policy, and after the election even announced that the EU was its priority. So both NATO and the EU have to come up with a strategy to hold the government’s feet to the fire, and ideally work together and coordinate their actions to make this strategy effective.

In the first place, they should put Georgian Dream under strong pressure to carry out a joint investigation with reputable international election oversight mechanisms, such as the OSCE and the Council of Europe, to fully probe election irregularities. The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, NATO, and the EU High Representative, Josep Borrell, have all called for such an investigation. Borrell has usefully added that Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, does not represent the EU in dashing to Tbilisi to congratulate Georgian Dream even before the full election results are known. The EU and NATO member states should freeze their relations with Georgian Dream until the joint investigation has been carried out, the evidence analysed and the conclusions published. Where irregularities such as ballot stuffing, illegal payments or violent intimidation of voters is identified the elections in the districts concerned should be rerun under international supervision.

But the second leg of the strategy needs to be continued engagement with the Georgian government. Isolating it will only give it an excuse to move even closer to Moscow. Where Georgian Dream requests technical help from the EU, it should be given. This has been the case for instance with the advice that the legal service of the European Commission has consistently given to Tbilisi on the rule of law. NATO too needs to step up its engagement with the Georgian armed forces through joint exercises and work on airspace management, equipment standardisation and interoperability. Georgia’s military needs to be formed in NATO’s military academies, and not in Moscow or Minsk, in order to maintain a Western orientation. Members of parliament need to acquire the knowledge and mandate to exert effective democratic control and maintain the neutrality of the armed forces, at least as far as domestic politics are concerned. Both the EU and NATO need to beef up their diplomatic and military representations in Tbilisi and have senior envoys posted there who can maintain channels of communication with both government and opposition and send regular assessments back to Brussels. We should not just wait for the Commission’s annual report on EU enlargement candidates, but keep the spotlight focused more regularly on Georgia.  Foreign and defence ministers need to visit Tbilisi more often to engage Georgian Dream (if indeed it is to remain in power for four more years ) and leave it in no doubt as to what its Western partners expect from it. Allowing peaceful demonstrations and respecting the freedom of the press should be at the top of the wish list. The Council of Europe needs to establish a special mechanism to monitor the law on the foreign funding of NGOs to see if the government uses it stealthily to choke civil society and stifle criticism. Something similar is needed when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights within the country and human rights more generally. The narrative of Georgian Dream that its actions are reasonable and often misunderstood by the international community needs to be challenged more vigorously. Violations of democratic norms and standards need to be met with protest and exposure but also with some form of sanction, such as asset freezes on government ministers, travel bans or lowering the levels of diplomatic contacts. For more egregious violations, economic sanctions can be applied but targeted carefully on specific demands, such as changes to laws or the compensation of victims.

Third and finally: incentives. The EU has decided not to begin accession negotiations with Georgia, although it is an EU candidate country. As mentioned, NATO has also gone quiet on Tbilisi’s membership in the alliance. These retreats may be justified given the attachment of both institutions to liberal and democratic values and Georgia’s recent backsliding. But the carrot is often more useful than the stick, particularly when it comes to giving a country like Georgia something to lose. Getting Georgia into concrete negotiations with Brussels with milestones to meet and concrete reform and transformation commitments to deliver is a good way of entangling Georgian Dream into everyday EU business and giving EU officials and national diplomats a firmer footing in intervening in Georgia’s domestic affairs whenever a guiding hand becomes necessary. It can also help the opposition to hold the government to account and to enhance the scrutiny role of Parliament. So the EU Council should agree to open two or three of the accession chapters to Georgia once the election imbroglio has been sorted out in a satisfactory way. Things that are important to the EU as well as Georgia, such as energy, agriculture and financial services could be chosen. The EU needs to pull Georgia away from the Russian market in areas such as wine and farm exports and make it more resilient against the Russian trade sanctions that will inevitably follow a closer alignment of Tbilisi with Brussels. Similarly, and as it approaches its next summit in The Hague next June, NATO should take a fresh look at its Annual National Plan for Georgia and the country’s progress in the alliance’s Membership Action Plan. It should work on a package of additional measures, equipment, and financial support, training and exercises that can further integrate the Georgian military into NATO standards and structures, including the NATO command structure and military HQs in Mons, Belgium and Norfolk, Virginia.

If Georgia does indeed decide to turn its back on Europe and rescind its constitutional commitments to integrate NATO and the EU, and integrate into the Russian orbit and its fledgling institutions, then of course all bets are off. There is only so much that benevolent outsiders can do to influence a country’s trajectory. Ultimately, nations have to decide their own future themselves and live with the consequences of their wise or foolish choices. But we are not there yet. A country sitting on the fence can still fall in either direction. So the message of the Georgian election is that it is time to reengage, not disengage.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.