The Atlantic On Favourable Terms: Why Georgia’s Colour Revolution Really Matters

Galway To Tbilisi By 2030

Fresh-faced and TikTock savvy twenty something year olds getting water cannoned on the cobbled streets of a post-Soviet capital city.

Stern statements from both Brussels and the U.S. State Department, and even our own Iveagh House, about the rule of law and nascent Putinism within a government at odds with the West.

A contradictory coalition of Russophobic nationalists, gay friendly europhiles, anti-corruption journalists and Atlantic facing businessmen clubbed together by backroom NGOs and spooky sounding think tanks.

Yes, all the hallmarks of a colour revolution are on show in Tbilisi this week as an ensemble of oddball political elements combine to kill a prospective ‘foreign agents law’ sliding through the Georgian Parliament at the behest of ruling oligarchs.

Born out of legitimate concerns from the governing Georgian Dream Party that the country’s labyrinth of Western-funded NGOs will force the Orthodox nation entirely beneath the heel of the EU’s and US’ social and foreign policy agenda, the statute mandates that “civil society entities” must declare their funding and register with the state.

An effective red rag to a bull considering Georgia’s NGO empire financed by the European Commission, World Bank, USAID, and the UN, thousands took to the streets  correctly detecting that the legislation was an act of entrenchment by the Dream Party even if claims of direct Russian meddling are unfounded.

Following similar demonstrations last year that temporarily killed the Bill the Georgian government, likely influenced by poor news for Ukraine on the Eastern front spelling the end of the Zelensky dream, was emboldened to try again.

This touched a raw nerve with Georgian youth already on the cusp of mass emigration to the West for economic reasons who are rightly peeved at decades of mismanagement as the country commences a six year journey to EU membership.

Conscious of 2014’s Euromaidan experience, and with a worrisome eye on Russian-backed separatists in the north, Washington and Brussels push ahead hoping not to repeat the mistakes of Ukraine and a repeat of another dirty war against the Muscovite state. Colour revolutions can lead to real war as Ukraine showed.

To explain how tear gas outside the Georgian Parliament may impact us all in the coming decades lets begin with a refresher course on the recent history of the nation that birthed Stalin and a disproportionate number of Ireland’s asylum seekers.

Defying simplistic ideological terms, the street battles and urban blockades in Tbilisi will dictate the direction of travel for the EU with Irish citizens expected to be in the same economic, political and de facto military bloc as Georgia by 2030 in an increasingly Byzantine geopolitical EU gearing up for the multipolar world.

While prospective Fine Gael MEPs twaddle on about CAP payments and contrarian socialists make hollow stands about Irish ‘neutrality’ a new EU is being hammered out on Georgian streets with the fastracked integration of post-communist states like Georgia, Serbia and even Armenia by 2030 changing the calculus of the bloc forever.

The next chapter of the EU story may stretch from the Donegal foothills to the borderpasses of Azerbijain by decade’s end should Eurocrats pull off this wave of expansion; the terms on which Georgia enters the union a factor in how the bloc will develop ideologically more than most realise.

To survive, the EU will have to evolve into something be less defined by French civil servants and pantsuit feminists harping on about climate change but an agile military-focused union deadset about securing breathing room from China, Russia and the United States.

The goings on in Tbilisi matter more than they appear for this reason and with that lets untangle the recent history of Ireland’s would-be EU partner.

Georgia for Dummies

Not quite as badly bruised from communism as its imperial master, post-Berlin Wall Georgian elites nevertheless had to deal with the inevitable issues of currency instability, runaway inflation and ethnic chaos in the northern Abkhazia and South Ossetia provinces in the first decade of independence.

Previously favoured as a bolthole for Soviet uppercrusts, Georgia was distinguished by being the USSR’s wealthiest republic with its sunkissed dachas tucked away from the Stalinist vortex that sent so many millions to death by Gulag. 

Georgian nationalism never gave the Kremlin any sleepless nights in part motivated by the nationality of Stalin himself as the country acted as a Costa del Sol equivalent for Politburo insiders complimented by hydro-electric power generation and a vibrant mining industry.

Nevertheless in classic post-Soviet fashion Georgia was (and is) without the fundamentals of a free society when that economic stepladder was kicked from under it and very quickly collapsed into parochial gangsterism upon the demise of the command and control economy that fared the land better than most in the USSR.

The transition from socialist satrap to market democracy was complicated by the ambiguous death of the state’s founding father Zviad Gamsakhurdia, likely knocked off as part of a botched palace coup in 1993 with power passing to pragmatic ex-Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze who chartered a flawed but pragmatic course between East and West.

Allegations of rigged elections and economic stagnancy resulted in Shevardnadze being ousted in the so-called Rose Revolution of 2003 precipitating the election of the pro-NATO firebrand Mikheil Saakashvili with a revanchist Russia using the 2008 Olympic Games as a smokescreen to assert its stake in South Ossetia by force of arms.

During this period the on-the-ground presence of Western and largely liberal leaning NGOs multiplied entering the civic space vacated by the dysfunctional Georgian state in the areas of health, education and economic management.

Ending the war with Russia with a white peace and inching its way closer and closer towards NATO and the savoury economic prospect of EU membership Saakashvili  served out his term with relative success but endemic corruption and accusations cronyism stirred up disquiet in the nation’s oligarchic class.

This disenchantment catapulted charismatic mining executive cum real estate tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream Party to high office with the party in power to this day and now being tarred with accusations of being Kremlin footmen.  

Regardless of who is prime minister Ivanishvili remains the man behind the throne in Georgian politics noted for his recent criticism of western decadence and LGBT fanaticism. Indicative of a generation of post-Soviet moneymen who have grown more cynical with the West and with business ties to Russia a conservative veneer has appeared around Ivanishvili and his plutocratic clique.

To recap.

Broadly speaking, the trajectory of Georgia politically, economically and socially since 1991 has been a bumpy ride towards westernisation bouncing from flawed reformer to even more flawed reformer as it balances a natural nationalist yearning to escape the orbit of Moscow without offending established business interests who prefer the Russian connection. 

Certain comparisons could be made between ourselves and entering the European community to deleverage from the UK with Ireland’s Dev-era semi-protectionist economy and even our natural law constitution liquidated to enter the Euro club. 

Similar to Ireland and the institutional overthrow of republican and Catholic mores up to and including the Repeal of the 8th amendment Georgia’s Rose Revolution built up personal relations between local liberals and the Democratic wing of the US foreign policy establishment with George Soros in particular playing the Georgian equivalent of Chuck Feeney.

Labour organiser Sopo Japaridze has a decidedly cynical take on this resultant NGO Republic on collision course with the country’s oligarchic class as one with few heroes. 

“In this ecosystem, it is rare to find someone who genuinely cares about people and their well-being. The local NGO landscape is a deeply competitive sector that incentivizes sharp elbows, self-promotion, and duplication rather than collaboration, let alone solidarity. For many industry professionals, working in an NGO is a fast track to high incomes, perks like foreign travel and embassy receptions, and being part of the elite….Fundamentally, any government’s growing suspicion of foreign donors’ motives for funding hyper-partisan NGOs will only be fueled by forcing the government, via escalating threats, to continue letting such funding in. This is a game of chicken that could go very dark.”

Georgia’s journey from Yelstin-era clown economy to eventual EU candidate status hit the skids the moment Russian armour crossed the Ukrainian frontier in 2022 forcing the country to commit to European and NATO integration once and for all and arguably ten years before it should have been allowed to considering its rickety and corruption-prone economy nevermind border tensions with Russia.

Lest they become a new space of chaos between the Kremlin and the West, becoming an effective Ukraine 2.0 Georgia like the Western Balkans is now in an unplanned bolt to become an EU member state thus forcing a rethink on Europe’s Concert of Nations on the cusp of multipolarity.

Orbánism on Ice

Firstly it is worth dispensing with any illusion of what the Georgian elite actually are ideologically.

Despite appearing alongside the European populist right at the recent CPAC convention in CPAC the Dream Party are merely a tribe of business interests only against the NGOs and EU intervention in so far as it impinges on their economic stake in the country and risk of being ousted in the new Euro-order Georgia is embracing.

They are neither Russian stooges as alleged by revolting NGOs or knights in shining armour for detached nationalists peeking in from the West, but crude operators only recently putting on a cloak of social conservatism as it suits them.

NGOs are pushing an open door by rallying the populace against eye watering corruption, with the Dream Party building its power off a tower of clientlist protectionism comparable to the recently ousted Law and Justice Party in Poland. And its worth remembering that these towers fall hard.

Despite recent ultranationalist splits from the Dream Parts it's not an easy choice for normal Georgians to pass up the chance of EU integration, especially considering the relatively booming economies of Poland, Romania, and other Eastern European countries that made the transition to Brussels’ orbit. 

Georgia has spent most of its national life under the yoke of various Asiatic and Islamic empires from the Mongols to Soviet commissioners and for good reason sees the EU as a mealticket away from a grey-world of cronyism where your economic future is decided by status and ability to placate capricious party officials.

A failure to make the leap into the EU could and likely would leave Georgia exposed to a revanchist Russia after a now probable victory against Kyiv with Putin and friends eager to tip over the table militarily using the excuse of northern separatism should the need arise.

A perpetual prison of nations, whatever line Vladimir Putin spins to gullible American talk show hosts, future reliance on Russia only invites Georgia to be sucked into an Eurasianist bloc and the prospect of Chechen war bands crossing their frontiers should they fail to comply.

Georgia should and will move towards political westernisation with the antebellum equilibrium forever shattered after 2022, but the question is under what terms and how can Western populists use it to benefit them against increasingly centralised and deranged Eurocrats?

The End of Monnet’s Europe

Throughout its history, the EU has lured prospective members into the fold largely due to the rule-based liberal order it embodied and the Franco-German economic engine that powered the Common Market. This was an obvious path for battered Eastern European polities who overlooked the institutionalised liberalism the EU demanded on social policy and denationalisation of society.

Now that status quo is melting away as German industrial might crumbles, France’s colonial machine falters, and Western Europe at large is consumed by an existential migrant crisis egged on by ideological freaks in the halls of power. European liberalism doesn’t produce the same results as it did ten, twenty years ago this side of the euro crisis.

Eastern Europe, led by Poland, is coming into its own after twenty years of adjustment and economic liberalisation, with the United States gradually disengaging from Europe to prepare for an epoch-defining conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

The invasion of Ukraine was a kick to the groin for Eurocrats who now wish to complete the process of gobbling up member states into a federal union on double time to fend off a multipolar world, with Macron elucidating the frailty of the European project in a new world of bloc politics only last week.

“Our Europe could die. It could die if it does not maintain its borders. If it does not know how to respond to external risks in terms of security, It can die if it becomes dependent on others. If it cannot produce in order to create wealth and redistribute it.” 

Simultaneously, European populists and wayward conservative states like Slovakia and Hungary have realised Brussels is more bark than bite without the political hardware to stamp its authority on even medium-sized nations should institutions (judiciary, media, intelligence agencies, central banks) be in control of the national government.

More importantly, smart money knows that the budding EU membership of relatively conservative-leaning nations such as Serbia or Georgia presents not just an anchor on Franco-German-led liberalism but a way to water it down.

The Europe of 2030 will almost certainly be in a sea of chaos in a looming Cold War between Washington and Beijing and an onslaught of migration from the Global South as an unprepared geriatric continent living off America’s coattails begins to face up to the modern world.

EU elites know they have a small window until 2030 to break down conservative elites in the Western Balkans and Caucasus before they take their place at the table in Brussels. From pure logistical term the European Council, where member states navigate foreign policy simply cannot work with 30 plus members in challenging geopolitical times with Macron offering a more decentralised ‘stages of Europe’ to compensate.

Failure to integrate these nations into the EU, Brussels knows, will open up a space of chaos for Russia and potentially more radical and China-oriented nationalist governments in the future so it is now a question of getting the likes of Georgia and Serbia into the union on the best of terms for progressives.

In the aftermath of the Ukraine failure, Orbán and fellow travellers envision a future illiberal bloc acting within the heart of power in the EU or adjacent pan-European organisations of conservative Eastern European countries combined with Western European populists likely in power by 2030. 

If all goes well, this duo will be complemented by conservative Serbian, Armenian, and Georgian governments, fully entrenched in power, who will hold the fort against any lingering liberal attempts to relegate sovereigntist states.

On the flipside a scenario where liberal NGOs triumph in Serbia or Armenia means one where they are copper fastened to Western liberalism.

Serbia especially offers the prospect of a blank canvas for Orbánism to flourish with its irredentist ruling class and post-Yugoslavian gripe against Western, where similar attempts at colour revolution are being tried presently alongside Slovakia.

The next wave of EU expansion paradoxically poses the end for unipolar liberalism in Europe, where Eurocrats will be forced to either vaporise national conservative governments from Bratislava to Tbilisi permanently or come to a compromise with them as populists in Western Europe gear up for power.

For all the many imperfections and gangsterism of contemporary Georgian politics, the immediate survival of the Georgian Dream Party is to our benefit. Orbánism is now for export, and a very ill-equipped Europe is waking up to the fact that the nationalist right may take ownership of the European project in the geopolitical wreckage of liberalism.