Eurasia note #90: Manoeuvres In Georgia; The Opposition’s Plan

EU and U.S. behind NGO protests - Georgia-EU Part 2

• Activist chatter: seeking sanctions on ruling Georgian Dream politicians

• ‘De Russification’ of Georgia, as happened in Ukraine, with same results

• A ‘constitutional coup’ in Oct 2024 and the ‘decentralisation’ of Tbilisi rule

• Georgia, like Ukraine, sits on historic trade routes that are being revived

• Business corridors could benefit the people or shunt them aside

• Trans-Caspian seen as an alternative to Russia, for goods and energy

• Politicians largely agree on closer ties to Europe and a wary stance towards Russia

• So why the sound and fury of two weeks’ protests?

• Players much bigger than Georgia have their eye on future leaders

• Realpolitik has a dose of "might makes right" - regional bullies are the policemen

• EU and UN can hardly use that as a strategy for nation building

• Net Zero might do the job, financialise nature, grab land in the future

See also:
Eurasia note #91: What Is This Europe That Georgia Would Join? (May 7, 2024)
Eurasia note #90: Manoeuvres In Georgia; The Opposition’s Plan (May 3, 2024)
Eurasia note #89: Georgia, Beware An Offer Of ‘Ukraine 2014' (Apr 29, 2024)

Eurasia note #84: Georgia Warns U.S.-Backed Groups Plotting Unrest (Oct 04, 2023)
Eurasia note #83 - Tragedy As Armenians Flee Karabakh (Sep 26, 2023)
Georgia's Colourful Riot Not Yet Revolution (Mar 08, 2023)
Europe, Gas And The Endgame - Switching energy flow from East-West (Sep 30, 2022)

(3,000 words or a quarter hour of your fortitude.)

Same street theatre; similar objectives

Tbilisi, May 3, 2024

Hope and change

Protests in Tbilisi are dominated by slogans, and expressions of longing and desire. There is not much political depth on the street.

People express hope to join the European Union, but more as a move away from Russia. Georgians have been staunch supporters of Ukraine in the war.

Many seek economic change, better jobs, and higher pay: prior to these riots the longest running protest on the street was the food delivery drivers, who make as little as $1 per journey working for companies like Wolt.

However, yoking European Union membership to the issue of NGO funding has just been a way for the NGOs to attract bigger crowds.

Georgia is already in talks to join the EU, and the Georgian Dream party is committed like all careerist politicians to the project.

As for the slogan “the Russian law” promoted by the NGO Transparency International, this is yet more misdirection. The question is why and for whom.

U.S.-style transparency

There have been two weeks of protest against a bill that would expose any NGO that gets more than 20 per cent of its income from outside the country.

The country that loudly denounces Georgia’s bill, is the one that invented it: the United States. [1]

The toughest such requirements are those of the U.S., but that did not stop U.S State Department assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs Jim O’Brien expressing strong concerns over the “draft Kremlin-inspired foreign influence law.”

The U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) defines "foreign agents" as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons. FARA includes anyone who:

• Engages within the United States in political activities, such as intending to influence any U.S. Government official or the American public...

• regarding U.S. domestic or foreign policy or the political or public interests of a foreign government or foreign political party;

• Acts within the United States as a public relations counsel, publicity agent, information service employee, or political consultant.

In addition to FARA, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) allows anyone who may associate with a foreign entity to be put on a watch list and investigated for providing "material support" to entities abroad.

See Censorship Is About Money And Power - Truth & Servitude Part 2. From propaganda to crackdown: follow the dosh (Apr 22, 2024)

If the U.S., a country of 330 million people, considers foreign-funded entities a dangerous influence, what of Georgia, a country of 3 million? In an ideal world such laws would be unnecessary; so let us see.

Deeper threat

The most vocal complainers in Georgia include top NGOs like Berlin-based Transparency International.

In our last article we pointed out that Georgia’s “Foreign Influence Transparency Bill” is similar to one that NGOs and Western ambassadors defeated in Ukraine in 2017.

See Eurasia note #89: Georgia, Beware An Offer Of ‘Ukraine 2014' - Foreign-funded NGOs work outside the electoral process (Apr 29, 2024)

Since parties agree on closer ties to Europe and a wary stance towards Russia, even while self interest demands they keep the borders open, why two weeks of increasingly violent protests?

And why were those protests led by the NGOs — more than 400 of which signed a statement opposing the bill?

Because the money needed to build a political power base, in a country where most citizens don’t have money to spare for political causes, is most readily available to NGOs, from abroad!

Politicians in Georgian Dream may wish to embarrass NGOs that they consider loyal to their rivals, but with all politicians benefitting from their money and international connections, NGOs aren’t going away. Players much bigger than Georgia have their eye on future leaders.

This suggests something more threatening and potentially more dangerous for all of Europe. Something to share with subscribers after the paywall.

We are not seeing a choice between political parties, but rather the ground is being prepared to install individuals who will follow the pattern of Ukraine in the past 10 years.

See the reporting of former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the creation and installation of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and, more importantly, his handlers.

See Eurasia note #81: Mercenary Leader Disappears In Plane Explosion - Wagner Group Yevgeniy Prigozhin's phone is found (Aug 24, 2023)

Yearning for union

What is this EU they seek to join?

It is the European Commission that is wedded to expansion, as a route out of its problems. Since the financial crisis of 2008 the EU has seen little growth; if France and Germany joined the USA they would be the poorest states.

The single currency, the euro, has never rivalled the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency and thus Brussels cannot solve its problems with cheap money as does Washington.

Mistakes at the creation of the single currency only made things worse (see Part Three, upcoming).

Guy Verhofstadt MEP challenged Ursula von der Leyen who is seeking a second term as president: no expansion without reform.

The EU stands at 27 members. The objective is now 36.

The members joining in 2004 were Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Croatia joined in 2013, Britain left in 2020 (but remains part of the European security architecture.)

The next round of expansion is anticipated to include Georgia, and what the EC calls the Western Balkans, which includes the former Yugoslavia – (Croatia has already joined), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo - and Albania.

As former communist countries, sometimes called transition economies, the EC requires them to demonstrate economic convergence, while reducing the corruption that frequently characterised the redistribution of Soviet-era assets.

It is this push-pull that frustrates populations in countries such as Georgia: they think EU membership would bring them higher incomes, and yet the country needs to increase job opportunities and earnings in order to get there. And the government knows that what would follow EU membership would be even greater emigration.

The slow progress in building institutions is the wall they need to climb — the one that Georgians are currently hurling themselves against and daubing with slogans.

War or politics

Overlapping this is the military imperative given new impetus by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The European Security Architecture maps NATO's objectives on top of the EU.

Russia has a military presence in Transnistria, a breakaway territory of Moldova, and Georgia regards it as an occupier in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Military objectives are playing as much of a role, if not more, than a desire for economic integration.

Ukraine applied for EU membership on Feb 28, 2022, four days after Russia’s invasion. Moldova and Georgia followed the next month.

The European Council — the heads of state, not to be confused with the Council of Europe (human rights) or the Council of the European Union (ministerial) — began Ukraine’s membership process with rare haste.

Who and what

So if we are being misinformed about the foreign influence bill, and disinformed by the status of Georgia’s accession to the European Union, what else are we missing?