Georgia Next In Brussel's Conquest

EurasiaNote 98 - EU's expansion driven by internal crisis

Oct 26, 2024

Georgia’s election portrayed as choice between Russia and West
EU and U.S. interfere in Georgia election, cancelling aid, traducing government
Pro-American is one thing, but Atlanticist is quite another
Georgia signed its EU/NATO allegiance into constitution but still Europe shouts
‘Pro-Russia!’ — so we ask what it is the war-o-crats want
Waiting for the EU to shape Georgia’s destiny would be waiting in vain

Latest Georgia series:
Europe's Parallel Reality: C02 And Degrowth - Turning nature into currency is a plan for a mercantile feudalism (May 09, 2024)
What Is This Europe That Georgia Would Join? (May 7, 2024)
Manoeuvres In Georgia; The Opposition’s Plan (May 3, 2024)
Georgia, Beware An Offer Of ‘Ukraine 2014' (Apr 29, 2024)

(2,900 words or about 12 minutes of your company)

Tbilisi’s protestors cannot rely on Europe to give them meaning

UPDATE:
Georgia’s opposition is refusing to accept the election results and hinting at trying a coup.

The incumbent Georgian Dream party is in the lead at 52.99 per cent against a combined total of 38.4 per cent received by opposition parties. Some votes have yet to arrive from overseas.

The Georgian government says the vote was well-organized, free, with electronic voting machines fully protected by international observers.

For the opposition: "We the Coalition 4 Change consider the October 26 elections in Georgia illegitimate. It's stolen elections and a constitutional coup. Our position will not be revised.

"We have identified the mass fraud mechanism employed by the Georgian Dream... These elections will not have any internal or international legitimacy. The Georgian Dream will be unable to rule this country, and they will have to concede defeat."

Tbilisi, Oct 26, 2024

Georgia is not immune to the popular rebellion that is sweeping much of Europe, concerned about war and economic uncertainty.

Like the people of Hungary and Slovakia, eastern Germany, France and Austria, the European Commission pigeonholes them into the "awkward squad" or those leaders or voters who dare act out of national concern.

The headlines are simplistic: Georgia votes in election seen as stark choice between Russia and West, says my former employer, Reuters.

Brussels and Washington withdrew hundreds of millions in funding from Georgia just weeks before the election, seeking to punish the incumbent Georgian Dream party for seeking to expose the financing of foreign aid agencies and thus the extent of their influence on society.

Yet Georgia's parties are near universal in their support for EU and NATO membership. The objective of membership is even an article of the Constitution.

This election campaign has seen a steady stream of members of the European Parliament and even foreign ministers take part in demonstrations against the government of Georgian Dream (GD).

The might of the Brussels Commission, NATO in the form of some of its most hawkish members, and the billionaire international foundations is pitted against a country of three million people for not following policies about which the globalists are not themselves transparent.

As we'll see it is the European Union's failure to get its own house in order that drives its saviour complex — the 21st century version of the White man’s burden

Brussel’s answer to internal financial contradictions — it’s never passed an audit — is endless expansion, which aligns with NATO's eastward march.

If there was no conflict with Russia, the EC and NATO would have to create one — which is arguably what they did in 2014. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel told Die Zeit on Dec 7, 2022, “The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.”

It is also why Washington rejected Moscow's ambitions in the 1990s to join the European institutions.

See Ukraine: The War Everyone Saw Coming - The dispossession of human and mineral in the service of Monsanto-Bayer (May 05, 2023)

The European bureaucracy reserves its greatest hostility for countries that are trying to carve a national identity out of their Soviet experience — yet the Commission has little to offer it its place, since it failed to create a European identity. [1]

It seems almost to be scared of the collective. Even the Atlanticist think tank Carnegie Europe asked what might have been different had the EU embraced Yugoslavia as a member. [2]

The economic reasoning is clear: the unelected European Commission (which runs the EU - the parliament is advisory) answers to the most powerful corporations and they, in turn, comprise the monopoly capitalists of the globalist project.

Those interests are hardly going to address the economic needs of Georgians.

Waiting for the European Union to shape their destiny would be waiting in vain. If Georgians are to shape their future they'll do it outside or in parallel with the European Union.

Eurasia note #91: What Is This Europe That Georgia Would Join? (May 7, 2024)

Georgia is voting under a fully proportional representation system for the first time, with a 5 per cent threshold. [3]

The smaller opposition parties have been vocal in demands for speeding up membership of the EU (and NATO) but it remains to be seen how these smaller parties will fare in the PR system.

Previously it used a mixed system; half were first past the post, the other half allocated proportionally. This over represented the winning party. In 2016 Georgian Dream received less than half of the total vote but won 115 seats out of 150, a parliamentary majority. GD’s control over Parliament was achieved, in part, by winning 71 of 73 total single-district elections.

We shall ask whether Europe’s perspective is upside down, as Brussels seeks to shoe-horn countries into an ill-defined project that does not reflect the economic realities and cultures of its member states.

The theme of this artice is that EU members and prospective members cannot rely, as Tbilisi’s protestors seem to believe, on Europe to give them meaning. They must build it themselves.

Georgia is an old and intriguing culture, a country that rewards visitors in abundance, whether your interest is music, the history and architecture of the old Silk Road, or world class wine at affordable prices.

Now it is holding up a mirror and demanding the West look at itself, to ask what it gains from its forever wars and confrontation, and what it has to offer other than restrictive mercantilist trade practices whose benefits accrue to the core.

What's the election about?

Depends who you ask. Opposition politicians, who are given an outsize voice in Western media, say the government is pro-Russian and that the key issue is joining the European Union.

Government and opposition politicians regard Russia as an occupier, in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and play on fears of another war such as the 2008, though even Tbilisi now admits it was Georgia that mobilised first, and lost territory in Ossetia as a result.

At the same time Georgia has kept highways open for economic trade with Russia throughout the war in Ukraine and despite a temporary halt on direct flights between Russia and Georgia air travel is no longer restricted.

Economic concerns dominate the life of most Georgians, rather than the pro-EU/NATO talking heads that the BBC or RFE choose to interview.

What those talking heads dare not say is that joining the EU is really a proxy for joining NATO. As Ukraine discovered that may make them less safe not more.

Polls in Georgia favour the Georgian Dream while the opposition is coalescing around "Georgian Charter," calling for the acceleration of EU accession by installing a temporary technical government. This would prepare new elections in 2025.

Some opposition parties, especially those close to NATO, call for Georgia to be decentralised. Would Georgia return to the feudal principalities of old? There is little reporting in Western media of these calls to decentralise or decolonise the post-Soviet sphere.

The current government says it remains committed to EU accession by gradual steps. Its defence that this cannot be accelerated is probably true. There is no quick fix for transition economies to gain full membership of EU. If there was, the EU would have offered it to Ukraine before the war started with Russia in February 2022.

Neo-liberals and mercantilists

The rallying cry "Georgia in Europe" is a desire to be seen as Western. Yet in practice the country's economic model is nothing like the EU's bureaucratic, top-down, tax heavy structure which was (at least until recently) mercantilist in its approach to maximizing European industrial output.

Under Mikheil Saakashvili Georgia took a neo-liberal path. Western non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were given a prominent role through the outsourcing of government functions — or filling gaps where government capacity was limited or non-existent.

Prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze has blamed NGOs for the failure of strategic economic projects: one reason for the new law that requires NGOs and charities to register if they receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad.

The Western-funded NGO's protested — hence the exaggerated and almost hysterical way in which they called the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence a "Russian law." George Soros whose Open Society Georgia Foundation was established in 2004, would not have been happy.

See Georgia Warns U.S.-Backed Groups Plotting Unrest (Oct 04, 2023)

This month Brussels blatantly interfered in the Georgian election, cancelling €121 million in funds earmarked to help develop Georgia’s economy. The EU threatened to end visa-free travel for Georgians. The U.S. suspended $95 million in direct government assistance and sanctioned politicians and officials.

It blamed Tbilisi's alleged crackdown on dissent and "democratic backsliding." [4]

No matter that Brussels itself is preparing a foreign influence law far more draconian than Tbilisi's.

Georgia has received received billions of dollars from NGOs and aid and development agencies from both the EU and the U.S. in sectors like agriculture and tourism.

In Ukraine this replaced Soviet-era corruption with neo-liberal corruption that led to the 2014 coup, regime change, and the entrance of BlackRock, Monsanto, DuPont, Cargilll & Co.

Even before the Maidan coup, U.S. agencies and corporations were eyeing the rich black earth - the world's most fertile, called chernozem.

Ukrainian academics pointed out that most Ukrainian farmers used crop rotation to maintain soil quality. Western investors prefer genetically modified organisms and seeds that work with their own fertilizers and pesticides.

See Ukraine: The War Everyone Saw Coming - The dispossession of human and mineral in the service of Monsanto-Bayer (May 05, 2023)

Moldova, which this week narrowly voted to join the EU is another. More than three quarters of its soil is chernozem: the north, with the rich black soils and the fertile Dnestr River valley; the south, with its calcium soils (carbonate black soils) and warm climate, which make it particularly suitable for irrigated vineyards, as well as for peach and apricot orchards.

The cultivable area is estimated at almost 2.6 million ha, which is 76 per cent of the total area of the country. In 1992, the cultivated area was estimated at 2.2 million ha, of which 1.7 million ha was occupied by annual crops and 0.5 million ha by permanent crops. [5]

Georgia unfortunately barely has such soil (1.4 per cent) and as people who live there will tell you, nothing in Georgia is on the level: geologists describe its "extremely irregular surface."

That goes for culture, too, which is quirky and unique. According to the ruling Georgian Dream party, Western-funded NGOs are undermining the “history, traditions and identity” of the country.

The real gripe is that the government has little oversight of what NGOs are up to, and a glance at Ukraine suggests that it is right to fear where this could lead.

Caught in war

Georgian Dream says it is being targeted by the "global war party." That rings true.

The country is not the first nor will it be the last to find as it steps towards modernization it is buffeted by great power politics. Pro-American is one thing, but Atlanticist is quite another.

This shows the limits to taking a pro-Western view. Reality is more complex. That Atlanticists are actively pushing for the perpetuation of war in Ukraine makes it more complex still.

The kicker is that the goal of EU and NATO membership is enshrined in the constitution, which Georgian Dream inserted in 2018.

As the historian Bryan Gigantino of the podcast Reimagining Soviet Georgia writes: .

"If the EU, United States, or NATO claim a domestic Georgian law is incompatible with membership, it becomes a constitutional issue. NGOs can mobilize to demand the Constitution is followed or bring the issue to the Constitutional Court. Effectively, the Georgian state is subject to institutions that directly shape policy without popular accountability.
Even when NGOs or Western governments provide critical aid and services, they ultimately hinge on whether Brussels or Washington secure a political return on investment. While polls show the population widely supports joining the EU, this does not necessarily mean supporting EU or US policies that are politically contentious also in Western countries. " [6]

War of stereotypes

It would be better if Georgia wasn't holding elections a few hundred miles from a war zone but it is what it is.

The European Commission is increasingly talking as if it is an extension of NATO. President Ursula von der Leyen demonises countries that demur from war, such as Hungary and Slovakia, and threatens to withhold funding just as it has done towards Georgia.

See Plain Talk Gets Slovak PM Shot - Media double standards on Fico shooting (May 17, 2024)

This is how Georgian Dream found itself attacked as too slow on European accession.

Georgia's shared experience of the USSR draws comparison with Hungary and Slovakia and it is Western politicians that stereotype it as backward on issues like sexual liberation. There is a social conservatism rooted in the parallel development of east and west Europe through much of the 20th century, but that is true of other regions and cultures.

Yet the speck, or log, is very much in von der Leyen's eye

It is a neat inversion of history, for GD promoted European accession as a contrast to the strong pro-American stance of Saakashvili.

The legacy of Saakashvili's almost slavish pro-Washington stance was an avenue named after president George W Bush and the flooding of the country with NGOs but little change that ordinary Georgians could feel.

At the popular level, Georgia is not immune to the grass roots cultural conservatism that is sweeping much of Europe. Although this is often seen through the lens of identity politics, many voters are concerned about war and economic uncertainty.

We saw this in the European elections, and the polls in France, Germany and Austria, where war, living costs and migration animated the people to vote for the opposition parties that made this their concern, even if the incumbent "centrists" manoeuvred to neutralise the protest vote and exclude the victors.

See German Voters Reject Political Squatters - 'Centrist' parties defy popular fury, cling to power (Sep 03, 2024)

Outside influence from NGOs also promotes "civil society" -- the George Soros buzzword for modernising economies transitioning from communism, but also for creating wedge issues like trans and pride — the strategy of entryism seen around the globe.

Thus it is not surprising that street demonstrations, and the resulting coverage in the press, tends to focus on LGBT or the Orthodox Church.

The Western commentariat cannot tell the difference between real life on the street, in their own country, let alone others. The issues that matter to working people, and what the television tells, are framed by the social activist causes of their issue-based journalism.

Working people arse now divided from the political class that describes itself as "centrist" - the centrism of resource wars, open borders, weaponised migration, Green de-growth and the Covidian great reset.

With such democidal policies, Centrism cannot allow a meaningful change of government; too many Covid skeletons and corruption.

Challenge there is, nonetheless.

The "taking" of Ukraine by Western corporations, regardless of the eventual peace settlement, may have been in tended, in part, to obstruct China as well as Russia's economic integration with Europe.

Sitting just north of the Black Sea Ukraine is on the land route of the Belt and Road Initiative, or its "middle corridor." [7]

The BRICS summit in Kazan, Tartarstan, Russia, showed how strong is the drive to leave behind the financial institutions rooted in the Second World War and the Anglo-American establishment's attempt to extend their life by reviving the Cold War.

Ironically, the Western-provoked war in Ukraine has made Georgia a more attractive location for Chinese infrastructure, logistics and perhaps assembly.

Georgia has been here before. In the 2nd century the Roman Empire traded with China through the caravan route of Persia. When those relations became strained, the Silk Road passed through the mountainous terrain of Georgia.

When the oil age arrive it again played that role.

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Europe's block

The trouble with the European Union is that it sees expansion as its best hope of survival.

It over-promises yet cannot deliver a solution that suits very different regions; some that rely on trade with countries outside the EU, and with which Brussels declares open conflict, such as Georgia's neighbour Russia.

Thus the EU cannot resolve internal politics in Georgia but rather tends to aggravate them.

The Georgian elite, often living off income from businesses holdings abroad, and the middle class working for Western-financed NGOs have little in common with, and little to offer, Georgian workers.

As in Portugal, Southern Italy and Spain, the EU offers visa-free travel that encourages outward migration. It has no answers to technological underdevelopment or unemployment except for the dopamine high of emigration and remittances, tourism, and banking services that profit from hyper-financialisation - speculation for the rich, credit cards for the poor.

The academic, media, consulting professions survive largely because they can access EU and U.S. grants.

The elites dependent on supra-governmental money, now deny the people their history.

This is a blunt instrument, for many elder Georgians are fluent in Russian and grew up in an era that was - with a Georgian running the Soviet Union - more co-national than the predatory pseudo-internationalism of tourism that has replaced it.

As Gigantino writes, the US embassy in Tbilisi is working with NGOs, academics and opposition politicians to amplify anti-Soviet historical narratives.

"Here, Soviet history becomes a (geo)political instrument, as it is cast as the symbolic antithesis of democracy, Europe, and Georgian nationhood. These narratives consciously remove the nuances of Georgian agency, national consolidation, cultural production, and economic development from the complex Soviet story. This reading of history is neither new in Georgia nor the direct product of current Western support — it was central to twentieth-century Georgian émigré politics and national mobilizations during Soviet collapse, and rehabilitated after 1991. "

"Anti-Soviet memory politics " is the attempt to distort a reconciliation with the past.

An example: in The House on the Embankment, on the Moskva, made famous in the novel by Yuri Trifonov, there is a small museum to the victims of the purges. U.S.-backed NGOs weaponised the organisation Memorial, to turn it into a version of the EU-funded Estonian documentary Soviet Story (2008).

But there is also a reconciliation movement, in which descendents of officers of the NKVD secret police are brought together with descendents of those purged.

Thus history is distorted while denying the population the understanding that is essential to peace. It seems the the objective is to stir more conflict.

The lesson is that laying down and taking it from neo-liberalism doesn't deliver the seeds of growth. Georgia should not open the door without a marriage contract.

Stars align

We have written extensively how the decline of the petrodollar, the yielding of Afghanistan, and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline suggest an attempt to realign Europe from east-west to south-north.

The war in Gaza is one example of this: the Levantine gas fields could assist the redirection of pipelines, accompanied by a flotilla of liquefied natural gas tankers, from the Mediterranean to northern Europe. That seems to be the objective behind the ethnic cleansing.

Be careful what you wish for.

China also profits from realignment of trade routes for energy and commerce. South-north corridors also carry goods from India and Iran to Europe and Russia.

There are obstacles and potential flashpoints but the region is integrating.

Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran will likely overcome differences to develop alternative corridors that have the potential to settle centuries old territorial rivalries.

As they resolve these issues, the region becomes more important, just at the time when traditional sea routes through West Asia have become more vulnerable.

See BRICS Play Many Tunes; West Marches To One - If music be the food of thought (Oct 24, 2024)

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