It was Lincoln who once said “I would like to see someone proud of the place in which they live.” The 16th president never made it to the South Caucasus, but here reside a people quite justly proud of the place in which they live. Among the most striking differences between the vision offered to Georgian citizens by the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party and by the Western-backed opposition parties is that the former is unabashedly so.
From the perspective of an American of rather longstanding, it seems the politics of the GD are not dissimilar to those of MAGA Republicans; Hungary’s Fidesz; France’s National Rally; Poland’s Law and Justice; or the UK’s Reform Party. The pro-NATO, pro-EU Georgian opposition coalition, having lost a democratic election by a convincing margin last October, continues to call for foreign powers (the US, the EU) to sanction members and funders of the GD. The bedraggled youth who sit in protest on the steps of the Georgian Parliament under the flags of a foreign powers are calling for those powers to sanction the legitimate winners of their country’s last national election: Do they not know what “democracy” means?
For some reason, the Georgian opposition thinks Washington and Brussels (a EU and NATO “Information Center” resides in a handsome building just off Tbilisi’s Freedom Square) have something to teach Georgia about democracy. Still worse, the illusion that Washington has both the right and duty to teach Georgia how to govern itself persists in the American media and in the halls of Congress.
Hellbound and Down 