Anatol Lieven: Georgia shows that liberalism is on the defensive and the EU is stagnating

On 26^th October parliamentary elections were held in Georgia, amid already high tensions between the ruling Georgian Dream party and four major opposition coalitions. The opposition groups had agreed together beforehand not to cooperate with Georgian Dream in forming a government in the wake of the election. In the end, the official results had Georgian Dream winning with an outright majority of the vote, 53% to the opposition’s 38%. In a highly anticipated move, however, opposition figures immediately – before OSCE observers had time to issue their report – denounced the elections as fraudulent and mobilised mass protests against the Georgian Dream government. The pro-opposition President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, supported the protests and declared that Georgians were ‘’victims of what can only be described as a Russian special operation – a new form of hybrid warfare against our people and our country.’’ EU and US leaders have openly supported the opposition’s moves and called for an investigation.

The election outcome was only one in a series of occurrences this year which have seen tensions rise between Georgia’s two predominant political factions. April and May saw clashes between police and protesters over a proposed law, later passed, requiring NGOs to disclose the sources of their income when more than 20% of it comes from foreign entities. Although similar laws exist in Russia and in the US, its detractors dubbed the legislation the ‘’Russian law’’ and enjoyed Western support in publicly denouncing it. Finally, a month after the October elections, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced the government’s decision to suspend Georgia’s application for EU membership, refusing further EU aid, until 2028 – while continuing, however, to prepare the country internally, without EU assistance, for eventual EU accession. This further enraged opposition supporters and invigorated the ongoing Maidan-style street protests in Tbilisi – which according to observers could conceivably intensify enough to threaten to topple the government.

In this second part of my interview with Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (part 1 is here), I ask him about the contested Georgian elections, the controversial law on disclosing foreign influence, the unexpected decision to put Georgia’s EU accession process on hold, and the ongoing protests and potentially explosive tensions within the country. Formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the War Studies Department of King’s College London, Lieven has also served on the advisory committee of the South Asia Department of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and on the academic board of the Valdai discussion club in Russia. For well over a decade he worked as a journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and covered the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the southern Caucasus. He also worked for some years at think tanks in Washington DC and is the author of numerous books, including The Baltic Revolutions: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence (1993), Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power? (1998), and Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry (1999). His book Pakistan: A Hard Country (2011) is on the official reading lists for US and British diplomats serving in that country.

You wrote way back in July that all the Georgians you spoke to about the upcoming October elections believed the same thing – that ‘’if the government wins, the opposition, backed by pro-Western NGOs, will allege that the results were falsified, and will launch a mass protest movement in an effort to topple the Georgian Dream government.’’ And of course that’s exactly what happened. Why is it that people could so clearly see this coming?

Well, in Georgia this has been true of almost every election since independence in 1991 – as it is in many places, where the losing side always alleges fraud and says it really won. Now of course, it generally depends on how many people they can turn out to support this allegation. But on this occasion, critically, it depends on external support. And here – in a whole series of stages – you had a situation where Western governments were backing Western NGOs, which then backed Georgian NGOs. And these Georgian NGOs, although ostensibly apolitical, in actual fact were overwhelmingly and intimately linked with the Georgian opposition. Now, this wasn’t necessarily the intention of Western governments when all this started, because for several years the Georgian Dream government was seen as very pro-Western. It was carrying out economic reforms very much as part of the EU accession process. It didn’t – and still doesn’t – have formal diplomatic relations with Russia.

Yet they’re not seen as pro-Western today – they’re presented as more aligned with Russian interests. How did that come about?

Well, over time various things happened. One was that the government, frankly, got sick of seeing the West indirectly – but with very large sums of money – supporting the Georgian opposition through these NGOs. And because Georgia is still a poor country – and because so many aspects of government collapsed after the end of the Soviet Union – these NGOs have a power in society vastly greater than the phrase ‘’NGO’’ would normally suggest. The other thing is that because Georgia is so poor, these NGOs employ, directly or indirectly, a huge chunk of the Georgian educated classes – not of ordinary people but of the educated classes. And as the government began to move against them, they mobilized their allies in the West to protest against this and to put more and more pressure on the Georgian government. And so the alliance between the West and the Georgian opposition became just more and more open. And what really brought this to a head, of course, was the war in Ukraine, where the Georgian government came under immense pressure through these channels, not just to adopt but to enforce sanctions against Russia – even though this would have done enormous damage to the Georgian economy. And also under pressure to supply the Ukrainians with weapons, and to allow or encourage large numbers of Georgians to go and fight in Ukraine. And the government took the view that it was simply too dangerous for Georgia to do this.

Wouldn’t a big chunk of the population have had similar worries about this?

Well, yes. The Georgian government was able to mobilize a lot of public support for its position, because most Georgians are very worried about the prospects of a new war with Russia. And also the Georgian government – not, I think, altogether sincerely – was able to portray the Georgian opposition as the party of war with Russia. But the government also said – and this is much more plausible – that if the opposition wins, with Western help, they will want to – or be forced to – break off trade relations with Russia in order to impose Western sanctions. Well, if you’ve gone up to the Georgian border with Russia, the line of trucks going in and out stretches for miles. Because Georgia has made a great deal of money from increased trade as a result of Western sanctions being enforced in other countries. And Russia is also a very important market for Georgian goods, particularly agricultural goods. So a lot of ordinary Georgians stand to lose a lot of money from such a breach in relations with Russia.

So the Georgian government has the support of a lot of ordinary Georgians.

Well, I honestly don’t know with certainty who won these Georgian elections, in terms of who got a majority of votes – although it would require proof of rigging on a very large scale to reverse the outcome. But in any case, I think it’s very clear that whatever happened, the result was at least relatively close – meaning that a very large proportion of the population voted for the Georgian Dream government. In other words, Georgia is deeply divided on these issues. And there is one other important issue. While it’s true that a large majority of Georgians still want to join the West in principle, there has been one long standing element of disillusionment. Although Georgia’s official government policy is still to join NATO, very few Georgians I talked to believe that NATO would ever fight to defend Georgia. And they point to Ukraine, and they point to Georgia’s war of 2008 with Russia, where there were all sorts of quasi-promises from the US, but in the end the US did nothing to save Georgia.

And what about potential EU membership?

Well, there are two things there. One is the fact that – as you see in Romania, in Hungary, but also in Western Europe, in France, in Germany – there are a lot of people in the EU who are getting very angry with dictation from Brussels – from Brussels ordering you what to do, irrespective of your own national interests and your own national culture. And this has been tremendously played up by conservative forces in Georgia – for example the Georgian Orthodox Church – as it has been elsewhere. But the second thing, of course – and I’m not sure how far this has permeated into the Georgian population, but it’s certainly permeated into Georgian government circles – is that the European Union is now economically stagnant. Europe is not growing, or it’s only growing very, very slowly. I mean, parts of Europe are growing – Eastern Europe, yes – but Europe just does not look like nearly such an attractive economic proposition as it did 20 or 30 years ago. And I think this is also having an effect on Georgian opinion. And also, as a number of people said to me in Georgia: Look, it would be different if we bordered on the European Union, but we don’t. We border on Turkey, a NATO country, but Turkey has been trying for 50 years to get into the European Union, and still isn’t there. And so, viewed from where we are in the world, what we really need is a ‘’multi-vector policy’’ – a phrase widely used in other parts of the former Soviet Union. And in fact there are now huge Chinese investments in Georgia – which the United States did its utmost to block, and the Georgian opposition is very hostile to. But the point is, the West is no longer the only game in town when it comes to foreign investment and foreign trade.

There has been a lot of fuss over the new Georgian law requiring NGOs to disclose the sources of their income when over 20% of it comes from abroad – the so-called Law on the Transparency of Foreign Influence. To many people this law seems to makes perfect sense – we should know about foreign money because it means foreign influence. I believe the US has a very similar law. Why have Western leaders and the Georgian opposition denounced this new law so vigorously?

Well, because what’s coming into Georgia is Western money, that’s the reason. Our money is good – other people’s money is bad. The European Union also has rules about foreign influence, but everybody knows they don’t apply to the United States. But also, as I say, it’s because the Georgian opposition depends so heavily on these NGOs for support, and for links to the West and mobilization. It isn’t that this law itself is a ‘’Russian law’’ – it’s not nearly as severe as the Russian law along these lines. But there was an understandable fear that this was the first step to something a lot harsher.

Another thing that’s provoked a strong reaction is the Georgian government’s recent decision, not to cancel Georgia’s application to join the EU, but to suspend it until 2028, and to reject EU aid in the meantime. This announcement have upset a lot of people and driven protesters into the streets.

I think this is the really big question now, whether that announcement will really mobilize huge numbers of Georgians against the government. Because although there’s a lot of disillusionment with the EU and NATO, the dream of joining the West does have an almost religious significance for a great many Georgians – which transcends issues simply of policy. Now, the government has done this, of course, in order to try to eliminate the EU’s capacity to blackmail Georgia through suspending its accession, which the EU had done already.

The feeling is basically: If you’re going to suspend us, we’ll suspend you, and don’t threaten to cut off your aid because we’re not going to take it anyway. And then we’ll come back, and if you want us, we will resume our application in 2028. But clearly this has deeply worried and affronted a great many people in Georgia, and we’ll have to see now whether with Western support – with all the Western money going into the Georgian opposition – it’s enough actually to overthrow the government. And that isn’t clear.

There are obvious parallels with the Maidan protests in Ukraine in 2013-2014. No doubt the government will have learned something from watching how that episode played out. What sort of factors do you think will ultimately determine the outcome in Georgia?

If you remember, in Ukraine it took about five months from the beginning of the Western-backed Maidan protests to the fall of the regime. And the regime basically fell when either it had to start shooting people, or – as has been alleged – the opposition started shooting. But in any case, my own sense is that as soon as people start getting killed in significant numbers it will be game over for the Georgian government. As long as they can control this with the police, I think they can hold on. But if they have to call on the army, I don’t think the army would save the government. But of course, the Georgian government does have the support of a great many ordinary Georgians – not so much in the capital Tbilisi, where the more cosmopolitan, educated people vote liberal – but in the countryside and the small towns and the post-industrial areas, where they vote conservative. It’s the same pattern you see in America, and across much of Europe now.

How do you imagine things will develop if the protesters succeed in toppling the government?

Well, whatever happens now, Georgia is going to be in a deeply unstable state. Because if this government is overthrown by yet another kind of quasi-coup from the streets backed by the West, a lot of Georgians are going to be very angry. And you will have a breach in economic relations with Russia, and most probably economic decline and deep economic instability. And as a result deep political instability – which will then, frankly, also block Georgia’s move towards the European Union. So none of this is good, I fear – not for the Georgians. But then, of course, the question is – to be perfectly honest – whether the people who are planning Western support for all this actually give a damn about Georgia, or whether this is simply part of their wider games to push back Russian influence.

Do you have any sense of whether the government will be able to hold out?

I don’t know. I mean, they’re holding on so far. But if the opposition can keep up the pressure, and the West goes on funding the opposition, then who knows. On the one hand, the longer this goes on the more pressure there will be for a compromise between the opposition and the government – just from ordinary Georgians who say: Look, this is ruinous, we we’ve got to bring this to an end! But on the other hand, the more difficult a compromise will be, because obviously more and more people will have been imprisoned and beaten up – or even, God forbid, killed. And so, you could see a compromise brokered by the European Union – which would then be turned simply into a seizure of power by the more radical parts of the opposition. Which, after all, is very much what happened in Ukraine.

Going back to the election for a moment – the OSCE observed these elections at the invitation of the Georgian government, and issued a report afterwards. Was there anything in that report alleging that the elections were rigged in a significant way, enough to put the outcome in question?

Well, there was certainly rigging and irregularity in some places – that’s there in the OSCE report. But they did not say that the election as a whole was rigged. Now, what they did say – and it’s completely true – is that the government used all the media it could control, plus administrative methods – basically ordering civil servants to vote for the government, and so on. But given the margin of difference – 53% to 38% – it does seem a trifle unlikely that any of this would have made a key difference. And, you know, if one is going to be a purist about these matters, Western elections are not exactly above reproach either in terms of some of these features.

So when Western voices are alleging election fraud, what are they basing it on?

Well, the OSCE is probably the only really independent election monitoring organisation. But what you find here are Western journalists citing opposition NGOs and Western NGOs – like the International Republican Institute or the NDI – as objective sources for election monitoring. Which is like treating what Trump said about the 2020 elections as an objective source. It’s infant journalism, frankly.

You were critical of Western journalists in your October article, in terms of how they covered the Georgian elections. Much of the reporting, you write, ‘’has been closer to opinion articles based on interviews with the Georgian opposition.’’ You go on to say that many Western journalists seem to feel the only Georgians ‘’who truly deserve a voice are those who identify with the West.’’ And you ask ‘’whether this really corresponds to their self-image as free, independent, and honest reporters from democracies that value honest and open debate.’’ Why do you think this is happening?

It’s partly a question of class. The educated classes have always felt that their voice counts for more than the uneducated. It’s also ideology, obviously. But I think what is beginning to give this a much harder edge, is that it’s an ideology which now feels itself to be on the defensive. Liberalism in the 19th century, when it was fighting against formidable enemies – the old regimes, rebellions from below, later the threat of communism – was not a tolerant ideology at all. It was an ideology which seized control of states and then used state power to crush its opponents. Now after the Second World War, and for many decades, liberal ideology won. Everybody was a liberal, really. The socialists became left-wing liberals, the conservatives became right-wing liberals. But today, of course, in so many places – in America, across Western Europe – you see these mainstream liberal parties coming under more and more pressure. And this didn’t just start in recent years.

What are some concrete examples?

Well, particularly on the part of the European Union. You may remember back in the 1990s, when there was a populist backlash in several countries against the Maastricht Treaty – which basically gave far more powers to the European Union and turned it from a common market into something much more like an actual union. Well, basically, certain countries – France, Holland, Ireland – voted against it, and were told to go away and vote again. They made some very, very minor adjustments to the Maastricht Treaty and told them to vote again, and vote again, and vote again, until you get it right. And we see that happening now in Romania, where a judge has annulled the outcome of a presidential election – an election in which no fraud was even alleged. Now I’m not, by any means, excluding the possibility of Russian influence via TikTok. But nonetheless, to annul a whole election! And I would imagine to disqualify the leading candidate, who clearly is channelling the anger and frustration of a great many ordinary Romanians. And this was done with the full backing of the European Union. I mean, this is serious stuff.

As the European Union is fully backing the allegations of election fraud in Georgia.

Well, in Georgia there was never any question, as I predicted in advance, that if the pro-European opposition protested, then whatever the truth of the matter, the European Union was never going to accept these elections as legitimate.

How do you see this trend developing in the future?

My fear is that the European Union may become much more like NATO in the first decades of the Cold War. In many ways – as a result of the Ukraine war – the EU has already become more and more simply the economic and political wing of NATO. And with NATO – whatever people may like to pretend now – there was never any nonsense about democracy. Turkey was a NATO member through three periods of military rule. Greece was a member – military rule. Portugal was a founding member – military dictatorship. No, this was all about Western geopolitics. But of course, it’s much more complicated for the European Union, because the European Union has this enormous body of laws which are in principle founded on democracy and freedom and all these things. But that could be ceasing to be true – not in terms of formal dictatorship, but this whole business of ‘’anti-disinformation’’ agencies. At which point any opposition argument or public sentiment that threatens the establishment can be tagged – not necessarily with any evidence at all – as the product of Russian disinformation, or perhaps in future Chinese disinformation. And this be made grounds for disallowing elections, or prosecuting politicians, or banning parties. I mean, this is sinister stuff, from a democratic point of view.