Europe and the US must wake up to the threat posed by Georgia’s repressive Russian-aligned regime, writes the UK’s former ambassador to the country.
© First published on Byline Times
One of my proudest achievements as a British diplomat was to instigate the creation of a new strategic partnership between the UK and Georgia during my time there as Ambassador, in 2015. This became known as “The Wardrop Dialogue” in honour of the British diplomat, Sir Oliver Wardrop, who was the first British Chief Commissioner to the TransCaucasus in 1919, and his sister, Marjory, who became a champion of Georgian culture.
Under the partnership, the UK supported Georgia in three broad areas – security, economy, and good governance.
Examples of our security cooperation included the conduct of joint military training, the construction of a state-of-the-art national security operations centre in Tbilisi, support for the EU Monitoring Mission patrolling the administrative boundary lines between Georgia and the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; and assistance to internally displaced populations from those territories following Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. On the international front, we used our vast diplomatic network to lobby in support of Georgian resolutions at the UN, reaffirming Georgia’s territorial integrity, and condemning Russian occupation of Georgian territory.
On the economic front, we backed the establishment of a business council, to encourage the development of business-friendly policies, and to attract investment. We arranged study tours for Georgian farmers and small businesses to the UK, to learn how to develop and market goods into the EU. We shared best practices on government budgeting, such as the role of the Office of Budget Responsibility. We also provided top-level communications training to Georgian officials, including the Prime Minister and his entire Cabinet, to help them push back on Russian misinformation, and give out accurate information about what EU membership entailed.
Under the heading of good governance, we supported the Georgian Parliament’s efforts to improve its transparency, and the work of MPs in holding the Government to account. We provided training for up-and-coming politicians on how to develop election platforms and engage voters. We increased the number of prestigious Chevening scholarships for Georgians to study in the UK.
We ran initiatives to help Georgia’s minority populations, primarily ethnic Azeris and Armenians, integrate into Georgian society. We supported numerous human rights and democracy initiatives, and even engaged members of Georgia’s orthodox Church, to dispel myths about EU stances on contentious issues such as gay rights.
Taken together, this amounted to an unprecedented level of attention from the UK to such a relatively small country. In my three-year stint as Ambassador, we organised four Ministerial visits to Georgia, two of them at Cabinet level, as well as numerous defence and parliamentary exchanges. Most embassies in countries of comparable size consider themselves lucky if they manage to get even one junior Ministerial visit every three years.
Other western countries, such as the US, and members of the EU, had similarly large programmes of engagement and assistance to Georgia. We all regarded Georgia as the leader among former Soviet countries in terms of democratic development, a worthy recipient of our aid, who could moreover provide a beacon of hope for other countries in the region trying to escape Moscow’s orbit.
This all tastes like ashes, now that the incumbent Georgian Dream Government has decided to turn its back on the West, reverse its democratic reforms and aspirations to join the EU, and instead align itself closer to Russia.
Signs had been growing for several years that the Georgian Government was backsliding on its efforts to join the EU, even though this was enshrined in the country’s constitution, but the turning point appeared to be the decision of the EU to grant Georgia candidate status in December 2023. This made tangible what had once seemed only a distant aspiration for EU membership. It forced the government to abandon its balancing act of trying to appease Moscow whilst simultaneously stringing along the West.
The Government’s intentions became crystal clear in the spring of 2024, when the Government introduced a law requiring any organisation receiving more than 25% of its funding from overseas to register as a “Foreign Agent” – a highly pejorative term, implying subservience to hostile foreign forces. Under the law, any organisations which failed to register, which includes most of Georgia’s civil society, faced punitive fines and sanctions, effectively driving them out of business. The law was rammed through Parliament in the summer despite massive public protests, and strong statements by the EU specifying that the legislation was incompatible with EU membership.
Georgia’s democratic opposition pinned their hopes on winning a sufficient number of seats in Georgia’s parliamentary elections in late October to allow them to regain power, or at least prevent the Georgian Dream party from driving through further unpopular measures. However, in a highly flawed electoral process, which calls into question the legitimacy of the results, Georgian Dream was ruled to have won a majority. A few days later, the Prime Minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, announced that his government was suspending EU integration efforts until 2028 – in practice, closing off any hope of EU membership.
This announcement sent shockwaves through the Georgian public.
That night, tens of thousands of ordinary citizens came out on the streets of Tbilisi in protest, only to be met by brutal police tactics to quash the demonstrations. This included the use of water cannon, tear gas, and the seizure and beating-up of individuals identified as ringleaders of the protests, journalists, and some opposition party figures, as a way to intimidate everyone else.
These tactics produced the opposite effect, and only spurred further public protests. These have continued every night for almost three weeks now, steadily growing in size and spreading to other parts of the country.
I had a chance to witness these dramatic events for myself in early December when I spent a week in Tbilisi as part of a delegation organized by the McCain Institute, to assess the political environment. During our visit, we met representatives of the political opposition, civil society, media, cultural groups, election observers, minority groups, embassies, and even some of the youthful protesters who had been beaten up by the security forces. The chill in the air was palpable.
Our key findings were reflected in a joint statement after our visit. The delegation came away convinced that Georgia is at a critical point – risking a crisis akin to the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2014, or turning into another Belarus, unless the government can be persuaded to conduct new elections, under more credible circumstances, ensuring they are genuinely free and fair.
Although the people we met were clear that ultimately Georgia’s fate rested in their hands, they were insistent that international action is also vital, to increase pressure on the Georgian authorities.
Unfortunately, so far, the international community has failed to rise to the occasion. Western governments have largely confined their responses to handwringing statements of “concern” over the violence, and the introduction of travel restrictions on a few government officials. The EU’s hands have been tied by Hungary and Slovakia, who have threatened to veto any effort to introduce tougher measures, such as sanctions. The UK has suspended the Wardrop Dialogue and ended bilateral government-to-government cooperation, but also so far refrained from sanctions. The Biden administration has hinted at tougher measures, but not yet announced anything beyond visa bans.
The international community has also shied away from definitively rejecting the results of the election as illegitimate, instead hiding behind coy words about “irregularities”, or disingenuously arguing they need to see more “evidence”, as if people rigging polls issue receipts and photographs of their actions.
This failure on the part of the West to respond decisively to events in Georgia will reinforce the authorities’ belief that they can ride these protests out. The ruling party’s leader, Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, is apparently convinced that if they can just hang on until 20th January, the date of Donald Trump’s inauguration, they will get away with their rigged election and clampdown, because Trump will be more sympathetic to their cause.
This may be a false assumption, because there is strong bipartisan support for Georgia in the US. Trump may not care much about human rights or democracy, or Russia’s growing influence in Georgia. But he will not take kindly to the Georgian Dream’s efforts in recent years to build relations with China and Iran. Most likely, however, Trump will not care one way or another – Georgia being too small and far away to be worthy of his notice.
Nevertheless, this is becoming a moment of crisis not just for Georgia, but for the credibility of the West as a whole. The EU cannot allow Hungary and Slovakia to hamstring its response to Georgia, or other situations involving Russia. Biden should not end his Presidency as it started, in Afghanistan, with another strategic defeat.
If we do not do enough to support the Georgian people at their greatest hour of need, it will only feed into the Russian narrative that, when push comes to shove, the West cannot be trusted, and that the only sustainable option for countries like Georgia is to reconcile themselves to Moscow.
Reclaiming Georgia will give Putin a nice “consolation prize” for his losses in Syria, and a potential bargaining chip in negotiations with the West over Ukraine. Other countries in the region trying to break free from Russia’s orbit, such as Armenia, will also recalculate their options.
The West’s hesitancy is also hard to justify when there would seem to be so little risk involved in imposing penalties on Georgian leaders. There is no nuclear angle to worry about, such as in Ukraine; no risk of upsetting a major NATO ally, such as in dealing with Turkey; no significant business enterprises at stake. The costs of action on Georgia are relatively low, whilst the the costs of inaction are potentially very high.
In his time, Sir Oliver Wardrop was the strongest advocate of British support for the newly independent Georgia. Unfortunately, his efforts to protect Georgia from Bolshevik aggression came to naught in February 1921 when Soviet Russia’s Red Army invaded Georgia and ended its short-lived republic.
Are we going to let the same thing happen to Georgia again?
Alexandra Hall Hall
Former British diplomat with more than 30 years experience, with postings in Bangkok, Washington, Delhi, Bogota and Tbilisi. She resigned from the Foreign Office in December 2019 because she felt unable to represent the Government’s position on Brexit with integrity. ” She is the co-host of the Disorder podcast.
