A Rose Among Thorns: Georgia Makes Good

Charles King

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004

Summary:  Georgia's recent, peaceful revolutions might allow the country to become a beacon of hope for a troubled region. For that to happen, however, its new leaders must find a way to deal with local secessionists, as well as with Moscow and Washington.

Charles King is Associate Professor of Foreign Service and Government at Georgetown University and author of The Black Sea: A History.

BALANCE OF POWERS

Georgians say that the country's biggest problem is Russia. The Russian government has never denied that it takes a keen interest in its neighbor, and Georgia's secessionist leaders welcome Russian support -- they even visited Moscow just days after Shevardnadze resigned. Russia has effectively cemented the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as protectorates by maintaining preferential visa and passport regimes with them and making it easier for their inhabitants to obtain Russian citizenship. (It has extended that special relationship to Adjaria as well.) Russia also operates military bases in Georgia, in contravention of international agreements to close them down.

To balance Russia's influence, Georgia's central government needs outside help, especially from the United States, which has been the country's most generous backer for a decade. A stable and democratic Georgia is the linchpin of U.S. policy in the Caucasus, and the Caucasus, in turn, is a critical part of the strategic future of Eurasia and the greater Middle East. The Clinton administration gave Georgia massive amounts of aid, a good deal of which helped Shevardnadze stay in power so long. Since the "revolution of roses" last fall, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. government officials have visited Tbilisi, underscoring Washington's commitment to Saakashvili and his associates. These moves are encouraging to many Georgians, who say that the country needs to establish the right "pressure gradient" in its foreign policy. They hope that the United States and its allies will put pressure on Russia, so that Russia, in turn, will put pressure on the Abkhaz and South Ossetian leaderships to give up their quest for independence. With a big enough push from the outside, their logic goes, Georgia's territorial problems would go away.

Things are more complicated than this, however. Abkhazia and South Ossetia certainly depend on Russia. Their trade is oriented almost exclusively toward the north, and Russian financial assistance, especially via subsidized energy supplies, is the bedrock of their existence. Moreover, Russian bases support local economies, even outside the secessionist zones; closing them down without a plan for replacing the jobs lost would be disastrous. At the same time, residents of these regions remember the violent conflicts of the early 1990s and remain understandably wary of the central government. Over the past decade, they have built their own administrations, security forces, and -- most critically -- school systems, with little connection to the rest of the country. Shevardnadze did little to reach out to the average people in these peripheral regions or to restore their confidence in the recognized government. Reversing that practice should be one of the key criteria by which outside powers judge Saakashvili's leadership.

Thinking creatively about what a meaningfully united Georgia ought to look like, instead of simply condemning Russia's dark influence, is the best way forward. There are several ways to bring together the country's disparate regions and interests, provided someone dares to consider and implement them. Federations, confederations, condominiums, and various forms of limited sovereignty have never really been put on the table in Georgia, even though these solutions are already being discussed in other parts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Until now, the situation in Georgia has not been sufficiently dire for anyone -- at least not for anyone with real political power -- to worry about solving it.

Saakashvili has a chance to change Shevardnadze's dismal legacy. But that will require statesmanship in the purest sense of the word, including articulating a clear case for why residents of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and any other part of the country should think of their future as lying within a state controlled by Tbilisi. Continued kvetching about territorial integrity and the nefarious designs of the Russian Federation will only alienate the secessionists further. In time, even Georgia's friends may come to wonder whether a country with fictitious borders and no plan for making them real is a country worth helping.

Georgia's strategic location and its pro-American foreign policy first helped put the country on the United States' radar screen. The government's weakness and Washington's fear that terrorists might set up camp in the country's mountain passes have kept it there. Money has flowed freely from Washington to Tbilisi for more than a decade, and U.S. soldiers have helped train the Georgian military. It is only recently, however, that the U.S. commitment to Georgia has come with meaningful admonitions about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Washington's growing honesty about the reality of Georgian politics helped bring about Shevardnadze's resignation. The United States should now help Georgia's new leadership think creatively about basic questions of sovereignty, territorial control, and institutional design. The central government must recognize the multiethnic and multireligious reality of the country. It must accept a decade of state-building in the secessionist regions and allow local governments to be empowered. If these efforts succeed, Georgia could well become the positive example for eastern Europe and Eurasia that observers have long hoped for.