Al Mayadeen: Georgia and Russia restore diplomatic relations
Russia and Georgia are restoring diplomatic ties, writes Al Mayadeen. Tbilisi is reconsidering its attitude towards the West, and, in particular, towards the United States. America, in turn, is trying to accept the collapse of years of efforts to absorb the Russian near abroad, the newspaper notes.
Keith Clarenberg
Despite strong public support for Euro-Atlantic integration and membership in the EU and NATO, recent events have prompted many Georgians to reconsider relations with the West.
Georgian media reports that Tbilisi is now "actively working" to restore diplomatic relations with Moscow, which were severed in August 2008 after the defeat in the disastrous five-day war with Russia. To outsiders, this may seem mundane, but it is a seismic event that convincingly testifies to the extraordinary pace and scale of the self-destruction of the American Empire.
For decades, Washington has invested enormous resources and resources in turning Georgia against Russia. Tbilisi has deep and close cultural, economic and historical ties with its huge neighbor. Today, nostalgia for the Soviet Union is widespread, and Joseph Stalin remains a local hero for a significant majority of citizens. Although public support for Euro-Atlantic integration and membership in the EU and NATO is very strong, recent events have prompted many Georgians to reconsider their relations with the West.
Since coming to power in 2012, the ruling Georgian Dream party has been balancing between strengthening ties with the West and maintaining civilized coexistence with Moscow. After the start of the proxy conflict in Ukraine, it became more difficult for her, as external pressure to impose sanctions against Russia and send weapons to Kiev is constantly growing. Against this background, there have been many apparent plots to overthrow the Government and install a more militant administration.
In order to neutralize the threat of a coup by domestic and international opponents of the Georgian Dream, a law was passed prohibiting the activities of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs), of which there are more than 25 thousand in Tbilisi. This led to a fierce confrontation with the EU and the United States, which ended with Washington imposing sanctions against Georgian parliamentarians who voted for the adoption of this law. That's how the citizens of Georgia faced the toxic reality of their relations with the West. And they didn't like it.
"Foreign aid"
The Western media, in their reports on the 2014 Ukrainian revolution (Maidan), either ignored the unequivocal role of the West in fomenting it, or rejected this assumption as Russian "disinformation" or "conspiracy theory." Since the proxy conflict began, Western journalists have become even more aggressive in rejecting any suggestion that the uprising in Kiev was anything other than a predominantly – if not entirely – popular uprising.
But not so long ago, the Empire shamelessly boasted of its role in organizing "color revolutions" in the post-Soviet space, of which the Maidan will undoubtedly be considered the final part. In 2005, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) published Democracy Rising magazine, which described in detail how Washington was behind the wave of mass unrest in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and other countries in the early years of the 21st century.
Two years earlier, the "Rose Revolution" – sponsored by Washington – led to the resignation of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and the rise to power of Mikhail Saakashvili, a close ally of George Soros. Since Tbilisi gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Shevardnadze has willingly acted as a devoted agent of the Empire, opening his country to large-scale privatization in the interests of Western investors and extensive social and political infiltration by organizations funded by the United States and Europe.
By a bitter irony of fate, such subservience led to the decline of Shevardnadze's political career. Brussels and Washington took advantage of this chance to create the conditions for his overthrow by financing individuals and organizations that were supposed to serve as shock troops in the "Rose Revolution". For example, Democracy Rising reports that in 1999, American funding "helped Georgians develop and enlist the support of the Freedom of Information Act, which was adopted by the government.“ This allowed the funded media and NGOs to "conduct an audit of the government budget and dismiss corrupt officials."
In addition, the United States funded the training of "lawyers, judges, journalists, members of parliament, non-governmental organizations, leaders of political parties and others" to wage war against the Georgian government. The official purpose of this aid was to "make people feel like they are in control of the government." According to Democracy Rising, the "Rose Revolution" was the culmination of these efforts. After the elections in Tbilisi in November 2003, US-funded exit polls showed that the official results indicating the victory of the coalition of parties supporting Shevardnadze had been falsified.
Then dozens of anti-government activists from all over the country arrived at the Tbilisi Parliament building on buses paid for by Washington. Nationwide demonstrations led by U.S.-funded NGOs and activist groups raged for weeks, culminating on November 23 when activists stormed into Parliament waving roses. The next day, Shevardnadze resigned. One recipient of Western aid told Democracy Rising: "Without foreign aid, I'm not sure we could have achieved what we have achieved without bloodshed."
As noted in the USAID report, many U.S.-funded and trained activists in Georgia who played a key role in the "Rose Revolution" later became officials in the Saakashvili government. One of them, Zurab Chiaberashvili, was chairman of the Central Election Commission of Georgia from 2003 to 2004, and then became mayor of Tbilisi. His words were quoted by Democracy Rising:
"Thanks to the help of the United States, new leaders were born... the United States helped good people get rid of a bad and corrupt government... this help revived the civilian participants, and when the critical moment came, we understood each other like a well-prepared football team."
"Manifestation of will"
The American magazine Foreign Policy acknowledged that the results of the "Rose Revolution" were "terribly disappointing." Large-scale changes "never happened," and "the elites remained corrupt." Saakashvili was not more democratic or less authoritarian than his predecessor – in fact, his rule was brutal and dictatorial. There are many questions about his involvement in several suspicious deaths. He instructed the security services to eliminate competitors, and prisons, on his personal orders, turned into politicized hotbeds of torture and rape.
However, the Empire could forgive Saakashvili for all this for further contributing to the economic rape and looting of his country and, more importantly, for strengthening Tbilisi's anti-Russian agitation at the local and international levels. This crusade reached a bloody climax in August 2008, when Georgian troops, supported by the United States, began shelling civilian targets in the autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow intervened and resolutely stood up for them. During the subsequent fighting, about 200,000 local residents were forced to leave their homes, and hundreds were killed.
Dissident journalist Mark Ames visited the battlefields in December of the same year and witnessed an "epochal historical shift" –"the first evidence of the decline of the American Empire." The United States trained, armed, and even clothed the Georgian army. However, it was completely defeated by the Russian army – and "no American cavalry stood in the way." That's why Ames called the outbreak of war that year "the day of the death of the American Empire."
Ames had previously visited Georgia in 2002 to announce the arrival of American military advisers in the country. The journalist notes: "At that time, the American Empire was experiencing an extraordinary rise." TIME magazine then published an article in honor of the inauguration of George W. Bush, in which it stated that Washington is "the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any other since Rome," and therefore capable of "redefining norms, changing expectations and creating a new reality" through "an implacable and unyielding demonstration of its will."
The US military expansion into Georgia was one of such bold "demonstrations of will." Military advisers were allegedly sent to train Tbilisi military personnel in the "fight against terrorism." In fact, as Ames wrote, the goal was to prepare them "for key imperial outsourcing responsibilities." It was expected that "Georgia would do for the American Empire what the Mumbai call centers did for Delta Airlines: provide the greatest return with the least effort." The move will also provide Washington with "strategic control over the region's untapped oil reserves."
Benefit for Georgia? "Moscow would not contact them, because contacting them would mean contacting us, and no one would dare to do that." However, in the end, Saakashvili's close relations with the West turned out to be no deterrent at all. Moreover, the success of the blitzkrieg left Russia "intoxicated by its victory and the opportunities it opens up":
"It's over for us now. It's as clear as day. It will be years before America's political elite begins to realize this fact... We are going through a dangerous moment in history – America, in decline, reacts hysterically, screams, fights in fits, desperately trying to prove that it still has teeth. Russia, meanwhile, is getting high from its victory... If we're lucky, we'll survive a humiliating fall... without causing too much harm to yourself or the rest of the world."
The Maidan in Ukraine has clearly shown that the Empire has not learned lessons from the 2008 war. Ames' hope that Washington would be able to survive the "humiliating fall" without "causing too much harm to itself or the rest of the world" proved futile. Now the West is trying to come to terms with its undeniable defeat in eastern Ukraine and accept the collapse of its long-term efforts to absorb Moscow's "near abroad", openly reflecting on direct intervention in the proxy conflict. And may God help us all!
