stories

A geopolitical paradox Former diplomat Sergi Kapanadze on Georgia’s upcoming elections, the people’s E.U. aspirations, and the government’s drift towards Russia

Source: Meduza

As The Beet reported previously, Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, underwent a reshuffle back in February, after its billionaire founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, returned to politics once again. Since then, Georgian Dream has managed to push through a controversial “foreign agent” law, prompting a repeat of last year’s anti-government protests and further straining relations with Western partners. So where does that leave Georgia heading into the elections scheduled for this fall? To find out, The Beet’s editor Eilish Hart spoke to Georgia’s former deputy foreign minister, Sergi Kapanadze.

The following interview, which has been lightly edited and abridged for length and clarity, first appeared in The Beet, a weekly email newsletter from Meduza. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.

The parliamentary elections in Georgia are just three months away, and though the anti-government protests that grabbed headlines in the spring have died down, the political turmoil shows no signs of stopping. Earlier this week, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court challenging the “foreign agent” law that sparked the demonstrations, arguing that it compromises Georgia’s constitutional commitment to E.U. and NATO integration. 

The legislation, which the ruling Georgian Dream party passed in late May despite Zourabichvili’s attempted veto, has wreaked havoc on Georgia’s relations with Western partners. Just six months after granting Georgia candidate status, the European Union has now frozen the accession process and suspended the equivalent of nearly $33 million in military aid. The United States, meanwhile, has launched a full review of its bilateral cooperation with Georgia and “indefinitely postponed” their annual joint military drills. 

But these developments haven’t prompted Georgian Dream officials to change course. During the party’s re-election campaign launch on Wednesday, Georgian Dream’s honorary chairman, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, framed the upcoming vote as a choice between war and peace, blaming deteriorating relations with Washington and Brussels on the “global war party” (more on that later). He then argued that his party needs to secure a constitutional majority in the Georgian parliament to keep the country on track to join the European Union. 

So, to make sense of the paradox at the heart of Georgian Dream’s platform and find out more about the stakes in the upcoming election, The Beet turned to Sergi Kapanadze, a professor of international relations at the Ilia State and Caucasus universities in Tbilisi, who previously served as the vice speaker of Georgia’s parliament and as the country’s deputy foreign minister.

Eilish Hart: In May, Georgia saw mass protests against the adoption of the “foreign agent” law, but these have since died down even though the authorities have introduced new legislation (namely, the anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda bill) that could further compromise Georgia’s E.U. aspirations. Why do you think the protests lost momentum?

Dr. Sergi Kapanadze: I wouldn’t say they lost momentum; it’s just that the protests were to show that the people were against [the “foreign agent” law]. But once the government completely disregarded the voice of reason and the voice of the people, there was no point in continuing the protests. 

Elections are forthcoming in October, so a lot of those groups that were protesting have effectively switched to going against the government in the elections. Some have taken political stands by establishing or joining a political group, and others are going to contribute to the process because those who believe that these laws are detrimental to our democracy and European integration think the way to deal with this is to change the government. And I think this is correct because, at the end of the day, even if they had withdrawn the law, it wouldn’t have changed the identity of this government, which is non-European, non-democratic, and authoritarian-leaning. In fact, it’s already authoritarian — it’s not even leaning. 

Around 80 percent of Georgians want to join the European Union, but Georgian Dream has really mixed messaging about E.U. candidacy. Officials say Georgia “isn’t ready” to become a member country, and they push through legislation that hinders the membership bid, but at the same time, they tell the public Georgia is on track to join the E.U. by 2030. What do you make of this paradox?

I think it’s the classic doublespeak that you see in a lot of authoritarian societies. [The authorities] say different things, but what matters is what they do and the course they have taken. I think that European integration has no value for [Georgian Dream]; what has value for them is maintaining power at all costs. If, as a bonus, they also get European integration, I don’t think they would mind. However, we don’t know [what] sort of dealings there could be between the oligarch who runs our country, [Georgian Dream’s honorary chairman, Bidzina Ivanishvili], and Moscow.

The other thing is that we have proportional elections. So the only way for the oligarch to stay in power is to somehow get more than half of the vote — because nobody wants to be in a coalition with [Georgian Dream]. And for that, they need to polarize society to the maximum because, in a non-polarized political equation, you can’t really get 50 percent of the vote. That’s what they’re doing with these laws: polarizing [Georgian society] to the maximum. But they still talk about the European Union [because] you still have an overwhelming majority of Georgians who have a European identity and want to pursue European integration. So for those people, they have this classical doublespeak where they basically lie to them. 

But for [Georgian Dream politicians], it doesn’t matter that they lie, [so long as] they can maintain some of those voters. This government doesn’t have a European or a democratic identity. It’s a one-man show, a vertical that’s subordinate to Mr. Ivanishvili, and, at the end of the day, most of these people have proven they’re only going to do what Ivanishvili tells them to do.

It sounds like you really see Georgia’s foreign policy and its E.U. aspirations in particular as the key issue in the upcoming elections. Or would you say most Georgians are more concerned with something else, like the state of the economy, for example?

I think those two are not mutually exclusive. In my opinion, from looking at different polls, it depends which parts of the country we’re looking at. The urban centers, particularly Tbilisi, are very much concerned with European integration because these people realize that for the prosperity of the country, it plays an integral role. So for them, it’s not just an identity issue of I am Georgian, therefore I am European, therefore I want to join the European Union but it’s also a [precondition] for a better life, a better economy, and more security. 

But for a lot of people, particularly people in the regions who are more susceptible to government propaganda — and this government has mastered propaganda in the best Soviet or even Orwellian style — obviously the things that matter concern them directly, whether it’s the economy, jobs, etcetera. So I think it’s a challenge for the opposition parties in Georgia to break through that propaganda barrier and not just argue that this is a civilizational choice between Europe and Russia but also show the Georgian population what concrete benefits regular people will get once Georgian Dream is out. 

There were big celebrations in Georgia when the country received E.U. candidate status last December, but now relations have really deteriorated. You previously served as Georgia’s deputy foreign minister — what is it like for you to see relations with Western partners deteriorate in this way?

It breaks my heart, to be honest, because some of these things were literally unimaginable for me. We’ve been through some rough times because of the war in 2008, the economic crisis, and the reluctance of our European and NATO partners to accelerate Georgia’s integration. We were always banging on the doors, trying to get on the agenda, and then the tables turned. So the geopolitical environment is a lot more conducive to Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic integration now than it was 15 or [even] 10 years ago for that matter. And now, once the window of opportunity is open, to see how we are missing out on it because of one individual’s concrete personal interests and whatever shady dealings he has with Moscow, it really breaks my heart. 

But the more important problem is that this could be, as they often say, the last car of the train that you need to hop on [because it] might not come back again. We missed that opportunity in the 1990s when, instead of doing as our Baltic friends or other Eastern Europeans did, we got engaged in a civil war and conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. [This was] obviously with the participation of Russia, but we still sort of chose a different track. 

We missed [an opportunity back then] and it cost us dearly. And if we miss it again now, it might never appear again. So this is a very, very, very serious thing. That’s where Georgian Dream is making its biggest mistake: they do all these things [that hinder E.U. accession] and then by the same token argue that [Georgia will] integrate in 2030. It’s just not going to happen that way. What they are doing now blocks every possibility for any further integration down the road.

Do you have a sense of how Georgians perceive the response from the West? Has it provoked popular backlash against Western partners?

No, I think the Western approach has been rather smart in that whatever measures are being taken are actually against the government and concrete individuals. These aren’t really measures against the Georgian people, and I think that’s a good thing.  

What the government is trying to do is to portray it as the West punishing Georgians. But I don’t think they are succeeding there, to be honest. I think it’s been quite clear that they’ve failed to win that propaganda battle so far. Now, I’m not saying they won’t turn the table. They might, because, as I said, their propaganda is usually quite strong. But so far, my reading is that they haven’t really succeeded in persuading Georgians that the West is actually targeting the people and not the government. 

Georgian Dream officials have adopted really conspiratorial rhetoric about Western influence. For example, they say a so-called “global war party” is trying to drag Georgia into a war with Russia. To whom does this rhetoric appeal, and what end does it serve?

I think this is also very characteristic of authoritarian and even dictatorial regimes, where they try to invent an ephemeral enemy, which does not necessarily exist. It’s important for them as a reference point because that’s the enemy they’re going to rally the people against. They can’t really rally the people against the European Union, I think that ship has sailed. You can’t actually make Georgians anti-European or even anti-American. 

One of the reasons is that a lot of Georgians have migrated to the E.U. and to the U.S., and a lot of Georgians who stayed back actually live off the money that their relatives send [home]. So it’s hard to cultivate real anti-Western feelings here. So what they did [instead] was invent the next best thing, which is the “global war party.” This is a propaganda tool that’s very cheap, if you ask me. But at the same time, it has worked in other autocracies. 

Observers often label Georgian Dream’s anti-Western policies as “pro-Russian.” Is this a mischaracterization, or do these policies really represent a bigger shift in Georgia’s international position? Is Georgia actually growing closer to Russia, or is it just becoming more isolationist? 

In our case, isolationism is equivalent to being pro-Russian because we have such a clear threat coming from Moscow that you can’t sanely expect to be either neutral or isolated from the West without realizing that this is a serious problem for [Georgia’s] security. So, in our case, any sort of anti-Western shift is actually promoting Russia in Georgia. 

But that’s generally speaking. What we see rhetorically and policy-wise is a very clear approach to Russia, [which involves] sharing Russian positions on a lot of things. For instance, these laws are “Russian” not only because they’ve also been adopted by Vladimir Putin, but because only Russia and other places that are following the Russian approach blacklist organizations as “foreign agents” because of Western funding. There’s also the rhetoric about how, for instance, the West undermines Georgian Dream and wants to stage a coup d’état and a “color revolution” here, which [has been one of] Moscow’s primary talking points for many years now.

Also, if you look at Georgia not joining the sanctions against Russia and the positions we take on Ukraine, which was and really should be one of our primary partners, you really see that [the authorities] have come really close to sharing most pro-Russian positions. So, I think it’s a very deliberate policy choice. But it has an explanation. For this government, being in cahoots with Russia is actually quite comfortable because it means they don’t have to play by democratic rules: nobody threatens their [hold on] power, nobody asks them to reform the courts, nobody asks them to do necessary democratic reforms [concerning] media plurality, human rights, or respect for NGOs etcetera. 

The government has also passed another law about offshore money, basically allowing offshore companies to move into Georgia and bring money in from outside [without paying taxes — editor’s note]. And there is a lot of expectation that it will be Russian money coming in. So if, as a bonus to the current situation, you also have additional Russian money coming into Georgia that obviously benefits those who are affiliated with power, then it makes perfect sense why an oligarch who doesn’t really have European values would pursue this course of action.

Given popular sentiment towards Russia in Georgia, wouldn’t this damage Georgian Dream’s position heading into an election? Why do they think they can pursue these policies and still remain in power?

It would do damage, but what we’re omitting here is the power of the propaganda, which they really count on. Georgian Dream’s propaganda spins this not as a Europe versus Russia debate, but as peace versus war. So the meta-narrative is that they say we are the ones who are preventing Georgia from sliding into the war with Russia. They don’t portray Russia as an enemy, they portray Russia as a potential threat of conflict, which they are able to balance. And so under that [pretext], they are demonizing the European Union and the West, and that’s why they also need this “global war party” phenomenon. 

If it was an outright debate about Europe versus Russia, those who are for Russia would lose the elections 70–30. But they changed this debate, through propaganda, into war versus peace. And they think this gives them a chance to get enough of the vote to stay in power.

The NATO declaration adopted at the Washington Summit last week made no reference to Georgia’s membership prospects. Is joining NATO still part of the public discourse in Georgia or is this just completely on the back burner?

It’s still on the public’s agenda, but from the perspective of the government, it is not part of the foreign policy agenda right now. I would have preferred if NATO had still maintained the same language that was there before but added the problems with this government. I think that would have been a fairer approach, to say that, yes, Georgia as a country is still on our mind, but you have a government that is pursuing a different course and that needs to be rectified. That would have been a louder message. I have no doubt that once the government changes all that is going to come back. It just would have been much better for the Georgian public to understand [NATO’s position]. 

I think NATO has never been a priority for this government. They got rid of NATO as an agenda item quite a long time ago, to be honest. They just didn’t really make it public because, once again, this would have been a problem for the electorate.

One more question about the elections: Recently, a group of opposition parties announced they were joining forces against Georgian Dream ahead of the October elections. Do you think this will help strengthen the opposition’s chances of winning? 

I think the opposition has two major challenges. The first is getting people out to vote, because I believe that the majority of people in Georgia are anti-Georgian Dream. They just need to come out and vote, because a lot of groups that have been active during the protests — the youngsters, the middle class, the urban vote — they’re not necessarily active politically. So making these people come to [the polls] will be one major challenge for the opposition, not only in the country but also [abroad], because there’s a very strong migrant vote that needs to count in this election.

The other challenge is to ensure that votes are not lost. Because we have a proportional system with a five percent barrier, the surest way to lose votes is for people to vote for those opposition parties that don’t clear the threshold. Then the vote is split between the [ruling party] and the rest of the opposition. The coalition building that happened recently is one way to address that problem. 

But there are those who think they can clear the threshold and therefore don’t want to coalesce with anybody else, and there are others who are simply stupid enough to put their own ambitions [ahead of] the real interest of the state, which is to move forward on European integration. They are basically risking [Georgia’s] European future by gambling on whether they’re going to clear the threshold or not. And I think that’s very irresponsible of some opposition parties (but I’m not going to name any).

An argument I often hear about Georgian politics is that the reputation of the biggest opposition party, the United National Movement, is just so tarnished that it’s not a viable alternative to Georgian Dream. Do you think this kind of coalition building will help make the opposition more viable even if UNM is involved? 

I’m not even going to dispute that. UNM will go [it] alone with the little coalition they’ve created. They don’t have a problem clearing the barrier, so these elections won’t be decided by how many votes UNM gets. Their reputation is tarnished enough for them not to be able to win alone. But the question is what the other opposition parties are going to do. I think the bigger challenge is how the other opposition parties [will] manage to match or [surpass] whatever percentage [of the vote] the UNM already has. This is where the key to this election’s success is going to be. 

Now, whether those parties are going to cooperate in the post-election period… I think one thing the last 12 years and the years before that have shown is that one-party rule in Georgia somehow always ends up with authoritarian-leaning governments that nobody really likes. We need to learn how to work with coalitions, how to have multi-party governments, and how to share power. When you share power, it’s often with a party that you don’t like; I think that’s one thing we need to realize in Georgia. And I hope that by the time these elections come [around], there will be enough people [who realize] that the next parliament isn’t going to be one guy replacing another guy: it’s going to be coalition partners replacing one person and one-party rule. 

Hello, I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of The Beet. Thanks for taking the time to read our work! Our newsletter delivers underreported stories like this one to subscribers every Thursday. Like all of Meduza’s reporting, it’s free to read, but relies on support from readers like you. Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign.