In late November, following parliamentary elections marred by government-led intimidation and apparent fraud, Georgia’s government suspended efforts to join the European Union. EU and NATO accession is an explicit constitutional requirement for any Georgian government, and the vast majority of Georgians support it. Responding to this betrayal of legal obligations, tens of thousands have taken to the streets to demand the government’s restored constitutional loyalty.
The governing Georgian Dream party hasn’t shown any contrition. On the contrary, it has reacted with wanton brutality in an attempt to put down the protests. Hundreds have been very badly beaten and/or arrested without lawful excuse. The media have also been deliberately targeted by violent gangs which are operating under government direction. Bidzina Ivanishvili is the central villain here.
While he is only Georgian Dream’s honorary chairman on paper, Ivanishvili is the ultimate power behind the throne. An oligarch billionaire with pet sharks, Ivanishvili made his money looting post-Soviet industries in Russia. Today, he uses his power for wanton corruption, diverting state resources and lucrative contracts to his family and to loyalists. While President Joe Biden pledged to sanction Ivanishvili, he has not done so. This weakness has not gone unnoticed by the oligarch and his crony government. They sense they can do whatever they want without fading any serious riposte.
That brings us to President-elect Donald Trump. In response to the violence it is inflicting upon its own people, the Biden administration has suspended its strategic engagement with the government in Tbilisi. Georgian Dream is arrogantly betting, however, that Trump will ignore their brutality and corruption. The party wants him to ignore its theft of state resources, its betrayal of the Georgian constitution, and its attacks on innocent men and women. Georgian Dream is also keen that Trump not notice its supplication to Russia, its prime minister’s attendance at a funeral for a top Hamas leader, and its support for Chinese strategic interests. This latter concern has led to the government signing a strategic partnership agreement with Beijing and seemingly unqualified support for Chinese security, technological, and political interests.
Instead, Georgian Dream hopes that Trump will adopt the same approach to it that he has adopted toward Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Namely, welcoming its rhetorical praise while ignoring its blatant betrayal of Trump and America’s better interests.
Unfortunately for Ivanishvili, Trump is unlikely to fall for its fiction. As in his first term sanctioning of the Nord Stream II energy pipeline, Trump has shown a willingness to target economic interests that undermine U.S. security and interests. And Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream encapsulate the very thing that defines Trump’s political identity: a corrupt elite acting against the interests of the common man and women without any sense of guilt. In turn, rather than laughing it up in anticipation of Trump’s arrival, Ivanishvili should be nervous about facing sanctions, including secondary sanctions, on his interests. The Georgian Dream government should fear the same.
The key point here is that Georgian Dream is no friend of Trump or America. Don’t take my word for it, take President-designee Mikheil Kavelashvili’s.
A former soccer star, Kavelashvili has blamed the United States for the brutality his partners have inflicted on their fellow citizens. A vehement anti-American, in June, Kavelashvili attacked members of Congress, including prominent Republicans, as having an “unquenchable desire to destroy our country.” And in stark contrast to the conciliatory rhetoric Trump has employed since his election triumph, Kavelashvili warned his political opponents that they would face dark consequences for testifying to the U.S. Congress on Georgia’s human rights crisis. As he put it, “After the elections, the Georgian people will give you all a proper place for this unprecedented betrayal!”
In the blood and broken eye sockets of innocent Georgians, the world is now seeing what Kavelashvili meant by “proper.” But Kavelashvili is no outlier. Ivanishvili has called Kavelashvili “the embodiment of a Georgian man.” It says much about the oligarch king that he would endorse this blatant anti-American with such adoration.
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Trump should judge Georgian Dream for what it is. A group of corrupt thugs who want to smash Georgia’s constitution and people into obedience in order that they might better enrich themselves and better serve American adversaries in Moscow and Beijing.
A group, that is to say, which deserves Trump’s sanction-laden derision far more than it does any offer of friendship.