Recently, on 25th July 2024, the Washington Post published an article “How four U.S. presidents unleashed economic warfare across the globe”, in which some interesting statistics were noted. Firstly, the US imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country (or group of countries) on earth. Secondly, that around one third of all countries on earth are on the receiving end of some form of US sanctions, and that the effectiveness of such sanctions has been, to say the least, limited, despite being the “go to” option of the US government for inflicting punishment on countries from Iran to Cuba, Russia to Myanmar.
It was also implied that this was an act taken against “unfriendly” (a polite way of saying “enemy”) states, but the recent US actions against the Republic of Georgia show that they are also happily applied to countries that have, by any reasonable measure, been friends of the US.
A good case in point is the Georgian contributions to US led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, where in the latter it was the largest contributor of all non-NATO members, and fourth-largest overall, after the US, Germany, and Italy, and Georgian troops took part in operations in far more intensive combat areas such as Helmand, with the USMC forces there. Georgia was also critical to US logistics during the precipitous US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
It is interesting, therefore, to look at the recent statements by the ever slimy Anthony Blinken, a Neocon to his core, regarding the US State Department’s fury at Georgian democracy in action.
Blinken, in response to the Georgian government passing a law supported by a large majority of the population, aimed at bringing transparency to the murky field of grant eating NGOs in Georgia, into which the US and EU have poured billions of dollars in cash, generally in an underhanded/under-the-table manner, to fund NGOs that seem hell-bent on attacking everything from Georgian culture and traditions, to that pillar of Georgian identity, the Orthodox Church, resulted in Blinken announcing:
“On May 23, after anti-democratic actions by the Georgian government, I announced a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation between the United States and Georgia. As a result of that review, the United States is pausing more than $95 million in assistance that directly benefits the Government of Georgia”
Blinken went on to laud US “assistance” to Georgia, and decry statements by the Georgian government that he considers “incompatible with membership norms in the EU and NATO”
One assumes the statements referred to are those by the Georgian Prime Minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, where he warned about a global war party pressuring Georgia to join the war against Russia.
Also infuriating the US and EU is the Georgian government’s refusal to join anti-Russian Sanctions, and the Prime Minister’s attendance at the funeral of the Iranian president, and the swearing in of his elected replacement.
Kobakhidze has further enraged the US by warning that a return of the United National Movement of Saakashvili, something that is almost certainly the US objective, will result in Georgia opening a (suicidal) second front within days, and that he had been under intense pressure from foreign institutions to start a second front himself, something his government has refused to do.
“As for the threats, I can tell you with full responsibility – if theoretically we can imagine the processes like this, may God protect us, practically, this will not happen because the Georgian people stand first and foremost on guarding the interests of this country, but if we theoretically imagine the collective United National Movement opposition coming to power, for example, by November, after the elections, I guarantee you, if not in two, three and four months, but within days Georgia will become a second front. I guarantee this based on the information I have”
In retaliation, as well as Blinken’s suspension of aid, there is the reprehensibly named “Megobari Act” (Megobari is Georgian for friend) has passed the Senate committee and is poised for a vote in the house.
The opening of the bill reads like this:
“The current Georgian Government has increasingly and regrettably embraced a policy of accommodation with the Russian Federation as an aspect of its increasingly illiberal turn, and has openly attacked the United States and other western democracy promotion organizations as well as local and international civil society while embracing increased ties with Russia in particular, as well as China and other authoritarian governments, in defiance of its own preexisting foreign and security policies as reflected in its constitution and longstanding public sentiments,”
It is plain to see that the real concern of the US is that Georgia is trying to normalize relations with its biggest neighbor, and most important trading partner (despite a lack of diplomatic relations) in order to solve in a diplomatic way the issues that lay between them, such as the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
A stable and peaceful Caucasus would run entirely opposite to this agenda, and therefore must not be allowed.
Which brings us back to the subject of US aid. The US has spent large, some would say immense sums, in both grants and loans to Georgia, as has the EU. But it is interesting to see the results. The US statement by Blinken says that aid for education and educators will not be touched, but what good has been done by such aid?
It appears very little, in fact, quite the opposite. The standard of Georgian public education has nosedived under western “assistance”, which mainly seems to consist of moving God out of schools. Until quite recently, each School had a resident priest, and religious education was part of the curriculum, something the US and EU lobbied hard to remove, plus the (luckily averted) drive by western “friends” of Georgia to force LGBTQ issues into public schools, something horrendously unpopular with the general public.
Go Woke, or Go Broke Approach
Instead of focusing on the fundamentals of reading, writing, sciences, and history, western educational aid is following the “Go woke, go broke” approach, and trying to weaponise the youth of the country against their own culture, with a corresponding decrease in achievement, as shown in the PISA studies.
The same is true for most other types of aid and loans, with western lenders choosing projects that may not be appropriate for the country, but will be good earners for the International Financing Institutions (IFIs) such as KfW, EBRD, EIB, and USAID, who are, when all is said and done, money making machines for their respective backers, rather than actual aid agencies.
I am firmly convinced, that like many of the other targets of US sanctions, that the Georgian government should wean itself off the deadly drug of western “aid” and make a much-needed pivot towards the rest of the world, the so called “global south” which is now emerging from centuries of Western colonial oppression. Only by uniting with the rising multipolar powers such as the SCO and BRICS, led by China, Russia, and India, as well as other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, will Georgia be able to realize its full potential.
To that end, I hope the Georgian government tell Blinken and von der Leyen to take their money, and either send it where it is really needed, the nation of Ukraine that has been destroyed by their warmongering, or shove it up their proverbial and rotate.
Furthermore, let’s ask ourselves whether this money was loaned or was it donated outright, with or without strings, and whether there is any donated money at all? It is clear all the hype over these actions are part of the same preparation for a Venezuela like scenario, the difference is that in Georgia the majority of the people support the government. Again, the United States is making a terrible mistake by betting on the wrong opposition, which is associated with the criminal regime of one of its former presidents, Mikheil Saakashvili and its murderous past.
The United States and its allies, especially the US and NATO, are pushing Georgia away from the West and pushing it closer towards Russia and China…leaving it with no other choice, as it needs a strong ally/back to survive in this conflict situation When you are facing an abyss, there is no other way but to go back to what you know better.
Do they [the wiser policymakers] not understand this in the USA, and the Georgian government has seen what has happened to Ukraine, where US and EU fueled ethnocentric nationalism has destroyed the country, as a result of the flood of money and weapons to an extremist fringe that now rules the country at gunpoint, with no chance of victory.
Such western largesse has also made Ukraine’s already turbocharged corruption grow like a cancer, ruining any chance of reform or improvement that the average Ukrainian could have hoped for. All in the name of US and EU strategic interests.
It is coming evident to even average Georgians that the regime in the USA has evolved into the most openly criminal one that has ever existed!
Because with friends like the US and the EU, who needs enemies?
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs.