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Against Saakashvili, Not Georgia

The title of James’ post on Georgia, responding to Freddy’s post from earlier in the week, pretty well sums up my response to this line of criticism from Jonathan Kulick.  There are several problems with Kulick’s view of why Americans and NATO should stand up for Georgia, beginning with the strange idea that “freedom and […]

The title of James’ post on Georgia, responding to Freddy’s post from earlier in the week, pretty well sums up my response to this line of criticism from Jonathan Kulick.  There are several problems with Kulick’s view of why Americans and NATO should stand up for Georgia, beginning with the strange idea that “freedom and democracy” have something to do with the current regime of Saakashvili.  Unless and until friends of Georgia can begin to acknowledge that Saakashvili is consistently doing great harm to Georgian interests and to the prospects of sustainable representative government in that country, they will continue to be viewed by Georgia’s neighbours, skeptics of NATO expansion and more than a few European governments as willing dupes for unwise, unjustifiable policies aimed at Western hegemony in the Caucasus rather than the well-wishers of the Georgian people that they claim to be.  In point of fact, neither I nor any of my colleagues treats Georgia as a “whipping boy.”  I have profound sympathy for the suffering land of Georgia and its people, as I have stated time and again.  It is Saakashvili and his hangers-on that I criticise and I wish the U.S. would stop lending such unstinting support to such an unworthy character for a country that is, as Kulick correctly states, “not obviously central to American interests.”  In fact, it is not even tangential to American interests, which is all the more reason why Washington should have no hand in propping up someone like Saakashvili to the detriment of ordinary Georgians.

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