There is a new sheriff in town, and he does superpower politics like no one did before. That much we all have gathered over the past few weeks. Donald Trump’s return to the White House changed the game forever. He is set to broker peace in Ukraine, the Middle East, and, just as significantly, he purged USAID and thus the whole international network of American liberal democracy export. This new era of U.S. foreign politics was introduced to Europe by Vice President J. D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference.
Vance’s speech was devastating for the liberal elite in Europe. He launched an offensive against woke identity politics and illegal migration, long awaited by conservatives across the continent. He decried the annulment of the Romanian elections as severely anti-democratic and warned against an imminent meddling attempt after the German elections too. He reminded European decision makers that the Trump administration will not hide “behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation” to evade political dialogue, whether it’s left or right.
There is a growing democratic deficit in Europe, and this backsliding pulls to the left. The left-wing Polish government purged its judicial system and public media, suspended the right to asylum, and the EU hasn’t even blinked an eye. But when the Hungarian government limited the promotion of gender ideology for minors and built a fence on its southern border to halt illegal migration, the European Commission referred Hungary to the Court of Justice and fined Hungarian authorities with hundreds of millions of Euros. Make no mistake, these are not value-based decisions, these are pure power politics.
These double standards have taken EU enlargement hostage too. The Ukrainian government banned eleven opposition parties, several TV-channels, the country’s largest church, books and musicians, and systematically destroyed the cultural heritage of minority groups and cancelled elections while it fast-tracks toward European Union membership. On the other hand, the EU and the Biden-administration launched an unprecedented offensive against another EU candidate country, Georgia, on accounts of putative anti-democratic measures. The real reasons, again, are not democratic concerns, but political struggles.
Why was the Georgian government singled out? First of all, because it refused to join European sanctions against Russia, and thus it was labelled as a “Putinist regime.” Don’t make any mistake, Georgia is not pro-Russia. Tbilisi doesn’t even have diplomatic relations with Moscow. Russia occupies 20% of Georgia’s territory and is the number one threat to the country’s security. However, they are neighbouring countries, with deep-rooted economic ties — Georgia was subdued by both the Russian and the Soviet empires. It is a country of 3.7 million people and an economy of $30 billion in GDP. Russia’s population is 144 million and its GDP is $2,000 billion. Russia is one of the top export markets of Georgia, therefore, sanctions would have had devastating consequences for its economy.
The EU argues that some of Georgia’s recent legislations are incompatible with European democratic values. One was the law package on family values and the protection of minors, similar to the one adopted by Hungary, limiting the promotion of gender ideology — it was supported by the vast majority of the Georgian population. (Georgia is Europe’s most conservative country.) The other was the law on “transparency of foreign influence” that required NGOs and the press to publish their annual financial declarations. There are some 26,000 NGOs in Georgia, one for every 143 citizens — an extremely high rate globally. Though 90% of these organizations depend on foreign aid, a mere 26% made their finances transparent. Most of the money came from USAID, European Endowment for Democracy, and other Western funds, and engaged in an ugly culture war in a country with one of the most religious societies in the Christian world. One infamous beneficiary of foreign aid was Tbilisi Pride, while another organization organized “revolution workshops” for opposition activists from USAID money. That is why public distrust towards NGOs has increased from 17 to 32% since 2008.
The Biden-administration punished Georgia for not joining the sanctions regime, pursuing pragmatic foreign relations, conservative domestic policies, and insisting on transparency of the civil sphere in a post-color revolution society. It sanctioned Georgian officials and indefinitely postponed U.S.-Georgia joint military exercises. Complementing these measures, the EU has frozen Georgia’s accession process and demanded the annulment of these legislations. The Georgian government refused to comply and thus suffered an unprecedented assault from its European partners, with EU politicians, and European activists actively campaigning against the Georgian government prior to the parliamentary elections of October 2024. Their atrocity outraged the vast majority of Georgians and the governing party won the elections by a landslide.
The EU did what Vice-President J.D. Vance warned against in Munich — it attempted to overturn the elections. The European Parliament issued a resolution rebuking the results of the elections and urged snap elections under international supervision, even though 90% of the votes have been counted with a Dutch electronic system recommended by the European Commission itself for the Georgian authorities. Moreover, the EP resolution was issued even before the final report of the OSCE election observer mission was published and found no evidence of systematic election fraud.
That was the final straw for the Georgian government. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze declared that he will not put EU accession on the negotiations table unless the EU restrains itself from blackmail. He stressed, however, that he is ready to sign an accession treaty anytime given that this hostile environment stops, and meaningful dialogue is reestablished. His words, however, have been twisted by the liberal mainstream media which then accused the Georgian government of freezing the country’s EU accession process and betraying the Georgian people’s will, suppressing the fact that Georgia’s EU accession was long frozen by the EU itself.
Georgia has been a loyal partner of the U.S. and the EU since the 2008 Russo-Georgian war. It was the Georgian Dream government, now under Western fire, that codified NATO and EU integration in the Georgian constitution as the foundation of the country’s foreign agenda. Georgia is a country of key strategic significance, along the southern border of Russia, with access to the Black Sea. It does not want to suffer the fate of Ukraine and strives for peace, stability, and transactional economic relations with both its neighbours and Western partners. The Georgian government has welcomed the profound shift of U.S. foreign aid politics and the USAID-stop. Tbilisi fundamentally agrees with Vice President J. D. Vance when he calls for European liberals to stop meddling in sovereign states’ elections. Georgia is ready to accelerate its military spending, purchase more U.S. weapons, and to reestablish its partnership with the U.S. and the EU based on mutual respect and shared interests. It is time to engage in geopolitics as it is meant to — not by liberal democracy export and election meddling but meaningful security measures and strong economic cooperation.
Dr. Péter Pál Kránitz is a senior research fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs.
image, Pixabay license.
Jesus Christ is King
