Response to Oliver Bullough

On February 14, 2011, the Georgian news portal Georgiandaily.com published my response to Oliver Bullough [see photo on the right courtesy of circassianworld.com], whose article "Letter From Tbilisi: Toward a United Caucasus. A New Georgian Gamble in the Caucasus?" appeared on the website of the Foreign Affairs magazine on December 23, 2010. I am reposting it here in its entirety:

Response to Oliver Bullough

February 14, 2011

by Alexander Melikishvili, Freelance Research Analyst

Judging by the very appearance of Oliver Bullough’s vastly simplistic and transparently biased interpretation of Georgia’s recently launched array of policy initiatives vis-à-vis the North Caucasus (“Letter From Tbilisi: Toward a United Caucasus,” Foreign Affairs, December 23, 2010), the quality standards at the Foreign Affairs sadly continue to disappoint.

For many centuries now the volatile areas around the world have a habit of attracting rather diverse mix of thrill-seeking adventurers of all kinds and walks of life. In recent centuries this set of colorful characters ranged from Alexandre Dumas and Lev Nussimbaum to Sir John Chardin and Odette Keun. Of course, mentioning Bullough in this company is undoubtedly giving him too much credit, but these are difficult times that probably merit certain leniency as well as charity.

Bored with the Welsh Marches, in comes this self-styled “Rory Stewart” of the Caucasus, who is clearly convinced that he is qualified not only to admonish the Georgian government for its “provocative and potentially destabilizing” overtures towards the North Caucasus but also to urge the West and more specifically the Obama administration to do something about it. Curious indeed. However, let us proceed in examining the most problematic aspects of his essay in an orderly manner.

The reiteration of fallacies should begin with the often heard Russian complaint of Georgia’s alleged “betrayal” of its former imperial master. Apparently Bullough is highly susceptible to the Russian interpretation of the historical events, including the fateful signing of the Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783, which is conveniently presented as the selfless, humane and noble deed and not as anchoring of imperial ambitions and interests in the Caucasus that lasted in one form or another to the present day.

Bullough is obviously unaware of the fact that the Russian Empire subsequently violated the terms of the aforementioned treaty by disrupting the Georgian monarchic line, co-opting the oversized and fractious Georgian aristocracy and systematically destroying any vestiges of Georgian sovereignty symbolic or otherwise. In other words, Georgia became another territorial acquisition in the seemingly relentless expansion of the Russian Empire by land. Paradoxically by then Georgian statehood withstood multiple Muslim yokes and yet it was the “fellow Christians” from the north, who put an end to it. Under the Russian imperial rule Georgians distinguished themselves by serving Tsars with erstwhile zeal and exceptional loyalty. The equestrian statue of Georgian Prince and General of Russian Army Pyotr Bagration(i) that still stands in downtown Moscow ought to be an adequate reminder of this service. However, the collapse of the Russian Empire drastically changed the geopolitical circumstances surrounding Georgia and if it were not for the Bolshevik reoccupation and subsequent seven decades of servitude under the Soviet rule who knows where Georgia’s westward reorientation would have led? Bullough simply fails to comprehend that Georgia’s yearning for Euro-Atlantic integration is not some sort of bizarre idée fixe of the current Georgian government but it reflects genuinely broad national consensus.

However, the weakest point of Bullough’s argument is in simplistically interpreting Georgian government’s decision to introduce a visa-free regime for the residents of the North Caucasus as yet another example of Tbilisi’s thoughtless poking of the Russian bear. As I already wrote elsewhere, in simplifying travel procedures for the North Caucasians Tbilisi primarily seeks to cultivate the good will towards Georgia among them. The same purpose is served by the growing educational exchanges as well as by the relaunch in January of the First Caucasus News television channel, which is run by the veteran British journalist Robert Parsons.

The mentioning of Georgian natural gas imports from Iran is clearly intended to fuel Western suspicions about Georgian government’s regional policy, as the Georgian analyst David Iberi aptly notes in his criticism of Bullough’s piece here. In his monumental ignorance Bullough fails to mention that Iran is, by far, not the most vital source of natural gas for Georgia. Georgia receives the bulk of its natural gas from the neighboring Azerbaijan. If he were to do some most basic fact-checking before writing his screed, Bullough would have also discovered that NATO member Turkey last year increased its gas imports from Iran by 50 percent.

What is also striking about Bullough’s piece is that the author completely neglects to mention the systematic manner in which the Russian government alienated the population of the North Caucasus. Amidst the rising xenophobia targeting the dark-skinned “people of Caucasian nationality” in Russia proper, the North Caucasians have long become the second class citizens of the Russian Federation. So much so that after the introduction of the visa-free travel to Georgia a joke took root among the North Caucasians that at least now the anachronistic propiska or record of place of residence stamped in the Russian passport finally offers distinct advantage of visa-free travel to Georgia as opposed to many disadvantages and discrimination that a holder of such passport would experience once he or she ventures into the Russia proper.

Another sign of intellectual dishonesty is evident in the omission of the conferral of the Russian citizenship en masse on the residents of Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which violated the international law, as is duly noted in the EU-sponsored report on the August 2008 war.

In a typical zero-sum fashion Bullough makes rather provocative claim that any expansion of Georgia’s influence over the North Caucasus will invariably result in the weakening of Russia’s grip over this volatile region, which, he asserts, could result in ethnic conflicts there with all the consequences for the “outside powers.” What he forgets is that the Kremlin’s hold on the North Caucasus has always been rather tenuous. The policy of installing Putin loyalists and hoping that they will somehow manage the local affairs has proven to be disastrously misguided and ineffective. The widespread corruption, police brutality, rising unemployment and near total neglect from the federal center in Moscow created fertile conditions in which the insurgency that was once primarily circumscribed to Chechnya has now spread to the other North Caucasian republics. It is hard to imagine that Tbilisi’s peaceful “soft power” initiatives would make matters worse there and yet Bullough seems to be adamant about such doom and gloom scenarios. After the most recent attack on the Domodedovo Airport, Russians are more openly asking the questions about what they received in terms of basic security after more than ten years of Putinism.

Bullough contradicts himself when he grudgingly recognizes that Tbilisi is gradually restoring the status of the cultural and economic capital of the Caucasus region (both North and South) that it once held while at the same time resisting and even fearing this process.

Finally, Bullough naively overestimates the influence Washington now wields over Tbilisi. With the new round of Iran sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council and the new START treaty signed and ratified, the “reset” with Russia must now be propelled by Russia’s entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Here, however, Georgia suddenly finds itself in possession of a unique leverage because the WTO membership can only be granted by the unanimous consent of all member-states. Georgia is a WTO member and for a number of legitimate reasons, including the unilateral Russian trade embargo imposed on Georgia since 2006, Tbilisi has shown no willingness to give a green light thus far. Thus, if Russia were to enter the WTO in 2011, as per President Barack Obama’s personal promise to President Dmitri Medvedev, Tbilisi would have to be offered something significant in return. What that might be is anybody’s guess and there are those, who speculate that Tbilisi might demand defensive weapons from the West, but be that as it may, clearly Tbilisi is in a better negotiating position than Washington. In this context, certainly Washington will be less likely to dictate anything to Tbilisi, especially when it comes to Georgia’s policy vis-à-vis North Caucasus, which is poorly understood here anyway.