FOUR years ago, that other Georgia staged its Rose Revolution and renewed itself as a pioneer of democracy in the bedeviled Caucaus. A U.S. educated, 30-something president shone as a new, pro-Western political star.
On Wednesday, dreams of easy democracy collapsed in shambles: President Mikhail Saakashvili sent his security forces to break up a mass protest in the streets of Tbilisi.
The gendarmerie used clubs, rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas on demonstrators calling for an end to corruption, aid for those whom the country’s nouveaux riches have left behind – and, above all, greater democracy instead of creeping repression.
The result was a tragedy. Only the Kremlin profited by the violence – which put over 500 people in hospitals – and Saakashvili’s declaration of 15 days of emergency rule.
Russian agents have been working overtime in Georgia, stirring up trouble on every side and backing separatists in two provinces (Abkhazia and South Ossetia).
The Kremlin has long since demonstrated its determination to reclaim Georgia for its resurgent empire. But if Saakashvili’s pro-Western strategy made him a marked man in Russian eyes, his Eastern-style default to authoritarian measures only plays into Russian hands.
Our client, Georgia’s president, is in the wrong. Shutting down Georgia’s independent TV station and beating the daylights out of his former supporters only weakens his stature at home and abroad. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin must be grinning like the Cheshire Cat on laughing gas.
The sincere protesters are in the right. But they’re also na*ve, unwitting dupes for the Kremlin – “useful idiots,” as Lenin described the type. Russian agents have always known how to infiltrate and exploit idealistic movements.
I’ve seen this in the Caucasus before. I witnessed first-hand the Russian divide-and-rule politics that fueled the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The Kremlin employed the same techniques in Ukraine and Moldova.
Yet, even beyond the breakdown of Georgian dreams of democracy and Moscow’s cynical manipulation of a neighbor’s discontents, we need to recognize an enduring pattern here – one we’ve seen throughout the developing world, as new states struggle to master the arts of independence and freedom.
From Latin American and Africa to the Middle East and the former USSR, the scenario goes like this:
* The people elect a charismatic leader who promises liberty, equality and better lives.
* At first, he tackles the state’s problems with gusto. Then he collides with reality: The treasury won’t cover all that must be done. Colleagues and relatives prove corrupt, robbing the state and peddling influence.
* A new class of criminals and entrepreneurs emerges (with no clear line between them), amassing flamboyant wealth by exploiting the state’s shortcomings.
* Frustrated at intractable problems, the leader consolidates ever more power in his own hands. His patience wears out with the opposition and a legislature he views as obstructionist. Sycophants encircle him.
* The people demand what they were promised. The voices in the streets are no longer content with speeches. They want results.
* The leader sees enemies everywhere, while hardening in his conviction that he’s the nation’s best hope. He banishes “disloyal” comrades and relies increasingly on the security forces.
* The confrontation arrives. Initially, the security forces maintain the upper hand. But will they remain loyal to the leader – or flip to the side of the people? Whatever they choose, they’re now the king-makers. The hollow forms may live on, but the democratic experiment is over.
The point? First, we need to stop imagining that democracy and unfamiliar freedoms are easy fits for long-repressed societies. Second, we need to focus on the specifics that push new democracies into failure. While there’s a range of potential grievances and pitfalls, the one that’s been at work in states such as Venezuela and Georgia is economic disparity.
Most people don’t expect to grow rich. But they find it intolerable if their neighbors grow rich and they don’t. For many formerly Soviet populations, schooled to believe that capitalism is exploitative, it’s all too easy to grow embittered when their elected government facilitates the rise of an aristocracy of oligarchs.
It isn’t the continued poverty of the masses that gives nascent capitalism a bad name, but the in-your-face wealth of the few.
Washington has been a friend to Georgia in general and to Saakashvili’s administration in particular. We provided aid and developed Georgia’s military. We implied support against Russia as we sought to draw Georgia closer to Europe.
But our passion for a system of government blinded us to the fact that no government is credible unless it provides for its people. The Saakashvili regime shone from afar – but grew rotten within. We looked away as corruption grew and discontent spread.
Now the Kremlin has maneuvered us into a treacherous position: Do we back the regime that has alienated the people, or walk away from the Saakashvili government and hand the game to Moscow?
Democracy is a marvelous technique. But when we elevated it to an ideology, we forgot that democracy is for and of the people. As the Soviets did before us, we valued the system over flesh and blood.
And, as any old Tammany Hall politician would’ve warned us, hungry people don’t vote for incumbents.
Georgia’s crisis wasn’t only made in Tbilisi and Moscow. It was made in Washington, too.