Secretary Blinken, Amid a Crisis in the Caucasus, Reaches Into His Rusty Toolkit

In the run-up to President-elect Trump’s swearing in it seems there is no crisis that the Biden administration cannot fumble and, beyond the obvious flashpoints of the Middle East and Ukraine, it looks like Georgia can be added to the list. The small transcontinental country in the Caucasus, known for its fine wines, long-living people, and as the birthplace of Josef Stalin, has been wracked by protests. They have been precipitated by the government’s decision to put the former Soviet republic’s bid for accession to the European Union on hold until 2028.Public opinion in the country of 3.7 million persons favors EU membership — joining it is even enshrined in its constitution, as the Sun’s James Brooke has shrewdly pointed out — but the pro-Russian government does not favor the EU.The question of why countries covet membership in it touch on a economic and geostrategic questions that nobody at Foggy Bottom seems able or willing to ask, let alone answer. Plus, there is the fact that Great Britain hastened to leave the EU after a bona-fide national election.Secretary Blinken, who may be remembered for the weakness of the president he served, on Wednesday issued an anodyne statement of support for the Georgian people. “In addition to continuing our previously announced comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation,” Mr. Blinken stated, “the United States is now preparing to use the tools at our disposal, including additional sanctions.”The Baltic states beat Mr. Blinken to the punch, though. On December 1, the Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, announced that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia will impose sanctions against the Georgian government after the suspension of the bid for European integration and in the wake of the ensuing protests. Wielding sanctions as a diplomatic tool can have decidedly mixed results — case in point, those imposed on Russia. In the initial phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Washington and the European Union slapped sanctions on virtually every Russian bank, company, and Russian public official in sight.While Russia’s economy has been battered, sanctions have done nothing to dislodge Russian forces from the Ukrainian territories they illegally occupy. The cynical might say that the main tangible result of Mr. Blinken’s sanctions is that today’s Russian oligarchs have been deprived of their superyachts — and temporarily at that, as many are simply berthed at Turkish ports. Should we then laud Mr. Blinken for stating that “our partnership” with Georgia “has been rooted in our shared love of freedom and democracy and a desire to see Georgia in the Euro-Atlantic family” or congratulate him, as it were, for complicating the work of his likely successor, Senator Rubio?Sources at Mr. Rubio’s office tell the Sun on background that President-elect Trump’s pick for America’s top diplomat will likely have a different approach to tackling the world’s conflicts, but would not be drawn as to whether there is any specific policy change forthcoming with regard to the crisis in Georgia. Given the closeness of a former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, to Mr. Trump, and Mr. Grenell’s own views on where Ukraine does, or does not, stand in the “Euro-Atlantic family,” it is worth recalling some of the parallels with that embattled country’s recent history and the protests in Georgia. By most accounts, the Maidan uprising that occurred in Ukraine in late 2013 and early 2014 was sparked by the rejection by the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, of closer integration with the European Union. Mr. Yanukovych eventually fled to Russia. Before he did so, though, the ambassador to Ukraine under President Obama, Geoffrey Pyatt, and a former diplomat were accused of meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics. That fumble only fed the Russian narrative that America and the West not only had it in for Russia but could not even conceal it. Mr. Blinken’s limp-wristed approach now appears to point to the same kind of dynamics playing out in Georgia, a country that despite the secretary’s elegant verbiage is known to most Americans not for its wine or its bleak Soviet heritage but as a place name easily conflated with that of the Peachtree State.The situation in the Caucasus does not look great. On Wednesday, Georgian police raided the offices of an opposition party and arrested its leader in an apparent attempt to tamp down the protests over the governing Georgian Dream party’s stance on delaying those EU membership negotiations. Georgian Dream retained control of parliament in a disputed October 26 election, which many saw as a referendum on the country’s EU aspirations. The opposition and the pro-Western president have accused the governing party of rigging the vote with neighboring Russia’s help and subsequently boycotted parliamentary sessions.The country’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party, said the raids targeted those who encouraged violence during protests in an attempt to topple his government. “I wouldn’t call this repression,” he has stated, but “more of a preventive measure than repression.”Unlike the recent showdown situation in South Korea, this drama is not likely to blow over any time soon — it is a different part of the world at the crossroads of two continents, with a murky cast of characters. Those hoping for clarity from the desk of Secretary Blinken in the weeks to come shouldn’t hold their breath.

Secretary Blinken, Amid a Crisis in the Caucasus, Reaches Into His Rusty Toolkit

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