Keeping Up With Georgia, Or the Problems with Revolution Fatigue

There is plenty of commentary on Iran out there. You don’t need us to fill you in (though we might try a bit later, from an altitude above the twitter-RTing that’s currently 90% of the “news” about the “revolution”). What I do find remarkable about what’s going on right now remains what’s going on in Georgia. This putative U.S. ally is still beating and arresting its political opponents, and now that opposition has reached out for help:

THE LEADERS of Georgia’s opposition have called on western nations to condemn President Mikheil Saakashvili’s handling of a 10-week-long protest against his rule, after police clashed again with anti-government demonstrators intent on forcing him from power.

The fighting in central Tbilisi came as Russia used its veto in the United Nations Security Council to prevent the extension of an observer mission in Abkhazia, a separatist Georgian region which, like South Ossetia, has been recognised by Moscow as an independent state.

Violence erupted when dozens of masked police wielding truncheons confronted about 50 demonstrators who had gathered outside a police station to demand the release of activists who had been arrested at an earlier rally.

The current round of rioting has been going on for about two and a half months. But displeasure in Mikhail Saakashvili’s reign as President stretch almost all the way back to the so-called “Rose Revolution” that brought him into power in 2003. In fact, there have been protests against his presidency for so long (prompting both a snap-election and storm troopers) that it seems people are just sick of it.

It’s one reason so many treated the Russo-Georgian War of 2008 as a surprise: it’s no longer news when a riot clogs up the streets of Tblisi, or when there is sabre-rattling over Abkhazia. And Saakashvili has spent virtually his entire term in office in the role of antagonist, both of Russia and his own political opponents. It should have been no surprise that, eventually, the country hit a boiling point, and things started to happen.

What has been deeply surprising is how much the U.S. has tacitly approved of it. The region’s importance as an energy corridor does not excuse Georgian brinksmanship, nor does it mean that the U.S. must approve of whatever the President of each country does. In fact, by enabling Saakashvili’s thumb-in-the-eye approach to both foreign and domestic policy through enormous incentives, huge military aid packages, and a Washington wink and nod, it is quite probable the U.S. has contributed to the Caucasus’ destabilization. All in the name of freedom.