Disclaimer: I am not an unbiased reporter regarding Georgia. I devoted 3-1/2 years of my life in the first decade of this century to bringing part of Georgian law into the twenty-first century. I am a proud winner of the Georgian Medal of Honor. My closest colleague said I am half-American and half-Georgian. I have many close friends there.
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Georgia is an occupied nation. Has been since Russia invaded and stayed in 2008, something I've writen about before. There has to have been a reason for the continued occupation, right? You knew it had to come.
It became obvious in 2023, when Parliament passed the odious "foreign agents" law. That law, inter alia, gives the government sweeping new powers to repress dissent and will "marginalize and discredit opposition voices and have a chilling effect on free speech," according to Fox News.
That law was revoked after strong opposition but passed again recently, with the same result: Massive violent protests in the streets of Tbilisi and in and around Parliament. They're going on right now, as you read this, May 15, 2024.
"The law will allow them to start a witch hunt against all who do not share their position and oligarchic way of governance," former Georgia Minister of Defense Tinatin Khidasheli told Fox News Digital. [Thank you, Fox News, May 15, 2024.]
Vladimir Putin has a Tsarist view of Russia, one in which he is the tsar and he will conquer lands like Ukraine and Georgia and, to come, Moldova and others. He won't stop. He has to be stopped.
The comparison to Nazism is tiresome, but let me suggest a new view. Nazism, like communism, is a world view, not just a local problem. When leaders adopt this world view they, almost by definition, commit their nations to aggressive world building. That is, "I like it so much that I'm going to force other nations to accept us, 'no matter what.'"
If there is no resistance in the new lands, I give you Sudetentland as an example, the world view expands into the new land. There is a new normal. I suggest that Georgia is the new Sudetenland, where Putinism is becoming the new normal.
Given his experience in Sudetenland, Hitler thought, "Might as well try for more if no one is going to stop me." Enter Poland. But Poland wasn't quite the pushover that Hitler imagined. They fought back, hard, but were overmatched because Hitler had violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and built a modern, strong army and air force. Poland hadn't. France would be next.
Replace Poland with Ukraine and the similarities are striking. After an unresisted occupation of Georgia, Ukraine was the next victim for Putin. But it hasn't been the pushover conquest that Putin imagined. History repeats. See France, then England.
Georgia has been a small, strong ally since the fall of the Soviet Union. You may remember Bush the Younger dancing in a Tbilisi street with young Georgians in 2004. It was a time of heady independence.
I was in Tbilisi during the Rose Revolution. I saw the column of limosines slink away when President Eduard Shevardnadze abandoned his country. He passed right in front of me and looked at me. The same man who had presented me the Medal of Honor four months before.
I fear that the ruling pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party will do everything but re-annex Georgia to the Russian Federation. Back to the Sudetenland metaphor. Who will stop it? Is it already a fait accompli?
Russian tanks and infantry are only thirty minutes from Tbilisi. A heavily funded pro-Moscow party is in charge in Tbilisi. Has Georgia already been re-annexed and no one will say the words? Will Georgian citizens be told, "Don't worry. It's only a name change?" Watch this space.
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