Opportunistic Georgia joins Europe’s illiberal club

The author is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe

The war in Ukraine has repercussions far beyond that country. As the situation on the battlefield hangs in the balance, many of Russia’s neighbours are weighing their options. The current crisis in Georgia, although its roots are homegrown, is a symptom of this bigger trend. 

The governing Georgian Dream party is rejecting the west in a way that few could have imagined six months ago when the EU granted Georgia candidate status. A punitive law on “foreign influence”, passed in the face of mass public and international opposition, is designed to drastically limit the west’s influence ahead of elections in October.  

The default assumption is that Georgian Dream is pivoting to Russia. Its actions and its new law certainly “rhyme” with Russia. But Georgia has had 30 years of hot and cold conflict with Moscow since independence and no diplomatic relations with it since 2008. A European future is enshrined in the constitution.

It makes more sense to say that the Georgian government aspires to join a club of countries that might be called the Eurasian chapter of Illiberalism International. It includes the states of central Asia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Serbia and Hungary. Having hedged between Russia and the west since 2022, its members are now tilting more towards Moscow. The leaders of these countries believe in a world that is multipolar, not multilateral. They don’t believe in an international legal order and the post-1989 consensus on liberalism and human rights. They align with Russia in the global culture war, speaking the language of “family values”. (Georgian Dream has drafted a law targeting “LGBT propaganda”.) 

“Sovereignty” is the watchword: no foreign patron can be trusted. Georgian premier Irakli Kobakhidze took a swipe at western security offers when he said: “The examples of Afghanistan and Ukraine proved once again that the only permanent friend of a state is its sovereignty.” Regime survival is conflated with the national interest. Criticism of human rights abuses or electoral malpractice is decried as an “infringement of sovereignty” or attempted regime change, plotted by western busybodies, George Soros or even Freemasons. 

Whether this is all formally agreed with Russia is almost beside the point. The anti-western rhetoric and legislation are a kind of “virtue signalling” to Russia, designed to win approval and forestall the interference in domestic politics that Moscow is pursuing in Moldova and Armenia. Viktor Orbán’s ultra-conservative Hungary is an inspiration for Georgian Dream for the way it stays in the EU but deals with Russia.

Business ties are also crucial. If there are few formal political transactions with Russia, there is lots of real business to be done. Thanks to western sanctions, Russia offers neighbours advantageous trade and business terms. Turkey is a conduit for Russia’s gas; Azerbaijan is increasing its railway capacity for its freight. Georgian Dream has opened the country’s doors to Russian business interests. Another law that should ring alarm bells makes Georgia a new tax haven, encouraging the inward flow of capital belonging to Georgian Dream’s funders and Russian businessmen. 

That law, however, is a sign of nervousness. These regimes say they are against globalism, but they rely heavily on the global movement of capital to stay solvent. They are vulnerable to western laws targeting sanctions-busting and money laundering. If the same stringent controls belatedly being applied to Russian finance were used against the political and business elites of these countries, their calculations could change quite quickly.

These illiberal countries are opportunists and swing voters. They keep their options open. The best western response is to be the winning side — to prove Russia wrong, help Ukraine win its war and prove that a liberal European order can be repaired and reinvented.