For US in Georgia, political meddling is a hard habit to break

The U.S. foreign policy community is offered a generational opportunity, necessitated by crises abroad and shifting attitudes at home, to fundamentally reappraise American interests on Europe’s eastern periphery.

Georgia, a eurasian crossroads in the Caucasus, has become an unlikely focal point in the push and pull between dueling visions of U.S. priorities in the region.

The MEGOBARI Act (short for Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia's Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence), recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, is a series of ultimatums on Georgia that reads as a litany of post-Cold War Atlanticism's greatest hits. The full bill is here, but its stated aim is "examining the penetration of Russian intelligence elements and their assets in Georgia, that includes an annex examining Chinese influence and the potential intersection of Russian-Chinese cooperation in Georgia." A thorough 90-day examination by USAID and relevant Congressional committees will determine who will be punished with sanctions and whether Georgia is worthy of proper U.S ties moving forward.

In other words, to remain in — or, as it were — find its way back into the West’s good graces, the ruling Georgian Dream government must not just cut any ties with Russia but adopt an overtly confrontational stance, including through its enforcement of Western sanctions on Moscow and other measures intended to counter Russian influence (also in the bill).

The legislation, in its insistence that this prescribed stance of maximum hostility to Russia is the only one consistent with the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of the Georgian people, imposes a steep conditionality not just on Georgia’s path to EU accession or NATO membership, but on its ability to support any kind of constructive relationship with the U.S. and EU.

The act additionally calls on Georgian Dream to commit to a gamut of ad hoc concessions stemming from Western criticisms over the conduct of Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary elections, up to and including the rather striking suggestion that Georgian Dream should determine “whether the elections should be judged as illegitimate.”

The MEGOBARI law, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) observed in a March 27 Foreign Relations Committee proceeding, cannot be seen in any other light than as a direct intervention into domestic Georgian politics. It seeks, under the flimsy facade of advancing the interests of the “Georgian people,” to punish a duly elected Georgian government for pursuing a geopolitical course of which a faction within the U.S. foreign policy community disapproves.

This is ipso facto problematic insofar as it intrudes, in the name of defending democracy, on the democratic process inside Georgia to manipulate outcomes in ways that benefits perceived U.S. interests.

The second and more serious problem, from a technical perspective, is that these kinds of pressure tactics are counterproductive to any genuine sense of U.S. priorities in the region. Eleven percent of Georgia's overall trade volume comes from Russia, and the country's economy has been further entangled with Russia's after 2022 in ways that would impoverish the country if severed. Georgia, under President Mikheil Saakashvili, fought and lost a war with Russia in 2008 to establish control over two northern breakaway provinces. A reheating of that conflict at the behest of Western powers would be similarly ruinous for Tbilisi.

Demanding that the Georgians commit economic suicide and risk another war with Russia or face a flood of Western sanctions and restrictions is, as it were, not an attractive invitation. The West cannot offer anything remotely commensurate to the degree of hardship and insecurity that it is demanding from the Georgian people as the price of their Euro-Atlantic path. The 2008 crisis demonstrated that the West not only should not but will not fight Russia over Georgia.

There is a recklessness and more than a whiff of cynicism, not lost on Georgian Dream officials, to the West’s appetite for relitigating this question.

Meanwhile, Russia has signaled, in ways that have only grown more credible since 2008, that it will employ all tools at its disposal to balance against the integration of post-Soviet states into the Western security sphere. Far from an affront to democracy, it is Georgian Dream’s highest duty to the Georgian people to recognize these realities on the ground and steer Georgian foreign policy accordingly.

Furthermore, and for many of these reasons, the MEGOBARI Act will force a set of outcomes in Georgia and the region that are opposite of its intended effect. Attempting to strongarm Georgian officials into running roughshod over their own economic and security interests only incentivizes them to further insulate themselves against Western pressure by cultivating relationships with other powers, including its Russian neighbor.

American overreaction to Georgian Dream's well-founded pragmatism toward Moscow will ironically force Tbilisi into a more conciliatory posture with Russia by depriving it of an American partner with which to pursue a multivector foreign policy between East and West. Georgia will aim to soften the blow from Western punitive measures by doubling down on its trade and commercial ties not just with Russia but China, further distancing it from the U.S. and Europe in the long term.

Full diplomatic normalization between Georgia and Russia, previously inconceivable due to the outstanding territorial conflict from 2008, is now squarely within the realm of political possibility. This would clear the path for additional and deeper forms of Russo-Georgian cooperation, potentially even on security issues, with the effect of further peeling Georgia away from the West.

It is tempting to conclude from this sobering diagnosis that the MEGOBARI law's central conceit lies in its wrong-headed tactics, but that would be mistaking the symptom for the underlying disease. The deeper problem is that this law and initiatives like it proceed from a purist vision of Euro-Atlantic integration that forces not just Georgia but all post-Soviet states to pick sides between the West and Russia in ways that are harmful to these countries and do not advance any tangible American interests.

U.S. policy toward Georgia should instead proceed from the reality that America is not made more prosperous or secure by fashioning Georgia into a forward operating base against Russia whilst punishing Georgians who do not share this vision. The U.S., simply put, has no core interests that would justify the costly, dangerous, and counterproductive agenda of setting up a possible military confrontation with Russia over the right to maintain a web of de jure alliances and de facto dependencies in that part of Eurasia.

Georgia and many other post-Soviet states seek, for readily understandable reasons, robust ties with the West without being dragged into an overtly hostile footing with Russia, the dominant regional player. Washington has every reason to approach relations with countries like Georgia on exactly those terms, as they provide a low-cost, low-risk way of remaining engaged in the region while avoiding security spirals with Russia and thereby supporting regional stability.

It is clear in light of present circumstances that Tbilisi should be encouraged to pursue a multivector policy between East and West as the best course for all involved. Yet this will require part of the policymaking community to divest from the “with us or against us” mindset guiding the MEGOBARI bill in favor of a strategy that embraces, rather than dilutes, the sovereignty of local actors and their capacity to pursue strategies as nuanced as the challenges they face.