The small but important country of Georgia is one place where the Biden administration can make a huge difference in resolving a global crisis during its few remaining days in office. Hundreds of thousands of people of that country, mostly young, are risking their freedom and lives to demonstrate that they want a democratic future with the West, not with Russia.
But the U.S. administration is failing to forcefully respond to almost two weeks of nightly brutality against peaceful protesters by the Georgian ruling party. More than 400 people reportedly have been arrested and Reuters reports that “scores of demonstrators and dozens of police officers have been injured.” The country’s ombudsman determined already a week ago that police had wielded “violent methods against citizens in order to punish them” for their dissent.
There is one man responsible for creating chaos in Georgia and taking the country down an authoritarian and pro-Russian path: Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Georgian oligarch who made his fortune in Russia and then formed the Georgian Dream party, which has been the ruling party since 2012. The U.S. government should impose immediate and public sanctions on him and on Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, who announced Nov. 28, undoubtedly at Ivanishvili’s bidding, that Georgia would suspend its negotiations with the European Union. Given that some 80 percent of Georgians want to join the EU, it should be no surprise that Kobakhidze’s announcement triggered massive, sustained protests, especially coming after the Oct. 26 parliamentary election that has been widely seen within the country and by international monitors as riddled with serious problems.
In response to the crackdown on those protests, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted on Dec. 4 that the department was considering sanctions “against those who undermine democratic processes” in Georgia. He cited “the Georgian Dream party’s brutal and unjustified violence against Georgian citizens, protesters, members of the media, and opposition figures.”
And yet on Dec. 9, in announcing measures on International Anti-Corruption Day and on the eve of Human Rights Day “to counter global corruption and human rights abuses” from North Macedonia to Indonesia, the State Department did not include Georgia on a list of new sanctions. We have heard repeatedly that sanctions related to the situation in Georgia are coming – and yet they still have not materialized.
We recently joined with a number of former U.S. diplomats and experts in an open letter published at Just Security calling for nonrecognition of the recent elections; support for the Georgian president, Salome Zourabichvili, a strong critic of Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream, and her calls for new elections; and sanctions on Ivanishvili and others.
Ultimate Responsibility
Any sanctions announcement on Georgia that does not include Ivanishvili would be an enormous mistake. He bears ultimate responsibility for most of what has gone wrong in Georgia in recent years. Though he holds no elected position (he served for a year as prime minister in 2012), he has called the shots as “honorary chairman” of the ruling Georgian Dream party, falsely accusing the West of conspiring to drag Georgia into a war against Russia and promising to outlaw the parliamentary opposition and put them on trial similar to the Nuremberg trials after World War II. In the Oct. 26 parliamentary election, Ivanishvili’s party allegedly engaged in fraud, manipulation, and threats to claim 54 percent support – a tally that few believe is credible.
Ivanishvili is afraid of being sanctioned; he doesn’t want to lose access to Western financial institutions, nor does he want the stigma that comes with being singled out. When a VOA news report suggested, prematurely as it turned out, that he was about to be sanctioned back in September, Kobakhidze days later ordered the government’s Anti-Corruption Bureau to back off an investigation into Transparency International, a civil society watchdog, hoping such a move would stall the imposition of sanctions.
Under the Global Magnitsky Act and related authorities, the U.S. government has the capability to impose sanctions on Ivanishvili, Kobakhidze, and other leading Georgian Dream figures for undermining Georgia’s democracy, gross human rights abuses (to include the brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors), and corruption. Under Global Magnitsky, the sanctions could include denial of visas to travel to the United States and blocking of “all of the property and interests in property within U.S. jurisdiction of the designated individuals,”.
Also on the sanctions list should be all members of the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament who voted for Russian-style legislation that targets Georgian civil society and the media as well as the LGBTQ+ community. The precedent for such measures would be comparable sanctions imposed on members of the Russian parliament for their support for Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And Washington should warn police and military officers involved in the crackdown on peaceful protesters that they will be targeted, too, under the Global Magnitsky Act.
Sanctions Delayed for Elusive `Access’
Georgian civil society for months has been calling on the United States to impose sanctions on Ivanishvili. And yet some in the Biden administration have resisted these appeals, apparently believing, mistakenly, that if only they could gain access to Ivanishvili – who refuses to meet with Westerners – things could turn around. This is a vain hope. The White House should override their unfounded last-minute objections immediately.
Much is at stake. Every day that goes by without sanctions being imposed emboldens Ivanishvili and the government into thinking they can get away with their authoritarian crackdown and shift toward Moscow. The delay risks betraying the Georgian people and their Western and democratic aspirations, demoralizing the protestors who have peacefully and courageously defied the authorities every night for the past two weeks.
It also underestimates the influence the United States could have in a country where it has provided more than $6.5 billion in assistance over the past three decades.
The Biden administration should signal its unambiguous support for the peaceful protestors, which sanctioning Ivanishvili would do. And it would be a boost to the more than 100 Georgian officials in the foreign and defense ministries and elsewhere who have bravely resigned their positions to protest what Ivanishvili and Kobakhidze have done.
Quite simply, it would lend invaluable support to the Georgian people in their clear desire to preserve their country as a democratic, Western-facing nation.
President Zourabichvili spoke with President-elect Donald Trump during the Notre Dame Cathedral reopening in Paris over the weekend. If the outgoing administration fails to act, there is hope that the incoming one will do the right thing. But by then, it could be too late. Many people could be arrested, injured, maybe even killed between now and then.
The Biden administration has few options remaining in the time it has left to make an impact on many global crises, such as Ukraine, Sudan, and the Middle East. But it can in Georgia.
The time to act is now, especially with Russian leaders bogged down in Ukraine and distracted by the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. There must be no further hesitation in imposing sanctions on Ivanishvili and others responsible for what’s going on in Georgia. This is a country we can help, if the Biden administration moves immediately.