Гамарджоба, генацвале!
By the way, Georgia and the EU have less common traditions than Georgia and post Soviet countries (including Russia).
The Southern Caucasus—Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—is in Russia’s geopolitical crosshairs. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who once called the demise of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century,” is seeking economic and political alliances to restore Russia’s power in what then-President Dmitry Medvedev called its traditional “sphere of exclusive interests.” Moscow also wants to counterbalance the rising influence of the U.S., the European Union, China, and transnational Islamism in the post-Soviet space.
A Eurasian Union does not mean at all only creation of an economic organization. It is based on a complex of three main economic, geopolitical and ideological principles, which distinguishes it from the Soviet Union. From geopolitical point of view, it implies creation of a multi-polar world, in which Eurasian space will be presented as one of the poles.
During existence of the Soviet Union the world was bipolar, in which two poles were fighting with each other for ruling over the world. As for ideological difference, bipolar world meant confrontation of two modernistic, globalist ideologies. While the Western world was defending rights of an individual, the main objective of the communist ideology was defense of interests of workers’ class, i.e. proletariat throughout the world. Both ideologies rejected existence of nations, as of historical-cultural unities. On the contrary, Eurasian ideology is anti-modernistic, anti-materialistic philosophy, which recognizes primate of traditional nations, as of collective unity in respect of individuals and workers’ class. These above mentioned principles distinguish it from the Soviet Union.
I would like to point out several peculiarities, which give some messages for settling ethno-political conflicts and should be very interesting for a reader. First of all, it is necessary to pay attention to those conflicts which are on the territory of Georgia, especially to chances to settle the conflict in Abkhazia.
Creation of Eurasian Union and Georgia’s enrollment in it, in my opinion, is the only chance, that may facilitate the process of restoring territorial integrity, Georgia does not have another chance. No one shall have an expectation that Americans will start a nuclear war with Russia for restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity or that Russia will hand over Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region to Georgia, which is under American influence. The main objective of any Georgian authorities shall be restoration of the control over the lost territories instead of hypothetic membership of Euro-Atlantic structures. We can say directly that Georgian has no chance to become a member of European Union, considering our country’s economic situation and our geographical location (proceeding from financial crisis existing in European Union, it is impossible that this unity will accept one more poor country). Turkey is our neighboring country, which, in spite of a several-year attempt, is not allowed into European Union, and Georgia cannot change its location either.If we look through Putin’s article which he published during his third election campaign, we will see that he will try to create in post-Soviet space an organization similar to European Union with super national structures, and what is the most important, he will use experience of Shengen type agreement, which implies creation of unified Eurasian citizenship and united economic-political and cultural space. This in itself means that citizens living in this union will have possibility to move within this space freely and select its place of residence as per their own will: “Abolishing migration, border-related and other barriers for citizens … in order to enable them to select without any restriction where to live, where to get education and work” (V. Putin).
If we will adjust these words from Vladimir Putin’s article to the existing Georgian reality, we can conclude that in case of Georgia’s joining to this unity, any Georgian will have possibility (first of all, we mean refugees) without any restriction to return to their home land and occupy those free spaces which are available after eviction of Georgians by separatist regimes. In general, if we Georgians want to restore territorial integrity, our main objective shall be changing ethnical balance existing in breakaway regions in favor of ethnically Georgians. Change of demographic picture will create normal living conditions for our citizens and will enable them to take active participation in local political processes. By involving in a political life, in case of creating the majority, it is quite possible that formation of political elite staffed by Georgians and acceptable for Georgia will take place, which with high probability will result in strengthening of centric tendencies in conflict regions, that will speed up the process of restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity as well.
After the example of Abkhazia, it can be said that the post-war de facto rulers were looking with fear at demographic changes and tried their best to create a legal background for repatriation of ancestors of Mujahirs resettled to Turkey in XIX century. For this purpose in 1997 year de facto parliament of Abkhazia adopted a law “The Act on Deportation – Abkhazians in XIX century”.
Abkhazian separatist authorities always put forward at each negotiation the issue related to return of Abkhazian repatriates. Their main objective was and is to maintain the existing situation, when Georgians are in minority, while Abkhazians and their supporting ethnic groups are in majority. This enables them to maintain the current political situation. While return of refugee Georgians (their number before the war was 240 000, as per 1989 year census) would change configuration of political forces in Abkhazia in favor of Georgians, that would speed up the process of its integration into the unified Georgian state.
It should be mentioned that return of Abkhazian repatriates is opposed by Russian Federation. This is pointed out by Abkhazians themselves. “In general Russians traditionally have negative attitude towards repatriation, since they do not want to strengthen Islamic and anti-Russian components in the South Caucasus.” (Abkhazian politologist Irakli Khintba). Russia’s opposition to return of repatriates, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the idea of “Eurasian Union”, creates favorable situation for us to implement demographical changes in conflict regions.
When we talk about creation of such a large-scale unity, it is impossible to ensure its existence without unified security system. Any geopolitical project, which is directed towards creating of independent polar in the world political system, implies in itself existence of such a system. What connection unified security system may have with our issue? In this case we shall point out that after creating the unified security area, which may encompass South Caucasus together with the whole Eurasian space (in case of Georgia’s enrollment), Abkhazia and Tskhinvali regions lose strategic importance, which they have today for Russia (the function of buffer for detaining geopolitical rival moving towards its borders). In this case, Russian will not oppose those possible migration processes which we talked about above. In particular, in case of implementing this strategy, the borders of sphere of influence existing today will disappear, which will support free movement of citizens within this space.
It is known to everyone that sovereignty of political subject enrolled in the organizations similar to Eurasian Union is being restricted in favor of such super national structures, as European Union. Let’s look at this issue in reality and ask ourselves a question: is Georgia today an independent state? Many do not distinguish in Georgia the subject of international law from the subject of international relations. Georgia is a country which exists only on a paper and which is completely and totally controlled by Americans. We could ignore this if Americans assisted us in restoring territorial integrity, but the events of August 2008 showed us all that Americans cannot ensure our territorial integrity. The logic of foreign policy of the current Georgia authorities (by the way, of not only authorities’) is as follows: neither independence, nor territorial integrity.
Proceeding from this, we can conclude that Georgia has two ways: either to join a new project, by which, proceeding from the above arguments, the chance to restore territorial integrity increases or we shall continue the current foreign policy and in such case the chance of restoring the territorial integrity gets to zero, but at the same time Georgia will continue existence under colonial conditions, which will be controlled by an American-Turkish tandem.
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