I served as an adviser in the kind of informal role in the campaign in 2012. It was hard to pinpoint any specific advices a long time ago but I made a focus a couple of things there. One was the need on the one hand communicate to the west, that things were not as democratic as the united national movement had been saying for so long that were real problems here and that they were problems that were anticipated with the election that was a way we felt by rasing awareness around that we could ensure that the elections would be free and fair.
that was one of major thing that I kind of stressed and the second was you know Bidzina in Particular was new to politics and certainly new to electoral politics, to election campaigns and i tried to get them and him to really focus on the need to contact voters, not just to kind of make statements in the press or just be there as an alternative but to really reach out and get to voters and i do not know i was you know successful in that endeavor i mean, we know what happend in that election but i would hardly take credit for that. You know,
2) ten years later itis a very different situation right what would i advise them to do because I have no relationship with them, so if you asking me if they brought me in as a campaign adviser what would i tell them to do I would tell them to do a couple of things, I would tell them that you have to beging to take credit for some of your accomplishments, the Georgian Dream has done some thing well, some things not well, and the UNM as the leading opposition party has correctly rightly pointed out all their mistakes, so you have got to take credit for the thing that you have done,
and you know one thing about a few years in I was having to their leaders to their governance i was a meeting with the western diplomats here in Tbilisi and he said the UNM if they built one mile of road would have you know a press conference to announce it would be all over well this was before social media would be calling you the embassies to tell them about it and if the Georgian dreams builds 100 miles of road don`t bother to tell anybody, so really to get the communication better. and the second thing is that if you have been in power for 10 years, the Georgian dream has been in power longer then the UNM which is kind of hard to beleive for some people..
voters here in Georgia or anywehere are naturally going to ask what have you done for me lately that is the legitimate question and a democracy for voters to ask and the answer that you know we helo to get rid of saakashvili is not enough. So they have got to flesh out a message that is more than that but it s hard question that you are asking because the challenges facing Georgian Dream are not vampaign and politics related, they are governance related, they have to stand behined their record and their record has been mixed.
3) Believe it or not Georgia has stayed its western course despite some of its criticism the association agreement which is what but eight years ago now is a big deal. Georgia is still to the extent it was ever on track to be part of NATO, it is still part of NATO, the economic advancements have been slow but the country is clearly in better shape economically that was ten years ago.
So I would point to those and the other thing is there is a degree of political stability here that was not ten years ago, there is more basic freedoms it`s certainly not perfect but more basic freedoms of assembly and speech than there were 10 years ago, I am not saying Georgia is a consolidated democracy or that Geoegian people enjoy the right of free speech and assembly that some in other countries enjoy but they do more than they did 10 years ago. Media just certainly does have some problems here but had a lot of problems in the last years of the UNM regime and I think the situation is better now and again that`s not massage we hear a lot in the west but empirically speaking i believe that so those are the things that I would take credit for , uh problems have been that the big picture questions have not been solved right so there`s been almost no advance with regards to the dispute of Abkhazia and South Ossetia right.. to the point where no one even talks about it anymore really, I mean i have had many conferences i have only been here three or four days but and no one brings it up unless i bring it up it`s just not on people`s minds so that is one thing you know the economy still has a distance to go and the easiest thing they should have done and they did not was to really accelerate democratic reforms.
the election of 2012 was an opportunity was a democratic breakthrough which had the potential ro really more democracy forward in Georgia I do not think they did that I think they have gone essentially back to and I have said this you and others in Georgia over the years many times but Georgian politics in the picture has a pattern of democratic breakthrough, regime consolidation followed by regime collapsed and they had the breakthrough in 12 the regime consolidation of the one party system oe party governance and the question sitting here in 2022 is are we heading to another towards anither regime collapse or not and i do not have I do not know for sure what the answer to that question is.
4) I think democracy is better but marginally and not in a meaningful you know there was an opportunity to really to make the country much more democratic and that opportunity has been lost.
it is better know, the state of democracy in 2012 was pretty bad, what is the state of democracy in Georgia compared to where it should be and the answer is it is not where it sohould be ten years ago it was worse there was less freedom the country like today was dominated one man who ruled capriciosly and it was the same and but was much more repressive towards his political enemies or political oponents than the current regime is. elections are not good now but probably better than they were in the alst few days.
5) Well, I can say this I do not have much of a relationship with Ivanishvili now which is not.. I would not say we have had a falling out. we jast have not seen eacht other. I will say one kind of funny thing which was about your question: which was i am going to get year wrong but let us just say for the sake of argument 2016 or 2017 the last time I saw him, i met with him up i am pointing but you won`t know this if you are watching this but I am pointing up towards where his big estate compound is up here in the hills and i met with him there and he said to me in a kind of angry tone of voice we know what you have been writing and I said to him if you think what i am writing is your biggest probem, you are in trouble because i would say that my tone towards the georgian dream has been balanced but critical when necessary.
So, Bidzina Ivanishvili is somebody who and this is true of a lot of politicians who come from the bussines world although he is in a much bigger sense because he had a lot of money, but he is somebody who was tremendously successful , he made bilions and billions of dollars and because of that like a lot of people who have that experience he thinks he knows a lot about anything and Bidzina also has a very sharp political political mind he is a very good strategic thinker, but he does not have a sense of politics because it is not something he`s spent a lot of time around and as he`s told me he does not really like it and it is clear he does not really like it but he feels compelled to still be involved so he`s not somebody you know the easy part about being an adviser whether you`re doing it here or the United States or anywhere the easy part is giving good advice it`s always easy to tell a candidate what they should do what they should say what the tv if you`re in the us what the tv commercial should say what you know what that social media presence should be like but it is very hard to really get through and i would say that my record with that and Bidzina Ivanishvili back in 2012, was mixed, since then you know I have not really tried but i think if i did go up there tommorow and gave him some advice i think he would smile and ignore me because that is kind of nature of where things are between us right.
6) ukraine. 9.05)
Here in Georgia, we`re not in ukraine, but we are looking at Ukraine in New You York, Washington and California where I am usually am this war is very front and center but for a large part of the war it is not.
A larg part of the world sees this is not a global conflict, the world has not moblized against Putin, and because that he has a lot of options to keep his economy strong enought to stay in power, and because of the power of a state-dominated media in Russia and because of the real repressions that we have seen since this war started in Russia Russian Support for this war is strong enough that he can stay in power. So I am not anticipating the collapse of Putin`s regime again I am not saying I do not want that I am just sayng I am not anticipating that.
7) 15-27 Georgia
I have talked to a number of people here so one person said to me you know these people I considet pretty thoughtfull on sense of things one person said, if putin had succesfully gotten to kiev in three days like he thought he was going to and had a big win there he would have turned to Georgia next, because he would have had the felt he had the momentum. Well, that`s may be true we do not know and then someone else said to me I should not laugh I am worried that because this war is going so badly for Russia Putin will think he will need a quick victory somewhere to bolster his domestic political support so he will turn his attention to Georgia , now we are talking about Georgia but you could say the same things about Moldova, and what that the reason that concernes me is that you can see that in either scenario Putin has a rational for invading, so it is very clear that that threat has not gone away in Georgia before the Ukraine war, my sense was that Russia, Putin wanted to accomplish in Ukraine what he had accomplished in Georgia which was to damage it , to set it back, to set its western integration goals back several years and he had accomplished that here in 2008 so he did not feel compelled to inaved again but the rest the events of the war itself may have changed that and of course the question is if Georgia and Moldova are facing this threat what can bed done about it right i mean the it is remains true that in 2008, that war, here in Geoergia, ended not because the US sent military suppllies to Georgia, not because NATO did anything, It not ended because the Georgian Military pushed Russia out, it ended because Vladimer Putin wanted it to end, I am not saying oh good for Putin but I am just saying that was why this war ended and next time he may want to go further and one of the lessons 2008 that Georgia learned and I do not think sadly has changed is that as much as for the moment the west is not going to come to their rescue and i think the people here know that, that`s why NATO membership is so important because that would be a game changer
8) but those lessons are hard to apply in Georgia, because Georgia is so much smaller then ukraine and American, (I will from the american side) Biden administration had initially planned to support Ukraine think in this war as it was coming, thinking that Russia would win quickly and there would be a kind of guerilla resistance, so the initial thinking was we need to think of the kind of supplies and support for that kind of a fight and then suddenly the UKrainian Military kind of surprised everyoe and they pivoted to you know sending military supplies which is what`s been going on for the last couple of months.
Georgian military can not hold off Russia that long it is not as powerful as the Ukrainian Military, it is much more smaller country, so while the west has learned I think seen just how ugly Putin is it is not clear to me that a strategy has been crafted that can help Moldova and Georgia, and it remains true as I have said that NATO membership becomes the holy grail, right because it is notable I believe that Russia has not involved lithuania or Estonia because they are in NATO and Preident Biden I will leave the Biden`s immediate we will leave the former guy out of it because he was a Putin client but President Biden and Barack Obama`s second secretary of state in various times and John Kerry have said almost the same words we will protect every inch of NATO territory, which we have to say i mean that is the right position for the United States and for all of NATO but so that`s why Georgia wants that but the same hesitations about that some countries had in NATO about bringing Georgia and bringing Ukraine in are now only strenghthened because of this Ukraine war I do not think that`s the position of Washington i think washington would stil support Georgian membership to NATO.
9) ამერიკის პოლიტიკაზე საქართველოს მიმართ.
It remains true that nobody in the United States knows a lot of about Georgia. I mean, increasingly one thing that I have seen in the last decade and I do attribute this to and I do not know if it is strategy of the Georgian dream but it is something that happened , Georgian soft power is slowly growing in the United States, and what I mean by that is that you know Georgia`s small far away country and a small far away countries in many cases are only the news when there is a war , you know, a stolen election a terrible thing happens a natural disaster you know a flood an earthquacke, that is not good, because the way you get America , American people to like you is when you get in the news in other ways, and Georgia is beginning you know you will see Georgia mentioned in the design section in the arts and culture blogs or the arts and culture websites you know it is a cliche but it is true that Georgian Food and wine is becoming much more popular in the united states, it is not like chinese food which is a chinese restaurant in every corner or something but there are definitely you know foodies people are nursing food who will go to Georgian restaurants who will oh you have been to Georgia , have you know what is kachapuri like that kind of thing, So that is good for Georgia, because among the kind of cultural and educated elites it is begining to seen as kind of a cool interesting place which means that welll if it`s a cool interesting place maybe we should help protect it right that is a next step so. But I would be lying if i said that everyone in the United States is dying to go out for Kachapuri or something we are talking about incremental steps forward.
21:52)
and than among in Washington if we are talking about the kind of the political world, the presvious the UNM government the agenda was just to somehow always be in the news in Washington , that is not good for Georgia, Georgia is a smal country it should get attention propertioned to its size, that`s what it should want but even though we do not see president Zurabisvili, Prime Minister, or Bidzina Ivanishvili going to washington and having high level meetings.. the bilateral relationship is still stron at the level that matters right which is the state department , the embassy the relevant government office is here, So that is positive. the UNM still dominates the massaging in Washington which is unfortunate but it is mostly that is impacted moslty on the kind of right wing think tank world and also in congress the people the state department have a balanced sense and the last thing I would say that the most striking indicator of how Georgia is seen in Washington is how little attention people in Washington are given or have given to the fact that the former president of this country is in jail here.
I suspect when he came back here in 2021 he must have known that he would likely have been imprisoned and I beleive that he thought that would be something that would outrage the US that would really mobilize the US against this government it did not and that tells you while they are certainly some pretty overly negative views in some cases of the democratic credentials of this government, people in Washington are fed up with Misha and the just see him as to use an old expression of busted felice He`s yesterdays news and the problem is as long as the opposition here is still held and you know rotates around misha , it is not going to break through either here in Georgia, or to be taken as seriously as it should in the west or the united states particularly..
სანქციებზე:
I thnk that is a rumor that was started by the UNM, I do not think it is to be taken seriously and the reason for that is that for the Biden Administration to sanction what we all know is the leader of a country that is a long time ally just seems extremely unlikely.
Trump is an oligarch , I mean he obviously has the trappings of this kind of American buffoon but he is a familiar type right he is an oligarch , he has made a fortune or inherited a fortune by kind of half and half and a family operation that is half a real estate firm and half an orginized crime ring right so it has an oligarchical feel to it and because of his ties and the people around hims ties to oligarchs in Russia, in UKraine and elsewere it is a concept which Americans have become much more familiar in recent years , but you know, and then we also had this very odd moment in 2020 when Mike Bloomberg was running for president, now he is much reacher than donald tramp and much reacher than Bidizna, US is bigger country so it is all relative but bloomberg and at that time I refered to it as competetive oligarqchy right we have seen in other countries I will say here because this is a you talked about media freedoms then I made that comment on Bloomberg Radio
but that is a threat in the united states because as we see the hollowing out of the middle class and as we see so many very healthy people coming into politics , I have heard many people who are concerned about donald trump returning and think Joe Biden is too old which he is even though I would vote for him if he runn again say is there some rich person out there who can run well that is not the answer that is not the best way to move democracy
8.00
