Georgian oppositionists press for sanctions against their own country

British and European politicians should resist these entreaties

UK and European politicians should resist UNM calls to sanction Georgia. Sanctions have become a cynical tool for political oppositionists to mobilise foreign governments to interfere in the internal affairs of their countries.

This past week, a delegation from the United National Movement (UNM) lobbied British politicians on the need for sanctions against Bidzina Ivanishvili and a number of others.

While the tempo of western interest in Georgia has subsided since the October 2024 election, this latest deputation echoes continued calls for Europe to impose sanctions on lawmakers, officials and business owners who are considered to be ‘linked’ to the Georgia Dream government.

Although the European Union normally imposes sanctions as a bloc, the three Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia unilaterally imposed sanctions on Georgian officials in December 2024, in response to violent demonstrations in Tblisi that followed the elections.

UNM wants to encourage the United Kingdom to follow the same path. They evidently see sanctions as a vehicle to undermine the Georgia Dream government, one assumes, to gain power for themselves.

For those not fully acquainted with the UNM, it is the political party that governed Georgia from 2003 to 2012 under the leadership of Mikel Saakashvili, who served as President until 2013. Their period in office saw widespread abuses of power, high-level corruption, and well-documented cases of police brutality. One particularly shocking cases involved a young man who was murdered by Interior Ministry employees after an argument with the Interior Minister’s wife; Saakashvili offered the murderers a presidential pardon and has since been convicted of obstructing justice.

Desperate for Georgia to join NATO, Saakashvili took the country into a brief, destructive war with Russia in 2008 that led to the separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and a cutting of all diplomatic ties with Russia which remains in place today. Saakashvili fled to Ukraine, took up citizenship to become governor of Odessa, thereby forfeiting his Georgian citizenship. However, he was later exiled having criticized Ukraine’s President, whereupon his Ukrainian citizenship was revoked. Always the showman, he publicised his intention to return to Georgia in 2021, and was arrested after attempting to enter the country illegally in the back of a milk trailer. He is now in jail serving time for a range of charges including embezzlement.

It’s important to take any statements by the UNM with a healthy pinch of salt. Their core script appears to be that the October 2024 Georgian election was rigged, that the Georgia Dream party has no legitimacy, and that it uses tools of repression to cling to power. Their claims about Georgia’s elections – which are widely accepted in mainstream western media outlets - doesn’t match the OSCE record of how the election took place.

In its final report on the 26 October 2024 election, the independent OSCE monitoring mission reported that: ‘the legal framework [in Georgia] provides an adequate basis for conducting democratic elections’; that ‘party and candidate registration was generally inclusive’; that ‘contestants were generally able to campaign freely’; that the ‘public broadcaster covered all parties generally in a positive or neutral tone’; and that ‘election day was generally orderly administered’.

While a range of technical issues were raised to improve the electoral process in future years, there was no sense that the election was rigged in favour of Georgia Dream.

The cold reality for the UNM is that defeat, and the acceptance of defeat, is a key element of the democratic mindset. You lose one election, you refocus on your strategy for the next election.

Peaceful protest is also a healthy feature of democracy.

I live in a country, England, in which protests outside of the Westminster Parliament are a daily occurrence. Whether it’s a protest by British farmers, groups seeking to reverse Brexit, striking medical staff, or vocal pro-Palestine supporters, you will always find several different protests happening on any given day.

The vast majority of these protests are peaceful, but a visible police presence is needed for some and, very occasionally, more widespread disorder breaks out leading to arrests.

On the other hand, foreign election interference is not a healthy feature of democracy.

Most British politicians and people would react badly if the representatives of a foreign government sought to intercede between the government and opposition parties. There would be uproar if, say, German or American politicians joined protestors to declare their solidarity through speeches from platforms on Parliament Square.

This is exactly what happened in Tblisi during Georgia’s 2024 election. And the freedom afforded to Georgia’s media allowed this to be broadcast worldwide. Had there been censorship, the BBC and other international broadcasters would not have filmed protestors shooting dangerous fireworks at the police.

Yet, it is also a sign of a healthy democracy that law and order be maintained. When I visited Tblisi in early June I saw a low key, peaceful protest of 2-300 people outside of parliament, with the police present but at some distance. Nothing out of the ordinary.

However, Georgian opposition groups like UNM continue to promote the notion that the election result was unfair, that Tblisi remains a boiling cauldron of protest, and that the only remedy would be for western nations to sanction the Georgia Dream government in a bid to reinvigorate public protest and to promote regime change.

That would be anti-democratic.

Though, unfortunately, Europe has become a fertile ground for politicians and bureaucrats who want to impose their ideal of democracy on other countries in undemocratic ways.

And sanctions have become the go-to vehicle to help them secure their political ends.

Sanctions offer a low cost alternative to war and a replacement for diplomatic dialogue.

If you look back to 1962, the United States first established its trade embargo against Cuba, three years after the rise to power of Fidel Castro. The exodus of mostly wealthy and/or politically connected Cubans to the US formed the basis of a powerful lobby group that exerts influence on US foreign policy towards Cuba even today. Over sixty years later, American sanctions have had no discernible impact on Cuba’s independence or the strength of the governing regime, arguably the opposite.

Yet, Cuba provided the blueprint for a vast sanctions industry that has mushroomed in Europe since 2014 and the onset of the Ukraine crisis.

Powerful and well connected lobby groups have sprouted that urge the Eurocrats and politicians of foreign nations to sanction their or another country to achieve political ends.

The European Union industrialised its approach with the first introduction of sanctions against Russia. Driven by shock at Russia’s annexation of Crimea and under pressure from the Ukrainian and US governments to act, Europe took the first step when on the 17 March 2014 it imposed restrictive measures on 21 Russian officials. Since the Ukraine war started, Europe has imposed over two thousand sanctions against Russian people and companies.

Yet, you might be surprised to learn that many of the names were taken from lists provided by various pressure groups including the government of Ukraine and the late Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Unsolicited by the west, they mounted a campaign to ensure the maximum number of sanctions were imposed, sending in regular lists of new sanction targets identified. The evidence that sanctions have hurt Europe economically more than Russia is entirely incidental to the need to push sanctions as an end in themselves.

Of course, lobbyists establish themselves as part of the political fabric in Brussels and London and become seen as the legitimate rulers of their states and, even, the government in exile.

In pressing for sanctions, the subplot for UNM is that is becomes seen as the legitimate leadership of Georgia, despite its coalition only securing 10% of the vote in the October 2024 election.

British and European politicians should avoid taking the bait and pursuing the same self-defeating sanctions policy towards Georgia that has failed so badly in Ukraine. Georgian opposition figures might also heed my humble outsider advice that the best way to secure votes is to spend more time talking to their voters, than to foreigners.