TBILISI -- Throughout Georgia's decades-long tight partnership with the United States and Europe, the Caucasus country's Western partners have typically not played favorites in the country's domestic politics.
But following the ruling Georgian Dream party's recent turn toward anti-Western rhetoric and authoritarian practices, there are increasingly strong signals from Georgia's Western partners that they would prefer the party gets voted out in the October parliamentary elections.
The signals are indirect -- and Western officials insist the elections should be decided by Georgian voters -- but to many in Georgia the messages from the United States and Europe over the past few weeks have been conspicuous.
Georgia's international partners have hardened their approach since the passing of a controversial "foreign agent" law, which imposes tight controls on foreign-funded media and NGOs that get more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad. Russia has used that same designation to clamp down on opposition and independent media.
The EU ambassador to Georgia said that Georgia's accession has been halted as a result of the Georgian Dream government's actions and that he hoped Georgians would make "the right choice" in the upcoming elections. The European Union formally announced that it intended to reduce political contacts with Georgian government officials and increase cooperation with civil society, which has mobilized to defeat Georgian Dream in the fall. The Pentagon announced that it was postponing regular joint U.S.-Georgia military drills scheduled for this summer but that it hoped the cooperation could resume next year.
Georgian Dream officials have responded cautiously, suggesting that at the very least the moves create the impression of favoritism.
"It is not helping Georgia," Maka Botchorishvili, a Georgian Dream member of parliament, told RFE/RL. "Internally, it is a card in the hand of the opposition to show that things are deteriorating with our strategic partners."
She said it is only a matter of "speculation" that the West intends to boost the opposition in the elections.
"But it is also a fact that it is playing that role here in Georgia," she said. "Whether there is an intention or there is no intention, it is doing so."
Many of the ruling party's allies have not been so circumspect.
The United States' postponement of the military exercises "serves only one purpose: to put pressure on the Georgian electorate to vote for parties that will blindly engage in any war their patrons demand," said Sozar Subari, a member of parliament for People's Power, a Georgian Dream offshoot party, in a television interview.
Drifting Away From The West
Georgian Dream came to power in 2012 on a promise to maintain the country's Western trajectory while also trying to reduce the temperature on tensions with Russia, which had invaded the country four years earlier. Georgian Dream officials blamed the previous government of Mikheil Saakashvili for provoking Russia's attack in 2008 by launching an offensive into the breakaway region of South Ossetia, and one of their key talking points has been that they, unlike their predecessors, have managed to keep the country out of war.
The efforts to reach accommodation with Russia prompted regular accusations from the opposition that Georgian Dream was in the pocket of the Kremlin. Those accusations grew louder following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Georgia took a cautious and occasionally anti-Ukrainian position.
Until recently, Western officials were sympathetic to Georgia's vulnerable position vis-à-vis Russia and to Georgian Dream's efforts to navigate the fallout of the Ukraine war. The EU even granted Georgia long-coveted candidate status in December 2023.
But that sympathy has, by many accounts, run out.
The party's rhetoric has lately grown more anti-Western and conspiratorial; they regularly accuse a shadowy "global war party" of trying to drag Georgia into the Ukraine war. And the government has taken increasingly antidemocratic steps, most prominently passing the "foreign agent" law, which was strongly opposed by the United States and the EU.
While the Georgian Dream government seems to have been betting that it could play chicken with the EU, making progress on accession even while it defied the bloc's demands, that is no longer a viable strategy, one Western diplomat in Tbilisi said on condition of anonymity to speak more frankly.
The diplomat pointed to a recent statement from the EU that the Georgian government's actions had resulted in a "de facto halt in the accession process," an unprecedented move for the bloc, and noted that that statement had been signed even by Hungary, Georgia's erstwhile strongest defender in the EU.
"If they are gambling this time, this time it's not going to fly," the diplomat said. "The ['foreign agent'] law was the last straw."
Just Friendly Advice?
The question of U.S. and European involvement in the elections is a sensitive one. It has become even more so now that Georgian Dream's narrative around the "foreign agent" law has been centered around a criticism of the West for trying to influence Georgia's domestic affairs via foreign-funded NGOs and media and their allies in the opposition.
And Western officials have taken pains to argue that they are not taking sides.
"The United States does not support one political party over another," said U.S. Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Uzra Zeya in an interview with the news site Civil.ge. "We do, however, expect our partners to ensure a genuine competitive democratic process. It's up to the Georgian people to decide."
In the Georgian opposition itself, officials have long complained about what they say has been the United States' and the EU's excessively deferential position toward Georgian Dream and the party's defiance of Western capitals. In the last elections, in 2020, the U.S. and EU ambassadors faced sharp criticism from opposition parties for accepting the legitimacy of the vote. Georgian Dream won reelection for the third time, but the opposition claimed the vote was marred by voter fraud and irregularities, sparking protests in the capital, Tbilisi, and in other cities around the country.
Opposition leaders now welcome the harder line from the West and expect it to boost their chances in the fall, while pushing back against accusations that it amounts to improper interference.
"It's clear that there's a policy shift from the U.S. as well as the European Union, where European and American political leaders have been clear that under this government they see no prospects of Georgia's Euro-Atlantic integration advancing," Tina Bokuchava, the leader of the United National Movement party, Georgia's largest opposition force, told RFE/RL.
"Nobody's telling anyone, from outside of the country, who to vote for," she said. "They are just being clear about the prospects that our country would have under this government. And that's fair and that's necessary, because the Georgian people should not be misled."
"I don't put the responsibility on the shoulders of our Western friends. It's our responsibility to change things here," said Giga Bokeria, chair of the opposition European Georgia party. "But some policies are helpful, some are not. And a policy of downplaying the trajectory of Georgia was unhelpful for domestic democracy and for Western interests, too. And now the s**t has hit the fan. And yes, we see a reaction of the free world. It's natural."
Western governments remained more or less neutral on domestic politics "until you couldn't deny anymore that Georgian Dream's course is what it is," said Sonja Schiffers, director of the Tbilisi office of the German-based Heinrich Boll Foundation. "The EU and all of Georgia's Western partners would like to work with a democratic and pro-Western government, that's no secret."
While Western responses are being made with the elections in mind, "I would say that the Western response would be similar even if there were no elections," she added. "It's a choice that Georgians have to make. But they also need to understand that the country can't count on the same level of support if there's autocratization and an embrace of Russia."
The Western involvement is likely to remain limited unless the government takes dramatic antidemocratic steps, Schiffers argued.
"I wouldn't say that the EU and the U.S. are completely siding with the opposition," she said. "It is not their business, strictly speaking, and as long as there is no major election rigging or state violence, I don't think they will explicitly endorse the opposition."
'Either You Start The War, Or You Leave Power'
It remains unclear what effect the European and American actions will have on the elections. Georgian Dream has tried to mobilize voters with the message that they are standing up for the country's independence and sovereignty against an opposition controlled by a West that doesn't have Georgia's best interests in mind.
At the party's formal election campaign kickoff on July 16, Georgian Dream's founder and still de facto leader Bidzina Ivanishvili accused the "global war party," acting via "the European and U.S. bureaucracy," of promoting the opposition.
Those forces "decided to bring back to power the union of people without the motherland, the collective United National Movement," Ivanishvili said, using the party's favored epithet for the opposition. "'Either you start the war, or you leave [power]': This is an unacceptable proposition, and the Georgian people will give a clear response to it on October 26," Ivanishvili said.
The "appearance that [the EU and the United States] are trying to influence elections here" could backfire, said Georgian Dream's Botchorishvili.
"It will not help the opposition, and it will not damage Georgian Dream, but what will be damaged will be how the United States and European Union look in Georgia, to Georgian society," she said.
But Bokuchava of the United National Movement said the West's harsher line will help attract voters who might have supported Georgian Dream but are concerned about Georgia's relations with the West.
"I think it will affect the vote very significantly," she said.
