Euro-Atlantic utopia
The post-Soviet space is currently experiencing the largest transformations since the collapse of the USSR. They include not only the armed confrontation in Ukraine, the struggle to create an alternative financial and logistical architecture, and the growing activity of extra-regional players. There is also a third dimension, a psychological one.
We are not talking about an ideology centred on utopia, the Greek term for “a place that does not exist.” The implementation of utopia is impossible by definition. But it serves as a dominant preoccupation, fuelled by the people’s need to believe in the future.
After 1991, the communist utopia in the countries of the region, having exhausted its resources, gave way to a capitalist utopia, which was embodied by the US and the EU.
The Euro-Atlantic utopia (precisely the utopia, rather than EU and US officials) produced promises that countries could join the West. The phrase “third way” caused undisguised irritation – there was only one way – the Western one.
For decades, political regimes in post-Soviet countries adjusted their policies to this myth which had taken root in the mass consciousness.
Of course, not all citizens were striving to go West. Often, the majority of people were not enthusiastic or were against it. For example, the South-East of Ukraine before the start of repressive Ukrainisation in 2014. However, their opponents were ideologically motivated, charged with utopia and grants for active struggle.
The spirit of the times commanded people to align with the West; the feeling was that no alternative existed. The parasitical (NGOs became conductors of large financial flows) as well as ideological attitudes of the elites and active minorities allowed for the opinions of dissenters to be ignored for decades.
Post-Soviet societies allowed colour revolutions to happen and reconciled themselves with the new leadership. Political forces within the countries were divided into radical Westerners, who demanded to enter the West regardless of circumstance, and “pragmatists” who advocated ‘multi-vectorism’. In essence, this also entailed movement toward the West, but advised caution in order to preserve the Russian option for as long as possible.
Thus, the policies towards Russia of Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych were in sharp contrast, but their destination was the same – the West. The Moldovan “pragmatic communists” represented by President Voronin refused to sign Dmitry Kozak’s memorandum on the settlement of the Transnistrian conflict in 2003 under pressure from the USA. Eduard Shevardnadze also moved to the West, but more cautiously than the “revolutionaries” led by Mikhail Saakashvili.
Post-Soviet dystopia
As the global “empire” of the West approached the borders of the post-Soviet provinces, the utopia lost its flair. For post-Soviet countries, instead of EU membership, the Eastern Partnership was launched in 2009. It implied preparation for association with the EU – opening the internal market and shifting technical standards and foreign policy to the EU rails, but without EU membership.
In 2013, a fork occurred. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine – four of the six members of the EU Eastern Partnership – refused to sign an association agreement with the EU. A few months later, a coup d’état took place in Ukraine, and the new authorities signed the deal with Brussels.
Today, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus, despite all the difficulties, have retained their sovereignty. They have so far managed to avoid destabilisation and bloody civil strife.
The conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh was initially of a long-standing interethnic nature and was not related to European integration. However, in 2020 the Second Karabakh War occurred, which Armenia lost, two years after Nikol Pashinyan, who is oriented towards the West, came to power.
Belarus almost became a victim of civil confrontation in 2020, but with the help of Russia, it kept the situation within the constitutional framework and froze its participation in EU programs.
The countries that fell into the Euro-Atlantic orbit – Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – became the countries of the victorious utopia. In Ukraine, the victory yielded a civil war, into which the world powers gradually found themselves drawn. Kiev lost a significant portion of the territory the Bolsheviks had given the Ukrainian SSR. Georgia, after the aggression of Mikhail Saakashvili, lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Today, Moldova and Georgia are balancing on the edge of the abyss of being drawn into the Ukrainian crisis.
The embodiment of utopia, according to the laws of the genre, eventually leads to a dystopia. The hopes of the velvet revolutions of the early 1990s were replaced by the series of colour revolutions and the blood of internal civil strife with the involvement of the great powers.
Sovereign counterrevolution?
The degeneration of the Euro-Atlantic utopia in countries that ten years ago were considered “excellent” candidates for European integration has complex causes, including undermined expectations, economic problems, and the cultural mutation of Western societies. However, the most visible circumstances are associated with American policy in Ukraine. Ukraine has become a testing ground for the American strategy formulated by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan: to help countries defend themselves “without sending American soldiers to war”, to create a threat and damage the rivals of the US using the hands and lives of others. The victorious utopias had no other role to play except an instrumental one – the fight against Russia.
Apparently, the pro-Western Georgian government allowed itself the audacity to disobey the West because its survival is at stake. It is worth taking the first step and the slide into the funnel of confrontation will begin: anti-Russian sanctions, then military-technical support for Kiev, then the provision of territory to counter the Russian Federation and finally a full conflict. At some point on this path to the abyss, the “dreamers”, whom the West will not forgive for their courage, will be replaced by radicals.
Georgian President Salome Zurabisvili has condemned Prime Minister Kobakhidze’s decision on November 28 to freeze negotiations with the EU until 2028 as a ‘constitutional coup’. At the same time, Zurabisvili has said she won’t leave office when her term expires (the Ukrainian experience is being replicated).
The coup is being declared by Saakashvili’s associates, including the former French Ambassador to Georgia Zurabisvili, who themselves carried out their own “colour” coup in 2003. That is, we are talking about a “coup against a coup” – a counter-revolution or an attempt to return to normality.
If we accept this logic, then a counter-revolution of the majority is taking place in Georgia, having cast its vote in the elections against the war. The reasons for this counter-revolution are rooted in fatigue from growing geopolitical risks and instability caused by the permanent “global colour revolution” and related conflicts.
In the American expert community, there is a view of the Ukrainian crisis as a “proxy rebellion of the rest of the world against the West.” From this point of view, Georgia, following Russia, is doing the same thing at its own level – challenging the United States, demanding recognition of its right to sovereignty. It seems that the majority of Moldovan voters are also drawn to this.
Even taking into account the change of administration in the United States, the Georgian Dream will remain a problem for the West, as it is paving the forgotten third way, trying to jump out of the flags of dystopia. This may become attractive to other post-Soviet countries that do not want to be instruments of the conflict with Russia.
The farewell of the post-Soviet countries to the Euro-Atlantic utopia will not be easy or quick, especially where it has taken root. It will not be easy for Georgia to survive. However, it will have to fight in a changing world with strengthening alternative centres of power. Platforms like BRICS+ or the 3+3 consultative group with the participation of the Transcaucasian trio, as well as Russia, Iran and Turkey, are quite suitable. Overcoming the utopian worldview is possible through the inoculation of realism, without which stability is impossible. However, realism does not deny dreams, it even needs them.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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