US Targets Georgia as a Tool to Extend Russia

By Brian Berletic – Dec 9, 2024

Political unrest continues to erupt in the nation of Georgia along Russia’s southern Caucasus border, led by openly anti-Russian protesters backed by US-European government money and support.

The protests are a repeat of similar unrest that targeted Georgia in 2003 leading to the overthrow of the elected government then.

A 2004 Guardian article titled, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” not only admitted that unrest in Ukraine that year was fully organized, directed, and backed by the US government, it admitted that similar US-sponsored unrest had targeted “four countries in four years,” including Georgia itself.

The current ruling party in Georgia seeks to avoid NATO membership, thus avoid becoming the “next Ukraine”

The Guardian admitted:

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

The same article also explained:

Last year [2003], before becoming president in Georgia, the US-educated Mr Saakashvili travelled from Tbilisi to Belgrade to be coached in the techniques of mass defiance.

And from 2003 to 2008 the US-installed client regime headed by Saakashvili welcomed US-NATO military training, equipment, and weapons as part of a de facto NATO-ization right on Russia’s borders as part of what the US State Department referred to as the “Georgia Train and Equip Program.”

This training and equipping continued right up to 2008 when Georgian forces attacked Russian peacekeepers in August, precipitating a short but devastating war for Georgia. Earlier that year, for example, Georgian forces switched from Kalashnikovs to US-made M4 carbines, Reuters reported, reflecting the depth of US involvement in building up Georgia’s forces ahead of its attack on Russia.

Despite attempts by the US to depict the August 2008 conflict as a “Russian invasion,” the European Union, as part of its own investigation, found Georgia to be responsible for triggering the conflict, Reuters would report.

Georgia: A Tool to “Exploit Tensions in the South Caucasus”
Georgia’s political capture by the US, then use as an armed proxy against neighboring Russia in a devastating war served as a template the US would use again but on a much larger scale in Ukraine from 2014 to present day.

Georgia is still identified by US government and US arms industry-funded policymakers as one of several possible fronts for continued use to “extend” Russia.

In the 2019 RAND Corporation paper titled, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” Georgia is listed by name under a section titled, “Measure 4: Exploit Tensions in the South Caucasus.”

Other measures include “Measure 1: Provide Lethal Aid to Ukraine,” “Measure 2: Increase Support to the Syrian Rebels,” “Measure 3: Promote Regime Change in Belarus,” “Measure 5: Reduce Russian Influence in Central Asia,” and “Measure 6: Challenge Russian Presence in Moldova.”

All 6 measures are being pursued by the US government to one degree or another, especially considering the ongoing war in Ukraine and the recent escalation of conflict in Syria.

Regarding Georgia specifically, under “Measure 4,” the report states:

The United States could extend Russia in the Caucasus in two ways. First, the United States could push for a closer NATO relationship with Georgia and Azerbaijan, likely leading Russia to strengthen its military presence in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia, and southern Russia.

It also notes that, “the United States might also renew efforts to bring Georgia into NATO.”

The current ruling party in Georgia seeks to avoid NATO membership, thus avoid becoming the “next Ukraine.” In order to again use Georgia as a disposable proxy, the US must remove the current Georgian government from power, and re-install an obedient client regime eager to subordinate Georgia’s best interests to Washington’s.

The same paper warns, however, that Washington fully understands the national security concerns Russia has with NATO troops expanding their presence along its border including possibly in Georgia and note that Russia may militarily intervene to prevent this – just as Russia has now done in Ukraine.

The same 2019 paper noted, under “Measure 1: Provide Lethal Aid to Ukraine,” that the resulting conflict would likely, “produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace,” all realities now taking shape.

Thus, Georgia’s current government’s policy reflects not only Georgia’s best interests, but well-founded fears regarding admitted potential catastrophe laid out by US policymakers themselves while seeking to use Georgia once again as a proxy against Russia.

US Treats Georgia as Its Colony – Maduro

Georgia: A Battleground Between Empire and Sovereignty
The US government employs polling agencies to assess and present public opinion within targeted nations, including Georgia, to global audiences, depicting aspirations to join the European Union, NATO, and even position themselves adversarially against Russia, as the will of the people and representing what is supposedly their best interests.

Many onlookers take these polling numbers as evidence that sitting governments opposed to such interest are “dictatorships” running roughshod over the public’s will.

In reality, these polls are not assessing the best interests of the Georgian public, but instead the success or failure of US government-funded propaganda campaigns aimed at convincing the Georgian public Washington’s interests are also their interests.

Objectively, neutrality for nations like Georgia represents the Georgian people’s best interests, especially considering its most important trade partners and the consequences already suffered by Georgia during its previous political capture and use by Washington.

While nations around the globe have invested heavily in national defense across traditional domains like land borders, shores, and airspace, few nations have recognized let alone properly defended new domains including information space the US wages multidomain warfare across.

US political interference can be understood as a non-military instrument in persuasive, inducement, and coercive strategies along a single spectrum that – on its other end – includes military instruments of persuasive, inducement, and coercive strategies.

In other words, US interference is just the first few steps of a process that eventually includes sanctions, US-sponsored sedition, terrorism, proxy war, and even US invasion and occupation – all of it aimed at politically capturing and controlling a targeted nation. Libya and Syria serve as examples first targeted by US political interference that steadily grew into state-sponsored violence, to proxy war and eventually direct US intervention.

The limits to Washington’s ability to move along this spectrum are the measures a targeted nation has put in place to deter each step from being taken.

A nation with a large military and a tightly controlled information space makes US persuasion, inducement, and coercion strategies of any kind more difficult.

Nations with powerful militaries but no control over their own information space – in the 21st century – are much like nations last century with powerful land armies but no air forces or air defenses. Air power allowed the US to attack targeted nations with impunity, creating conditions both militarily and economically conducive to eventual regime change.

Today, by compromising a targeted nation’s information space, controlling what information can and cannot be shared, the US is able to turn a nation’s population against its own institutions without Washington itself firing a single shot. While it takes much longer and often goes unseen by ordinary onlookers, the final result is success as resounding as any traditional military conquest. The overthrow of Georgia’s government in 2003 and Ukraine’s government in 2014 are just two of many examples.

Georgia’s recent passing of its foreign agent’s law represented a tentative first step toward securing its information space from the deep and disruptive interference exercised by the US through local fronts funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and adjacent organizations.

Washington’s “Superweapon” Aimed at Georgia
The NED funds programs targeting Georgia’s information space by standing up media organizations promoting US interests, including Georgia’s joining of both the EU and NATO. These media platforms also repeat US narratives regarding US adversaries including Russia and China in an attempt to poison the Georgian population against who would otherwise be constructive partners for Georgia’s future.

An example of this is “Open Caucasus,” (OC) admittedly funded by the US government through the NED on its “About Us” page, which at the time of this writing featured stories promoting ongoing protests in Georgia, op-eds decrying Georgia’s election as “rigged,” and claims of “Russian influence” behind the desire for Georgia to avoid once again being used as a proxy by the US against Russia – all narratives promoted by the US State Department itself.

US government-funded media outlets like OC are numerous, well-funded, and often monopolize the information space in targeted nations like Georgia. This is because many nations also rely on US-based social media platforms like Facebook and search engines like Google to find and share information. These US-based platformes work directly with the US State Department determining what information can and cannot be shared and what information is promoted across the public, creating the illusion of overwhelming consensus while simultaneously suppressing alternative views.

US government-funded programs also target the education systems of other nations from elementary school to university, shaping young minds in what to think long before they understand how to think. Students then see narratives promoted through these programs reinforced across the US-dominated media, shaping national opinion and even identity.

The US through the State Department and the NED create entire pipelines indoctrinating youths who eventually work their way into a targeted nation’s legal, educational, journalistic or political system. Aspiring lawyers, educators, leaders, diplomats, and journalists are deliberately plugged into professional and personal networks across the collective West ensuring the vast majority of those indoctrinated into these programs not only serve US interests, but face professional and personal isolation if they don’t.

Together, these invasive means of political interference and capture represent a “superweapon” few nations acknowledge, let alone defend against. Nations like Russia and China have done much to secure their respective information spaces as well as their educational, legal, and political systems from such interference. Their ability to assist allies in doing likewise is so far limited.

Georgia’s ongoing fight against Washington’s attempts to reassert political control over the nation and redirect it onto a path of self-destruction represents a national security threat not only to Georgia itself, but to the rest of the multipolar world. If Georgia can be politically captured, its population poisoned against its own best interests (again) and convinced to destroy their own nation in conflict with Washington’s chief adversaries, any other nation can be targeted next.

More must be done across the multipolar world to expose Washington’s regime change “superweapon,” promote the means by which to defend against it including foreign agent laws cutting off NED and adjacent foundation funding, and the creation of pipelines creating future political leaders, diplomats, business owners, and journalists who serve the best interests of their own nation, not Washington’s, and the creation of social media platforms within and between nations of the multipolar world beyond Washington’s control.

Assistance could be provided by Russia and China to defend a nation’s information space, just as Russia and China sell military weapons to defend a nation’s traditional domains like air, land, and sea.

Today it is Georgia. Tomorrow – as the US has proven over the decades and its long and ever-growing list of nations divided and destroyed by US interference – it could be any nation next.

(New Eastern Outlook)

Brian Berletic

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer who hosts The New Atlas; former US marine officer. For over ten years he wrote under the pseudonym 'Tony Cartalucci.'