4
POLITICS
GEORGIA TODAY
JUNE 4 - 10, 2021
Communist China Is Bad for Georgia, and It’s Time to Cut Them Out mob, particularly for a small nation such as Georgia. While Russia and Turkey are expanding in the South Caucasus militarily, China has chosen the alternate route of economic enslavement through large investments and import/export control, undermining any of the competing military or political achievements. In addition, this also ensures longer term control of the region. Already on a global scale, the slight surface ripples of the undercurrent of CCP actions are becoming more visible. Media, political, and economic platforms are being probed with their dark tendrils, albeit mostly focused on undermining the United States. Georgia is still, as a member of the West, a viable target and will not be left untouched by the CCP globalization strategy. This all began after the rise of Communist China, and the exile of the democratic government to the island nation of Taiwan, still besieged by their northern neighbors. The United States, and much of the West as a whole, thought that commercially engaging with the CCP would mellow their radical communist sentiments. It didn’t, but it did serve the temporary purpose of pulling them away from the Soviet Union. In fact, with the increased economic activity, the beast only grew in size. China managed to build itself as a home of cheap labor, luring Western companies
Photo by Liu Bin / XINHUA NEWS AGENCY via AP
OP-ED BY MICHAEL GODWIN
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he Communist Chinese Party (CCP) has increasingly come into the spotlight as more investigations are launched and evidence surfaces about their involvement in the origins of the COVID-19 virus. From their lesser known human rights violations with the Uighers in their western provinces to the abuse and murder of protestors in the occupied nation of Taiwan, China is the world’s latest “evil empire.” Now, Georgia has become a part of the sphere of CCP influence, and it is imperative that Tbilisi realize this and save themselves and their nation while holding the CCP accountable.
First needed is an examination of the way China views modern warfare, or more accurately, the fact it doesn’t fight war in our traditional sense. In stark contrast to the Western classical focus on physical military strength and hardware, China focuses on what it has termed, and literally wrote the book on, Unrestricted Warfare. This work, published in 1999, takes a keen view of combating the West in information censorship, media control, economic influence, and ultimately political seizure. The authors, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, were both colonels in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). These officers postulated that the world and the function of warfare was radically changed after the 1991 Gulf War. They determined that the United States, and the West by proxy, had had their last
major accomplishment and the way conflict will play out will be different. This change was outlined by Qiao in an interview after publication by saying, “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” This strategy, due to its nature, can be used against both enemies as well as allies through the universal incentive: money. Georgia is being wooed into a sense of complacency by the injection of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment. From the Senaki highway project to the Tbilisi Sea New City, bringing Georgia deeper into the economic clutches of the CCP is top priority. This economic bait is too sweet for Tbilisi to turn down, but will hurt in the long run. Being indebted to Beijing is tantamount to owing large sums of money to the
to be betrothed to their workforce and therefore the CCP. This allows the CCP to slither through these corporate entities and into the cultures and societies in other nations that would be otherwise angled perpendicular to communist ideals. This tactic of normalization numbs the people to the horrors of Chinese communism and its deadly grasp. At the same time, they whitewash their own global reputation through a ruthless regime of censorship and shadow policing and law enforcement. Any dissidents swiftly “disappear” and their words are scrubbed from the media. Socio-political and cultural “opponents” are interred in concentration camps and hidden from the world, with the goal of forcing people to forget. Any warm interaction with a government that conducts itself in such a manner, treats its people in such an abhorrent manner, and remains so devious and manipulative, is despicable. It is imperative that Georgia rethink its position with the CCP and their policies. The continuation of these actions is clearly motivated by profit and growth, and this is not without its benefits. However, to go without recognizing the horrifying faults of the CCP is to condone them. From the abhorrent “One China Policy” to the abuse and murder of its own citizens, Georgia, along with the rest of the world, needs to make it clear in no uncertain terms that this malicious behavior by a state entity will not be tolerated.
Cartoon by Gordon Edward George Minhinnick
Handling the Occupation OP-ED BY NUGZAR B. RUHADZE
A
nything good and useful that is currently happening in Georgia is losing its color and value against the background of the Occupation that we have been suffering from the last 30 something years. I am purposefully capitalizing the word ‘Occupation,’ because it has turned into the most capital issue Georgia has had to handle in its recent history. The fact of losing Abkhazia and Samachablo is absolutely indigestible for every single Georgian of any age, gender or faith. We are simply not capable of putting up with the reality that life offers at this stage of our existence. We sleep and dream of these lands coming back to us, but we have not the slightest clue how to actually do it: no plan, no power, no will, no resource, no hope, no nothing! The world around us is aware of our pain, but the same world needs to do so much to ensure its own survival, that it has no will or muscle to turn our territorial issue into its core subject of care and preoccupation. Without an iota of exaggeration, our life is losing gist and
taste because of the Occupation imposed on us by our northern neighbor only thanks to the power it is allowed to exercise over us. Russia is angry with Georgia, and its anger is fierce and lasting, and there is no way to assuage that anger because, naturally, Russians honor in the first
place their own state and political interests above others’. Georgia became the ‘other’ for Russia as a result of Georgia’s decision to follow the western moral and political ideals, and its ability to make a human being happier than Russians can and would any time soon. To play a double game, including Georgia’s
The new generations are coming of age, forfeiting the acute sense of lost lands, their mindset gradually numbing towards the anguish of those that came before them. Source: ponarseurasia.org
goodwill gestures towards both, seems to be practically impossible, because Russia tends to maintain a categorical attitude: either us or them. Living in a presumable triangle between Russia, Georgia and the West has not worked, although this geopolitical model might have been ideal for Georgia. Time is passing and the so called ‘new reality’ is crystallizing little by little, turning into a genuine nightmare for us, because the more the world gets used to the irritating status quo, the more impotent we feel ourselves in our ability to revive our territorial integrity. Moreover, the new generations are coming of age, forfeiting the acute sense of lost lands, their mindset gradually numbing towards the anguish of those that came before them. Concerning the Western shoulder, we certainly have it to cry on, but only in lighter things like strengthening liberal democracy and honing our electoral culture. We should in no way be nursing the hope that the West is capable of having Russia return to Georgia its lost lands: it can only implement the policy of that loud label, ‘non-recognition’. Non-recognition is fine, but it is only a piece of moderate diplomacy, having no problemsolving strength or value. And everybody
knows that! Only, the overall picture stays on a shoulder-shrugging and lip-curving level. Not hard to understand, because, to put it straight, our beloved West has no power to make Russia drop Abkhazia and South Ossetia like a hot potato at one snap of a finger, have the happy Armenian immigrants out and the miserable Georgian refugees in, reinstating their illegally lost properties, and closing the issue forever. Things just don’t happen that way. Wars change things, sometimes so badly that recovery becomes impossible, and we are the victims of that change. In our hearts and minds, we are not prepared to reconcile ourselves with the fact, but we will have to find better ways to put back together our beloved motherland. Dreaming never hurts, and I will now follow one of the images of my best imagination: some day in the future, the world will not need borders, and that’s exactly when we will be able to relax and ignore the consequences of wars and borderization, visas and other restrictions, territorial quarrels and barbed wire installations. Wouldn’t this be something? I know that jokes are irrelevant about things like occupation and geopolitically broken hearts, but can’t we at least afford this little jovial moment when pain stays and has no intention to go?
