Edward Lucas: 'Georgia Is Heading In The Direction Of Belarus'

Edward Lucas is a longtime journalist and commentator who specializes in security and geopolitics. He has authored books on topics from spy craft and cybersecurity to Putin’s Russia and its perceived threat to the West.

Lucas spoke with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service about the October 26 national elections in Georgia. He talked about what the process and results say about the ruling Georgian Dream party, about Georgians, and about the Caucasus nation’s near future. He also coined the epitaph of the post-1991 liberal consensus and warned that Georgia “isn’t getting the attention it deserves.”

The Tavberidze Interviews

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vazha Tavberidze of RFE/RL's Georgian Service has been interviewing diplomats, military experts, and academics who hold a wide spectrum of opinions about the war's course, causes, and effects. To read all of his interviews, click here.

RFE/RL: What are your initial impressions and reactions after the elections in Georgia?

Edward Lucas: I think this is a bad day for Georgia; it's a bad day for Georgia's friends; and it's a good day for Vladimir Putin and for all his friends. We see the Georgian Dream having done, I think, better than people expected in terms of real votes, and, of course, rigging the election in terms of the votes that are reported, with numerous instances of intimidation and outright falsification proven quite clearly from statistical analysis.

And the opposition demonstration, although very brave and commendable, and the role of the president [Salome Zurabishvili] deserves a special mention, it doesn't look to me like this is going to bring Georgia to a halt and bring new elections under international supervision, which is what we need.

So I'm afraid that, as things stand at the moment, Georgia is heading in the direction of Belarus, and that is a source of great sorrow to me.

RFE/RL: What does it say about the ruling party that [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orban is the first -- and so far only -- Western leader to congratulate Georgian Dream? How is the Georgian Dream leadership seen from the West?

Lucas: I'm afraid that it's not really seen from the West because most Western decision makers are not focused on Georgia at the moment. We have another very important election coming up in the United States; we have a crisis in the Middle East; we have a war in Ukraine; and Georgia is struggling to get the attention that it deserves. So I think that this is not top of the agenda in Western capitals.

I think that Orban's decision to go there shows characteristic agility and showmanship from him. He's obviously hoping that [Republican U.S. presidential nominee] Donald Trump wins, and he will then be the No. 1 American ally in Europe, and this will be part of a big change in European geopolitics if that happens. But if I were looking for a friend in international politics, I probably wouldn't want Viktor Orban as my friend, because Viktor Orban's best friend is Viktor Orban.

And that's where we are for now. I don't see any obvious next steps at the moment for Georgians or for their friends abroad, so I can only urge strategic patience and hope that things improve.

RFE/RL: You say the situation in Georgia is not really on the Western radar. How costly could that probe to be?

Lucas: Well, I think there's been 35 years of neglect in terms of the world west of Warsaw [failing] to understand what post-1991 Russia is really like. And we saw that in the beginning of the '90s with the wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the so-called frozen conflicts, which are anything but frozen in terms of their destabilizing effects.

But I think in a way I counsel people not to get into this mode of thinking, “When is the West going to wake up?” because the West just doesn't wake up. You can sit there banging the alarm all you like, but if people are fast asleep and they stay fast asleep, it's very frustrating.

So I think the idea of a kind of Western white ship which will come and rescue countries in Russia's shadow is a bit of a misapprehension. In the end, the West is divided as never before and distracted as never before, and you have to deal with the world as it is rather than the world as you would like it to be.

RFE/RL: So no light at the end of the tunnel at this point?

Lucas: Well, I think the only hope in the end is that Ukraine wins. And if Ukraine wins and we get a change of power in Russia and Russia becomes, if not actually less malevolent at least a bit weaker and distracted, then everybody else can breathe.

And that was the story of the 1990s and to some extent of the early years of this century, and I believe in the end empires do crumble. But it looks to me as though the American empire is in more of a mess than the Russian empire.

RFE/RL: Let's talk about the man who made this possible more than any other, in Georgia, at least -- Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili -- and what you think of him as a statesman.

Lucas: Well, I'm not sure statesman is the right word, really. I think you could call him the proprietor, you know, a business manager. And I think it was a big mistake to assume that someone who'd made their money in Russia would leave any political baggage behind.

But let's not forget that Ivanishvili won more because people were fed up with the way Georgia was being run at the time. There was genuine dissatisfaction with the UNM (United National Movement, which ruled from 2003-12) and with the old [UNM founder and former President Mikheil] Saakashvili approach. And many Georgians felt exhausted and felt that it was time for a rotation of power. And those are reasonable things to wish for. We didn't know at the time that this would be the last free election.

I think that the fundamental message of this is that the bad guys win when the good guys screw up. And again and again, we see parties which are supposedly Atlanticist, pro-business, pro-civil society, [and] small-"l" liberal coming to power, and they don't actually run the country very well. And then the voters get fed up and they vote for a change, and the change is often worse in a different direction.

In the end, Orban came back to power in Hungary [in 2010] because the other lot screwed up. [Left-wing populist Smer party Prime Minister Robert] Fico has come back in Slovakia because the other lot screwed up. Bulgarians are voting in despair or not voting at all because of the failure of the centrist, smaller liberal parties in Bulgaria. And I could go on.

And so I think it will be written on the tombstone of the post-1991 liberal consensus: You had all the right ideas, but you failed to implement them.

RFE/RL: You mentioned in the Georgian context that irrespective of the falsifications, et cetera, the ruling party still did better than expected.

Lucas: I think the scare campaign [worked]…. You know, talking even to Georgians here in London, they felt that in the end they would rather be safe than free, to put it brutally. In a fair election with proper scrutiny and equal access to media and to public advertising and so on, I suspect Georgian Dream would have done less well. And I think their rather contradictory message is that, “We are actually pro-European, just by a different way; but if you pick the other lot, there’s going to be war..."

I’m afraid that the other side has a powerful toolbox. This combination of money, propaganda, psychological warfare, administrative resources, straightforward muscle is a pretty effective arsenal, and we've seen it in many countries. And if the bad guys have the guns and the money and the access to the media and to the other levers of power, and the good guys have the right ideas and nice people, it's not enough.

And we need to think, I think, quite profoundly about how we defend democracy against this sort of authoritarian tool kit. It's no comfort for the Georgians, but this is happening all over the place.

RFE/RL: If they genuinely believe what the government narrative is, can you really blame them for choosing peace ahead of any sort of European integration?

Lucas: I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, and there was a very common phrase then: "Better red than dead" -- the idea that the thought of a nuclear holocaust was terrifying and that people said it would be better to give the Soviet Union whatever it wanted rather than the choice between starvation and dying of radiation sickness in the ashes of a city that had been destroyed by nuclear weapons.

Now, of course, Russia weaponized that fear and used it to stoke the so-called peace movement, which was a major factor in Britain and in Western Europe generally in the late '70s and '80s. If a scare tactic works, I, to some extent, blame the people who believe in it, and I blame the perpetrators of the scare tactic, but I mainly blame the people who have failed to provide a convincing alternative narrative. As I said before, the bad guys win when the good guys screw up.

RFE/RL: Is it possible that Ivanishvili can cut some sort of a deal with the West? Could the West somehow acquiesce to having this kind of Georgia?

Lucas: I think that’s a question probably for Georgians to answer. I think what we see is that [Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr] Lukashenka and to some extent also [President Aleksandar] Vucic in Serbia play this game of playing the West off of others. And in the end, we need Georgia for some things: Geographical location is important; you’re a transit country.

And it may well be that, in a number of months or years, people in Brussels or Washington or wherever will say, “Look, we need a reset; there’s no point in keeping Georgia out in the cold. It may be bad, but Azerbaijan is worse and we deal with the Azeris, and in the end we need the oil or the gas or whatever. And so if we don’t get in there, it will only make things worse.”

We’ve seen this with Lukashenka, as well. Lukashenka says to the West, “Give me money and help and recognition, and I’ll release a few prisoners and try to play nice.”

RFE/RL: And look how it worked out for Belarus and its people.

Lucas: Well, Lukashenka would argue that he’s kept Belarus out of all the wars. And despite Lukashenka, Belarus is in a far better state than it was 30 years ago. It’s become a modern society. And I think when Lukashenka goes, if the conditions are right and Moscow’s weak, one could imagine Belarus joining the European Union, perhaps before Georgia does.

What happens at the high level of politics is only part of the story. And I think that the fundamental dynamic of post-Soviet societies is the stronger, a sort of embourgeoisement of the new middle class -- in a very broad sense, people forgetting the historical traumas of the past and becoming better connected with the outside world. Those trends are basically benign.

So I hope that despite this bad election result, other things in Georgia will continue to improve and develop, and that at a future point Georgia will be able to reemerge into the Western geopolitical mainstream in a stronger state than it is now. But I see no cause for immediate optimism.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.