Resize Text: Waging war, especially a disastrous one, can have dire consequences for ailing regimes. Georgia’s August 2008 war with Russia came after a year of political discontent, especially in the capital city of Tbilisi; a slowing economy; and a rising disenchantment with the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose ascent to power following the 2003 Rose Revolution was a hopeful sign of democratic breakthrough in the troubled Black Sea–Caspian region. Although the political opposition to Saakashvili failed to oust the government before the war, they regrouped afterwards pursuing the president’s resignation—a step they insisted was necessary for Georgia’s further democratization and security. The defection of some previously high-level officials in Saakashvili’s government, coupled with growing criticism of Saakashvili in the Western capitals most supportive of Georgia, encouraged the opposition to believe that its goal was both justifiable and obtainable.
However, the Georgian government was not as vulnerable as many in the opposition believed. A post–Rose Revolution record of successful spending on social programs and infrastructure, the population’s postwar solidarity in the face of the Russian threat, and foreign aid packages that included substantial budgetary support all provided the Saakashvili administration with a considerable cushion. More generally, the opposition simply underestimated the difficulty of translating social discontent into regime change. A disillusioned (or at least disconcerted) public still failed to view the war as the kind of unforgivable transgression the opposition made it out to be, so there was no sustained collective protest. The opposition’s internal divisions also made it more difficult to compete with the state for support. Although the defections from the government may have been significant, there were only a few. By comparison, the opposition remained openly divided, with its leaders joining forces tactically but with no real consensus regarding the ends and means of protest and often charting a course of action based on personal animosities toward Saakashvili or their personal political fortunes, rather than to achieve political reforms.
At the same time, the government dampened a new bout of “revolutionary” fervor by successfully establishing itself as part of the solution to the problems that the opposition diagnosed, rather than (as is usually the case in such circumstances) reinforcing the opposition’s message through obstinacy and brute force. Government officials, from the president down, consistently acknowledged the system’s democratic deficiencies and expressed a willingness to engage in a common effort to remedy them. Rather than retreat into authoritarianism, as might have been expected after a traumatic war, the government hewed to a process of political engagement that maintained its credentials as a democratizing, if not fully democratic, regime.
That said, the government also demonstrated a facility for more customary methods of state control. Although the government initiated reform of Georgia’s constitutional separation of powers, electoral code, and official and private local broadcast media, the government failed to move as quickly to reform the judiciary and the Interior Ministry—the key foundations of state power—or the ostensibly private nationwide broadcast television stations, which have the power to influence social attitudes particularly outside Tbilisi. It also refused to countenance preterm national elections of any sort, construing such a step to be less a compromise than a sign of weakness. Finally, while demonstrating considerable restraint in the face of increasingly tiresome street protests, the government also reacted firmly to protesters’ efforts to test the boundaries of state order, occasionally with excessive use of force and debatable applications of justice.
Barring a game-changing Russian invasion—and in part to reduce its prospects—the most immediate question for Georgian domestic politics is whether its three basic political forces (i.e., the government, the nonparliamentary opposition, and the parliamentary opposition) will agree to negotiate necessary political changes in good faith and implement compromise agreements. Although external supporters of Georgia might continue to find faults with the second aspect of the state’s approach to dissent, they have clearly indicated that they prefer the government’s evolutionary path to the nonparliamentary opposition’s revolutionary one. The opposition could potentially compromise by taking up the government’s offer to revamp Georgia’s constitutional structure of governance and electoral code, in exchange for the government promising to consider holding preterm parliamentary elections, possibly to coincide with local elections in 2010, as well as a legal review of the ownership of Georgia’s two nationwide private television channels. Such a compromise would pave the way for further reform of the judiciary and interior ministry, which could help ensure the consolidation of Georgian democracy, despite the calamitous consequences of the August war.
Cory Welt is Director of the Eurasian Strategy Project and adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He has also been Deputy Director and Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He would like to thank David Lonardo, Brooke Marriott, and Pavle Milekic at Georgetown University for their invaluable research assistance on this article.
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