November 27, 2003
FILLING THE VACUUM
Georgian interlude (David Warren, November 26, 2003)
The future need not be grim. The economic prospects for a country that offers the only possible transit to the high seas for oil from the Caspian basin, which does not pass through Iran or Russia, are potentially very good. (It is largely from fear of this potential competition, that the Russians have fished so assiduously in Georgia's troubled waters.)It is an experiment that, alas, cannot be repeated easily in any Muslim country of the Middle East (Georgia was an ancient Christian kingdom, one of the few Christian polities to survive the Islamic conquests). And yet it is a very significant event for the region, especially for Iran, where a huge student movement continues to lead opposition to the tyranny of the ayatollahs, and where the young are also increasingly inspired by "the American way" of doing things.
For Georgia has just created a shining example of what the fall of the Berlin Wall might look like, transposed and translated into the Middle Eastern vernacular. Mr. Shevardnadze's highly personal way of ruling was in the regional mould, and even his Communist background was suggestive of the ideological formations that underlie many of the region's most powerful statesmen.
The tinder has been struck. While the situation in Georgia is necessarily desperate (freedom invariably begins in chaos), and the Russians may well do everything they can to undermine the new Georgian government that emerges, the flame is lit. Christian Georgia has given the Muslim Middle East an example of "how it is done", even without the help of the U.S. Army. It is close enough to home to be noticed.
And the power of example in a moral vacuum should never be underestimated.
Georgia as Shining City?
MORE:
-Where Europe Vanishes: Civilizations have collided in the Caucasus Mountains since the dawn of history, and the region's dozens of ethnic groups have been noted for "obstinacy and ferocity" since ancient times. Stalin was born in these mountains, and it was also here that the Soviet empire began to crumble. The story of the Republic of Georgia illustrates that the peoples of the Caucasus may prove as incapable of self-rule as they were resistant to rule by outsiders (Robert D. Kaplan, December 2000, The Atlantic)
-Many Roles, Many Acts (Jim Hoagland, November 27, 2003, Washington Post)