The Paris Peace Forum

What do you do when you’re young, ambitious, have half of Europe looking up to you as a potential savior from Trump’s idiosyncrasies on the one hand and Putin’s Roman Empire tactics on the other? Many things, perhaps, but establishing one’s own Munich Security Conference (but bigger, cooler and shinier) must have ranked rather high on President Macron’s agenda, as last month saw the birth of a gargantuan annual-to-be gathering henceforth to be known as the Paris Peace Forum, which is, as its official website claims, “neither a summit nor a conference,” but a new annual event based on a simple idea: international cooperation being key to tackling global challenges and ensuring durable peace. To support collective action, it gathers all actors of global governance under one roof for three days: states, international organizations, local governments, NGOs and foundations, companies, experts, journalists, trade unions, religious groups and citizens. Through original formats of debates and the presentation of solutions, it demonstrates there is still a momentum for multilateralism and a better organization of the planet, both among states from North and South and civil society actors. And boy did it do all that and more in its first installment.

Attended by everyone of world level political merit (I should know, I was there), more than 10,000 visitors, 65 Heads of State and Government (although the bigger ones only stuck around for the opening ceremony – looking at you there, Frau Merkel!) as well as 10 international organizations leaders convened for three days at La Grande Halle de La Villette for the first edition of the Paris Peace Forum to exchange and discuss concrete global governance solutions.

The scope of the forum was also perhaps its biggest weakness: you could have literally drowned in the sea of information, and more often than not, due to the organizer’s apparent agenda of “let’s squeeze literally every conceivable topic into three days, shake it and see what happens,” you’d have missed one interesting discussion while attending another. This was certainly the case with the author of this piece, who found himself facing a choice of attending either a panel that included the debonair duo of Armenia’s Pashinyan and Greece’s Tsipras, another where Ukraine’s beleaguered President Poroshenko was having a hard time convincing the audience that progress was being made in Ukraine, or one in which this country’s now former President was involved. All three panels had roughly the same starting time. Not a good design, this. The choice was eventually made in favor of the first two panels and at the cost of Mr. Margvelashvili, whose output, if attending eyewitnesses are to be believed, was in the end as pointless as his presidential reign. Apparently, the man came in, said hello, and left, because he was late for some meeting or another. Way to put your country on the map there. But enough about that, for I have to tell you the story of the two more important sessions I attended.

For a person reporting on the South Caucasus region, Pashinyan, seemingly still some sort of an enigma for the Western audience, was always going to offer a more interesting story to tell. He was convincing, affable and not short of diplomatic suaveness, something you’d expect a seasoned journalist to pick up. Months before, he had sung a somewhat muffled serenade to the productivity of his meeting with Putin in an interview with the Russian “Echo of Moscow” outlet, saying he embraced the opportunity to have a face-to-face chat with the head of Armenia’s foremost strategic ally. When asked what exactly he saw in the eyes of the man the West has out for world’s main miscreant, seeing as President Bush and our very own Saakashvili both claimed to have deduced what the man’s soul was hiding, Pashinyan effortlessly dodged the ball by replying they were the eyes of a man with his country’s national interests at heart and, you know, it would be best if we all looked into each other’s eyes when speaking to each other. Honesty and all that. Nice. This has been a trademark trait of his policy so far: not burning old bridges while trying to build new ones, but how far he’ll be allowed to go into his seemingly impossible quest of sitting on two chairs at once remains to be seen.

Another rather interesting panel took place on the second day and it was largely interesting because it had Russians in it. Now, a comparison to the Munich conference was alluded to at the start, this one with a glaring shortcoming when it came to having Russians sit there, offer smug theories about how they’re the good guys and occasionally being flashed by Femen or another group of similar persuasion. Not enough Russians to throw questions (and eggs, if you so inclined) at! They did have one, though, and perhaps to make sure he was visible enough, they stuck him in moderating a panel no Kremlin-friendly type has any right to moderate – one dedicated to world peace. The man was none other than Anatoly Torkunov, the rector of Moscow’s State Institute of International Affairs, a place world famous (or infamous, if that’s your fancy) as the main hub of Kremlin thinkers and Foreign policy gurus alike (to put it in a Georgian perspective, being an MGIMO alumni was one of arguments used against the second placed presidential candidate, the UNM’s Grigol Vashadze, who the ruling party claimed to have been serving Kremlin interests). Hypocrisy barometers must have gone off the charts as Mr. Torkunov sat there, offering compassionate sighs to those in chagrin that world peace was in danger. Particularly satirical was his approval of Iranian speaker doom-saying that Might is Right these days. When asked to offer an insight into his own country’s input to peace when it comes to Georgia and Ukraine, he said that Russian officials have their country’s best interests at heart and that he himself is deeply in love with Georgia, but the situation is complicated and there’s hope that it will improve. Lovely.

The third day of the forum was largely dedicated to innovative technologies, the this-is-how-we-save-the-world eulogies that no self-respecting geopolitics-covering journalist should have any business with and that I would count as the third weakness of the forum. It’s not just biting more off than you can chew, it’s about mixing your starter with your dessert, to stay in the realm of gastronomical metaphors. The third day could easily have been another occasion altogether – there was little, if any, bridging between what preceded it and what happened in the finale. So, instead of listening to another monologue on how bitcoin will make the financial environment of our world more transparent, I went and interviewed NATO’s Ex-secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, also attending, who offered strong penance about not providing Georgia and Ukraine with the MAP back in 2008 Bucharest summit- a piece you might have (and should have) read in GEORGIA TODAY’S previous issue.

By Vazha Tavberidze