Is the Georgian State Strong Enough to Handle the Squeeze?
Op-ed
Heraldically speaking, Georgia has all the attributes of a regular contemporary state: a national anthem, coat of arms, seasonal ceremonies, necessary ranking, an historical pedigree and any other accompanying devices, such as armorial bearing licenses, badges, medals, orders, banners, and mottoes.
We have embassies in tens of nations, and those nations have reciprocated with their own diplomatic missions here in Georgia. We have a seat in the United Nations, and in a number of filial bodies thereof.
On top of all that, we are also aspiring to gain membership to the ‘star-studied’ NATO and EU families. Within our own boundaries, we have a multi-brunch constitutional government, including legislature, a cabinet of ministers and the judiciary; fortified by the densely populated law enforcement and a penitentiary realm. Deuce! I almost forgot: we have the army, one of the costliest and most question-marked elements of our statehood.
The lawmakers pass laws, the government executes said laws and the courts interpret them. So the process that makes us a State is very active at that.
The national currency regulates financial transactions; commercial trade is very much on the up, and banks are operating as they should. Democracy is being honed and personal freedom fluctuates up and down.
Having all those attributes in place, there is still something missing in the Republic of Georgia. What could that be? First and foremost, the State has no idea what precise direction it is headed for in the drastically divided modern world that humankind is faced with today. The little State of Georgia is squeezed in between morbid geopolitical tentacles created by the powers that be, who vehemently enjoy the way we are wriggling to free ourselves from a painful, suffocating reality. Masochistically playing with Russian geopolitical sadism, and meanwhile looking with tearful eyes at the glibly loquacious didactic West; the Georgian State is at a complete loss, not having a clue what might happen tomorrow. This country has never heard this much political commentary, which, actually, makes no sense at all concerning the rotten geopolitical quagmire that we have found ourselves in as a result of absolute absence of historical wisdom that we should have learnt from over the centuries.
There is not a single shoulder we can put the blame on except our own. We need our land back from the fiendishly celebrating Russia, gloating at our misfortune. We need to, but we can’t! This is a mindboggling geopolitical dead-end, where the nation is trembling with fear, cold, misery and with a bursting heart.
The situation concerns all of us personally the same way. A sense of national happiness is gone! And there is no way to have the Russian bear keep its mortally sharp claws of off our fragile Georgian body. The world is watching this prolonged political show and is looking at us with sagging impotent hands and stranded minds. The world cannot do anything here! It is the Georgian state that should do something, but what? If it undertakes a sharp move, it will perish because the Russian power to keep Georgia frozen is immortal.
If it does nothing, then it should not consider itself an independently functioning body that is capable of putting back together the historic national territory. An average Georgian patriot like myself would not even care who the Georgian state makes friends with, and what geopolitical orientation it chooses, be it Russia, the West or the Moon. For a regular Georgian patriot, the bottom-line is to see Georgia’s peaceful survival, with its territories back and the Georgian gene pool safe and sound forever, so that this nation is still in existence 500 hundred years from now and, even more so, that the unique Georgian language is still being spoken in the world and the letters are still being written in the amazing Georgian fonts. That’s it. Will America do that for us? Let them do it! Would Russia guarantee that cherished future? Why not? Is there an unknown third power that might give us a chance? Welcome any time! Let it come in and do the job! What’s happening meanwhile? Indigenous Georgians are spending days and nights in thoughts of relinquishing the country in search of a rusty little piece of bread, whereas their places are being taken over by foreign crowds, mostly from the orient, that would make for an easy survival in this wonderful land, turning Georgians into the minority in Georgia, slowly but steadily. This stinks. Has the Georgian state enough power to handle the stench? I wish it did!
Nugzar B. Ruhadze