Uncertain Democracy. Lincoln A. Mitchell
to our understanding of the Rose Revolution. However, my understanding of these events goes considerably beyond what I could have gotten from doing only academic research. It is my hope that Uncertain Democracy combines that access with the benefit of a few years distance from the event to provide a unique analysis of the Rose Revolution. I should add that, although I worked for NDI during a fair amount of the period addressed in this book, the analysis, observations, and opinions are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of NDI.
The Rose Revolution remains an ongoing story, the last chapter of which has yet to be written. Demonstrations in November 2007 led to a forceful response, with the government imposing a short-lived state of emergency and calling for snap elections in January 2008, which President Saakashvili, to the surprise of almost nobody, won. The results of parliamentary elections a few months later in May were not encouraging for democracy in Georgia, with the president’s party consolidating its strength in Parliament even as a number of domestic and foreign observers raised questions about the quality of those elections.
In August 2008, simmering tensions between Russia and Georgia over the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia erupted into war as an ill-thought-out Georgian military advance into South Ossetia met with a strong Russian response that saw Moscow send troops and planes far into Georgian territory. The Georgia-Russia relationship and the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are not the primary subjects of this book. They are, however, critically important for Georgia, since the country’s democratic future and, indeed, its very sovereignty, remain uncertain given these recent developments.
Chapter 1
Georgia and the Democracy Promotion Project
On November 22, 2003, a group of young Georgian politicians and activists led by former justice minister Mikheil Saakashvili stormed into the first session of the newly—and fraudulently—elected Georgian parliament. Holding aloft a single red rose—the symbol of thousands who had taken to the streets in the days before—Saakashvili marched forward, shouting “Resign!” as President Eduard Shevardnadze stood at the rostrum, addressing the parliament’s members. Moments later, a very old and disoriented looking Shevardnadze, known to most people in the West as Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev’s courageous Soviet foreign minister during the waning days of the Cold War, was hustled out the back door of the chamber by his concerned security guards. The next day Saakashvili, former speaker of parliament Zurab Zhvania and sitting speaker of parliament Nino Burjanadze forced Shevardnadze, Georgia’s president of ten years, to officially resign.
Shevardnadze’s resignation, which took place after almost three weeks of protests and vigils in the center of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, marked the culmination of what has come to be called Georgia’s Rose Revolution. Immediately following the resignation, Burjanadze took over as interim president, as specified by the constitution. Less than two months later, on January 4, 2004, Saakashvili was elected president with an overwhelming 96 percent of the vote in balloting broadly assessed as free and fair.
After Shevardnadze left office, interim president Burjanadze assured the international community that Georgia’s new government would place the country on a course oriented toward the West and democracy. Saakashvili, upon taking office, offered the same assurances to the United States and Europe. The United States and Europe, for their part, recognized the Rose Revolution as an important democratic breakthrough and assured Georgia’s new leaders that they would provide as much support as needed to help Georgia consolidate its new democracy.
The Rose Revolution can be understood and studied in many ways. It represents more than just the last, best hope for one small, impoverished, semidemocratic country in a remote corner of what once was the Soviet empire. It also can be seen as the beginning of what proved to be a short-lived fourth wave of democratization that quickly spilled over into countries such as Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Lebanon. Others, however, see it as just another case of old wine in new bottles, as the new leaders retreat from their initial democratic promises.
After the Rose Revolution, Georgia was quickly and visibly claimed by the United States and Europe as a success story for democracy assistance. Saakashvili was feted in Washington and other Western capitals. Money poured into Georgia to help the new democracy consolidate its gains. U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell was one of many Western dignitaries who flew to Tbilisi for Saakashvili’s inauguration. President George W. Bush and other cabinet members issued statements of support for the new regime and visited Georgia during the first years of Saakashvili’s presidency. Not surprisingly, the West’s—especially Washington’s—previous strong support for Saakashvili’s predecessor, Shevardnadze, is rarely mentioned any more.
The story of democracy assistance in Georgia, particularly from the United States, is not, however, the simple success story the post-Rose Revolution American narrative suggests. Looking at democracy assistance and democratization policy toward Georgia both before and after the event makes this clear. The Rose Revolution and the evolution of democracy in Georgia in general also tell us a great deal about U.S. democracy promotion policies. Through a close study of Georgia, it is possible to raise, and answer, central questions about the wisdom of American democracy promotion policies, the efficacy of these policies, and the direction in which they should move in the future.
A number of largely uninformed observers attributed the Rose Revolution primarily to the work of the U.S. government, often through NGOs funded by the United States.1 This view is held among many in the former Soviet Union, including both supporters and opponents of democratic reforms. Former Russian president Vladimir Putin’s remarks shortly after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine make this view very clear: “It’s extremely dangerous to try to resolve political problems outside the framework of the law; first there was the ‘rose revolution,’ and then they’ll [the United States] think up something like ‘blue.”’2 I have encountered similar sentiments frequently in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan, where I have been told by politicians and members of parliament that the United States forced Shevardnadze out, created Mikheil Saakashvili as a political force, and funded the demonstrations. Often those who viewed events in Georgia this way told me they saw little difference between U.S.-supported democracy assistance efforts and the CIA.
Others viewed the events as an indigenous Georgian phenomenon in which the United States played at most a peripheral role. I have heard this view from senior figures in the Georgian government as well as from several Georgian civic activists, many of whom were not deeply involved in the Rose Revolution. Civic activist Giorgi Kandelaki asserted that “many observers have overstated the contributions of civil society and foreign actors to the Rose Revolution. … Most of the international actors involved were too willing to compromise and make deals with Shevardnadze despite the demands of the Georgian people.” He added: “During the revolution not only were Western actors unhelpful, but at times they were detrimental.”3 While Kandelaki seems to bear a grudge against the West for the role it played in the Rose Revolution, the sentiment he expressed is not uncommon in Georgia.4 Nor is it without a kernel of truth, as I will show later. For example, one senior official in the Georgian government said, somewhat flippantly, of American support, “What the hell did the U.S. do?”5 The truth, I argue, lies somewhere in between, which is why examining the actual and perceived impact of democracy promotion work is so important.
Some in the U.S. government sought to encourage perceptions that the United States had played a larger role in the Rose Revolution. Lorne Craner, then an assistant secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the Department of State (he has since become president of the International Republican Institute), and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), at a July 7, 2004, meeting of the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Human Rights, demonstrated the views of some within the U.S. government on this question. Craner remarked that
in the 1990s, the United States supported South Africa’s democracy movement, which helped produce a new era of freedom in a country that some believed would descend into chaos. And for the last decade, we’ve worked with opposition leaders and NGOs in places like Cuba and Burma and Zimbabwe, and also in places like Georgia, where last year, the time and the energy