They come to Tbilisi, are taken on a tour, and “taken for a ride” by a conspicuous crowd of people who happen to be out of government at the moment.
The latest was Finland’s Elena Valtonen, who did the rounds: dropped by the opposition demonstrators at parliament to show support, met with the usual NGO set, then went to tell Foreign Minister Maka Bochorishvili how repressive the GD government supposedly is toward peaceful protesters.
Peaceful? Just days earlier, a violent crowd had tried to force its way through a police line to storm President Kavelashvili’s residence, after speeches calling for taking over control of the country and arresting the cabinet and prime minister. Perhaps she meant, they were peaceful when she dropped by the protest in front of parliament; a stunt that led to the Georgian government cancelling her visit with PM Kobakhidze.
Valtonen visited in her capacity as the rotating head of the OSCE, touring the line of occupation together with the EU’s mission in Georgia. She borrowed binoculars to gaze toward “the big bad Russians.”
It made for good photos, but not much substance. The OSCE once ran an observer mission on that stretch of land before Russia, after the 2008 war, refused to let the observers return. The EU then stepped in, ostensibly to fill the vacuum left by both the OSCE and the UN missions. Yet Brussels’ self-image as neutral and peace-minded doesn’t really work when that image is not shared by all sides.
The EUMM mission may have its upsides, but it raises a question: what are the trade-offs between the OSCE’s broader trust across Eurasia and the EU’s more partisan presence on the West’s frontier?
Valtonen could have made some interesting comments on this topic, but instead mingled as OSCE head with the EU, as if such formalities no longer matter. Was she there as Finland’s foreign minister, as OSCE chair, or in order to speak for the EU, or maybe as a partisan supporter of Georgia’s opposition?
Valtonen may have had legitimate diplomatic aims during her visit; the point is that the optics and messaging fit a familiar pattern: Western politicians coming to Georgia on what has become a ritualized “safari.” They visit a fixed circle of English-speaking activists, pose for photos against the backdrop of angry crowds, and then head home to declare that democracy is under siege.
Valtonen shouldn’t be singled out. Germany’s Michael Roth in January this year aligned himself with the opposition’s call for new elections, implicitly undermining the current government’s legitimacy, in a country that isn’t his own. The list goes on.
Visiting Georgia to “make a stand” while showing little grasp of what’s actually happening has become a peculiar form of foreign policy activism. Would Roth, Fischer, or Valtonen welcome foreign politicians doing the same in their own capitals, joining street protests and demanding that their governments resign?
One has to wonder: do they truly think they’re helping? Or is Georgia simply a convenient stage for grandstanding about freedom, before boarding the next flight home?
