Results

Based on their statements, this study split GD core elites into two rhetorical groups. The first was termed “Enthusiastic Activists,” and the second “Quiet Defenders.” Twenty-seven statements from the former and 13 from the latter were reviewed in the study.

The Enthusiastic Activists are characterized by a high degree of hostility toward the West. This group is made up of the highest-ranking elites in GD, such as current Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. Though the Enthusiastic Activists regularly give statements in support of Ukraine, at times they also make statements blaming both sides for the conflict, or offer an apolitical argument in favor of peace. In response to the criticism that Georgia has not put in place financial sanctions, the Enthusiastic Activists say that Georgia has already introduced limited sanctions and provided support to Ukraine via UN votes and humanitarian aid, while arguing that sanctions risk conflict with Russia and noting Western hypocrisy given the lack of action during Georgia’s 2008 war with Russia.

The calling card of Enthusiastic Activists is their heavy emphasis on a “second front.” Sometimes referenced vaguely and sometimes laid out as a specific theory, the “second front” concept claims that a vague coalition of American, European and Ukrainian elites are cooperating with local opposition parties to force Georgia to open a second front in the Russia-Ukraine war.

This study found 10 statements by Enthusiastic Activists referencing the threat of a second front and nine statements that explicitly or implicitly labeled the opposition United National Movement (UNM) “the war party.” This rhetoric has proved versatile, existing since the earliest weeks of the war. Georgian Dream elites use the threat of a second front to bat away Western insistence that Tbilisi take stronger anti-Russia positions and explain the foreign support for domestic opposition groups, as well as Ukrainian statements in support of anti-GD protests. Kyiv, having become critical of GD’s approach to Russia, has been a regular target. Notable but not included in this study were the accusations of Georgia’s GD-run security service that Kyiv was plotting a color revolution using Ukraine’s battalion of Georgian fighters. No such coup materialized.

As we said yesterday, there is a clear, coordinated effort to involve Georgia in a military conflict, which we will not allow. This effort is coordinated from Georgia by the National Movement, which, as everyone knows, has many representatives in the Ukrainian government, including in among those close to the president. Davit Arakhamia, a person trusted by the president, as Mikheil Saakashvili himself said yesterday, was trained by him. Former Prosecutor General Zurab Adeishvili and other Georgian criminals still hold quite high positions in the Ukrainian government. Mikheil Saakashvili himself remains the formal head of the Reform Council.

Public statement, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, March 2, 2022

When a person who is at war... responds to the destructive action of several thousand people here in Georgia [Georgia’s March 2023 protests], this is direct evidence that this person is involved, motivated to make something happen here too, to change… [The opposition] are insisting that Georgia join the war. Let’s imagine that there is a war in Georgia today, we all know what will happen here – our beautiful country will turn into a firing range… the only thing [Ukraine] are dissatisfied with is that we did not join the war.

Interview given to Georgian television, ex-Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, March 12, 2023

It is not in Georgia's interest to become a party to Russia's war of occupation; we will support peace. When [the charge d'affaires of Ukraine in Tbilisi] says that Georgia should supply arms and military equipment to Ukraine, it is obvious that they objectively have no special expectations with regard to supplies of special arms or military equipment from Georgia. The message voiced by this person is that Georgia should become a party to the military conflict.

Public statement, Mamuka Mdinaradze, parliament majority leader, December 6, 2023

This fear of a second front is contrasted with GD’s supposed ability to maintain peace and stability in Georgia. This thesis was found in eight statements by the Enthusiastic Activists. Often, the memory of the 2008 Russia-Georgia war is utilized, with it being labeled a failure of the UNM. Rhetoric such as this, warning of war with Russia, appeared even in the run-up to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The result of the steps of today's opposition is that 20% of our country is handed over to the Russian Federation; it seems that it is [not] enough for them and they want more. This is a kind of war party, they obviously want to see war in Ukraine; I think they are not satisfied with that only and they want to see such processes in Georgia again. What they did in 2008 will not be repeated for the simple reason that they are in opposition.

Public statement, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, February 1, 2022

Sozar Subari, the head of People’s Power, a party in coalition with GD made up of former GD members, was also looked at for this study. All three of Subari’s statements reviewed include explicit arguments that a second front is being forced on Georgia by the US, Ukraine and the EU.

Throughout the review of these statements, a cohesive narrative of the Russia-Ukraine war and the surrounding politics emerges. Georgia, having been victimized by Russian occupation, expresses solidarity and sympathy with Ukraine. In return, however, Georgia has received hostility from outside actors, which now intend to utilize the UNM as a fifth column to foment a war with Russia. This, according to many statements, is the true reason behind European capitals and the UNM advocating economic sanctions and criticizing the GD approach to the war. In this frame, it is not possible that critics of GD genuinely want Georgia to take a more hawkish stance against Russia; instead, a conspiratorial outlook is developed whereby foreign capitals and Kyiv in particular are distinct threats to Georgia. The UNM is likewise delegitimized as a foreign agent and threat.

This study separated the Quiet Defenders from the Enthusiastic Activists by the degree to which they embraced similar rhetoric around a “second front.” As the name implies, the Quiet Defenders defended GD policy toward Russia, such as no economic sanctions, but did not speak about a second front as an impending threat. If alluded to at all, it is in vague terms, something not deserving of attention. At the time the study was conducted, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the oligarch widely believed to control GD, was placed in this group. This was because, though his only public statement on the Russia-Ukraine war did include a reference to a second front threat, Ivanishvili stated it was not as pressing a threat as deteriorating relations with the West.

The threat of [a second front], has already been overcome… However, today, when the immediate threat of war has been neutralized as much as possible, I believe that the management team has the opportunity to largely shift its attention to another important priority and ensure that Georgia's relations with its strategic partner, the US and the EU, are not damaged.

Public statement by Bidzina Ivanishvili, billionaire and former prime minister, July 27, 2022

Conclusions and Current Developments

Since this study was concluded in May, GD rhetoric has grown all the more intense. Ivanishvili, who had maintained a relatively low profile in recent years, has held rallies attacking opponents. In two major speeches since April, he has endorsed an evolved version of the “second front” conspiracy. Now, Ivanishvili, along with other GD figures, rail against what they term the “global war party,” which he describes as having “first forced the confrontation of Georgia with Russia and then put Ukraine in even worse peril,” adding that “NGOs and the radical opposition are acting on their behalf.” Ivanishvili associates the “global war party” with the West while attributing a rootless global nature to it – for instance, he claims that “the global war party has considerable influence on today’s American and European bureaucracy.”

For GD elites, a once poorly defined grab bag of claims has changed into a much more ambitious narrative. It is not that Russia is the main threat, as was the primary rhetorical approach for previous Georgian governments, but that Russia’s aggression in both 2008 and 2022 are simply pieces of data indicating a larger global conspiracy that is not headquartered in Moscow but is rather worldwide and vaguely associated with the US and EU.

Russia and the wars it fights continue to exist as a crucial component of the threat described by GD. But Moscow is rendered as an actor without agency, simply a cog in a broader conspiracy that is truly responsible for conflict and upheaval in the countries surrounding Russia. The origins of this framing appear throughout the period this study surveyed. Georgian Dream elites regularly referred to the UNM as a “war party” controlled from Kyiv, Brussels and/or Washington. Yet the specific argument of a broader global pro-war conspiracy explicitly appears only once, in a statement made by the GD foreign minister in June 2023.

Georgian Dream is regularly referred to by critics as a “pro-Russian” party. Though GD may be acting in accordance with Moscow’s interests, this paper has sought to understand its public rhetoric. While that rhetoric may not be hostile to Russia, it would be inappropriate to call it explicitly pro-Russian. In GD’s rhetoric, Ukraine has often been described as a victim of unjustified Russian aggression.

Still, the most conspiratorial rhetoric deployed by GD represents a transformation of Russia’s role: the primary threat to Georgia is no longer portrayed as Russia – whose role, if anything, has been minimized in the current GD discourse – but the “global war party,” backed by enemies at home and their allies in the West, while the wars Russia is involved in remain crucial examples of the threat GD claims to be defending Georgia from. The word cloud of rhetoric on the threat of a second front (bottom left) demonstrates that Russia is named or referenced less frequently than Ukraine or the “war party” and on par with the UNM (“National” and “Movement”). Thus, with rhetoric on Russia either absent or negative, pro- or anti-Russia might not be the best frame from which to understand GD rhetoric. Explicitly pro-Russian actors in Georgia do exist, but they remain marginal.

Instead, this study proposes sovereigntism as a more appropriate ideological lens. Sovereigntism as it appears in the literature is defined as a defensive ideological-rhetorical stance that stresses the exclusive power of the state within the nation-state and employs populist rhetoric identifying a foreign threat.

Populist appeals were not the focus of this research, though GD has utilized populist rhetoric both in terms of delegitimizing the UNM and in what scholars argue is a broader attack on institutional accountability. Keeping its use of populism in mind and noting that GD has framed its efforts at passing a “foreign agents” law as defending Georgia from outside interference, GD’s Enthusiastic Activists may be best described as presenting themselves as ideological sovereigntists. A sovereigntist disposition would be in keeping with their approach to the Russia-Ukraine war – one that is hostile to outside criticism and depicts Ukraine and the West as attempting to foment war and revolution in Georgia.