Will we betray Georgia as we betrayed Hungary?

Susan Richards says that the Russian ban on Georgian wine is a whisper of the tensions that could turn into a roar — a Great Game for the 21st century The drink of choice for Russia’s thriving new middle class is Georgian wine. They love to celebrate with a buxom Kindzmarauli or a dry Saperavi. The trouble is, there is just not enough of it. The shortage has been met in the old Soviet way — by counterfeiters: up to 80 per cent of Georgian wine sold in Russia is apparently fake. This is ostensibly why Russia’s chief public health official banned imports a month ago.

The scale of the counterfeiting scams in former Soviet territory is certainly vast, as is Russia’s alcohol problem. It is a major factor in Russia’s catastrophic demographic decline. Last year more than 40,000 Russians died of alcohol poisoning alone. But the ban will not address the problem. For while Georgia has been clamping down on the fakers, Russia has not. Last year, Georgia’s Mukuzani region produced grapes enough for 1.4 million bottles a year; ten million bearing that label were on sale in Russia. Most of these were produced north of the border, concocted out of vodka or moonshine. Those are the killers.

But Russia’s ban on Georgian wine is actually just another move in the drama which Dick Cheney stoked a month ago in Vilnius when he accused Moscow of backsliding on democracy. As someone whose family fought on the northwest frontier in the 19th-century Great Game between the British and Russian empires, I hate to watch how crudely the Western powers are playing this new round.

After 9/11 Putin horrified much of his own elite by coming out in support of America in its war against terror. It took courage on his part to face down the mentality of Russia’s old cold warriors. Yet the new Republican administration did not reward his loyalty. Assistance to Russia was cut back, and the US freed up its own security options by withdrawing from the 30-year-old Anti-BallisticMissile Treaty with Russia.

Bush argued that the ABM Treaty was no longer relevant: it belonged to the Cold War. Had the West gone on to dismantle other aspects of the Cold War framework, this would have been convincing. But the Senate confirmed the Jackson–Vanik amendment — which had tied US–Russian trade relations to levels of Jewish emigration — when it came up for review.

Then there was Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation. The US overrode objections to China’s candidature which were every bit as problematic as Russia’s candidature. China joined in November 2001. Russia is still waiting.

Towering over all this was the issue of Nato. Had the Western powers chosen to dismantle it, this would have signalled that we were no longer stuck in the mindset of the Cold War. Instead, in November 2003 the US first scripted Georgia’s Rose Revolution, then went on to do the same for Ukraine’s Orange Revolution the following year. Almost unreported, a US naval ship docked in Crimea as part of a Ukraine–Nato military exercise the other day, amid continuing discussions about the country’s admission to Nato in 2008. The Crimea is, if you remember, still home to Russia’s navy. Is this gunboat diplomacy or am I a turnip?

Now look at a map. How happy would you be with these moves if you were Russia? It regards Belarus and Ukraine not just as the near-abroad, like the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), but as provinces of the same Eastern Slav territory. This is not presumption on Russia’s part. It has roots in history as well as ethnicity.

Russia being in no position to respond militarily, it has responded shrewdly to the West’s moves. Staged agreements to dismantle its four military bases in Georgian territory have been met: two have been closed already, and things appear to be on track for withdrawal from the last two over the next couple of years. More significantly, Russia appears to be preparing to decamp from the naval base in Crimea in 2017, when its agreement with Ukraine lapses. For an ex-superpower like Russia, this is all profoundly humiliating.

Like the chess-playing country that she is, Russia has instead been playing to the strengths of her position. In Abkhazia, South Ossetia and southern Ukraine, whose minorities strongly object to being subsumed into nations where they feel unsafe, Russia has been consolidating her hold.

Meanwhile, she has started reminding her neighbours how conditional their ‘independence’ really is. In Georgia the year began with mysterious explosions on the main gas pipeline from Russia, which left the country without heat at the height of a fierce winter. Even before that Russia banned the import of fresh fruit and vegetables from Georgia. Following the embargo on wine imports, Russia has now banned another of Georgia’s big exports — mineral water from Borjomi and Nabeglavi.

This leaves Georgia in crisis. Most of its old industry has ground to a halt as a result of contested privatisation deals. Wine was Georgia’s second largest export, and 70 per cent of that was going to Russia. On top of all this the conflicts with Abkhazia and South Ossetia have left a quarter of a million Georgians internally displaced. If the country staggers on, it is thanks to a combination of US help and remittances from abroad, where a quarter of the population are working. There are now rumours that Russia may send home the two million Georgians working in Moscow. If that happened it would bring economic collapse.

Georgia’s President Saakashvili has tied his colours firmly to the US mast since the Rose Revolution. And the West has gained much from this close relationship. Last year, the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline through Georgian territory connected Europe to the Caspian, the world’s largest untapped fossil-fuel reserves. Later this year, a second pipeline will start sending gas from the Azeri offshore field of Shah Deniz via Georgia to the Turkish city of Erzurum.

But once again it is less clear what Georgia has gained from Saakashvili’s passionate support for the West. The country has been offered no prospect of becoming a candidate for EU membership. Although it has been encouraged to hope that it may be invited to join Nato in due course, there is no definite commitment. What is clear is that if Russia increases its embargo against Georgia, the West is not going to do much to help its ally.

No wonder Georgia’s middle classes are becoming increasingly worried. They know their history. Christianised 17 centuries ago, their tiny nation has managed to hold on to its identity over centuries of conquest thanks to a very different philosophy. As the oak said to the reed in Aesop’s fable, ‘When the storm comes, it is better to bend than to break.’ If once again we inspire people to stand up to the Russians, then abandon them as we did in Hungary in 1956, who then will trust us?

Susan Richards is on the board of openDemocracy and is working on The Dreams and Griefs of a Town Called Marx, a story of Russia after communism.