Generated by AI
Penulis
In the winter of 2024, the people of Georgia poured onto the avenues of Tbilisi, wrapped in the blue flag of a Europe they had been promised and were now being denied. Their government, an oligarch’s party drifting back toward Moscow, had pushed through a Russian-style law to muzzle civil society, claimed victory in an election the opposition called stolen and then suspended the country’s long-sought path into the European Union.
Night after night the police answered the crowds with water cannon and truncheons. Georgia’s hope of joining the democratic West was never the real prize in the tug-of-war between Russia and the West for its allegiance; it was simply what got crushed as each side pulled. It was collateral damage.
Georgia is no aberration. It is the pattern of our age. The contest now consuming the world, among the United States, China and Russia, is not, whatever we tell ourselves, a battle of democracy against autocracy with democracy ahead. It is a scramble for alignment, a race to win partners and deny them to rivals, in which democracy is no one’s aim.
