By ANDREW KORYBKO*
Why the West promotes hostilities to foment a new hybrid war in the Caucasus
The Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia demanded an explanation to the US after security services revealed a USAID-funded regime change plan in the capital Tbilisi. Three Serbs from CANVAS (Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies), the organization responsible for organizing their country's “Bulldozer Revolution” in 2000, were detained a week ago on suspicion of teaching local so-called “activists” how to take down the government. After being interrogated, they left abroad, but the scandal suggests a renewed effort to destabilize the country.
Before this latest incident, Georgia accused Ukraine to be planning riots against their authorities, which Kiev obviously denied. However, by coincidence, Ukrainian deputy Aleksey Goncharenko wrote on Telegram, over the weekend, that “We stand ready to be allies of the US in all military operations, more strongly than Britain.” This statement arose following News that Ukraine had carried out drone attacks against Sudanese rebels allegedly backed by Russia, presumably at the behest of the USA, if true.
In this context, the security services' claims of Ukrainian complicity in their country's latest regime change intrigue are credible, despite Kiev not being directly implicated in last week's scandal. Therefore, the question naturally arises as to why Georgia is being targeted, given that it is a pro-Western country that officially wants to join the European Union and NATO. What is happening now is, in fact, the second phase of the same process that was set in motion half a year ago.
In March, the United States attempted to overthrow that country's government, claiming that the foreign agent legislation it proposed, modeled after that of the United States, was supposedly indicative of a secret desire to get closer to Russia. This assumption was not true, but it served to provoke a Color Revolution which ended up failing, and which aimed to open a second proxy war front in the New Cold War.
The analyzes that follow detail the strategic machinations at play and expose the false pretext behind this conspiracy: (i) “Georgia is targeted for regime change over its refusal to open a 'second front' against Russia”; (ii) “Georgia's withdrawal of its US-inspired foreign agents bill will not put an end to Western pressure”; (iii) “Russia drew US attention to double standards regarding Georgia-Moldova and Bosnia-Serbia”; (iv) “Exposing US double standards to other similar or identical foreign agent laws".
Georgia's conservative-nationalist government has a surprisingly pragmatic policy towards Russia, despite still officially wanting to join the EU and NATO, to such an extent that it has refused to impose sanctions against it or making threats because of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. For this reason, the West has begun preparing its liberal-globalist proxies to revolt as punishment, with the aim of pressuring them to reverse their position or replacing them with more compliant puppets if they continue to refuse to do so. it.
This campaign was forced into action prematurely in response to the government's impending legislation that would have allowed them to better manage these growing liberal-globalist threats and thus eventually neutralize them in time. The West felt that its window of opportunity to open a second front against Russia through Georgia was rapidly closing, which is why it gave the order to begin hybrid warfare hostilities in March.
This crisis ended almost as quickly as it began, after the government promptly withdrew the bill and therefore removed the basis on which the liberal-globalist groups demanded his resignation. The end result was the establishment of a sort of ceasefire, in which everyone informally agreed to freeze the situation for the time being, out of mutual convenience. The reason everything has thawed in the last month has to do with a combination of internal and regional developments.
On the domestic front, the conservative-nationalist government initiated a process of impeachment by the country's liberal-globalist president, which the Western-backed opposition saw as a power move that violated the spring's informal ceasefire. Simultaneously, the liberal-globalist government of neighboring Armenia began to move decisively away from Russia towards the West, which represented a regional power play that inadvertently ended the Karabakh conflict, as explained below: (i) “Armenia's latest three anti-Russian provocations risk triggering a new conflict in Karabakh”; (ii) “From Korybko to the Dutch media: the end of the Karabakh conflict will revolutionize the region”; (iii) The artificially manufactured 'ethnic cleansing' of Karabakh is a diaspora political ploy”; (iv) “The Kremlin reacted against false claims about the situation in Karabakh".
After the failure of the West to open a second front against Russia in the South Caucasus through Georgia, this bloc turned to its “Plan B” of trying to do so through Armenia, provoking another conflict in Karabakh that could have dragged the Kremlin into a regional conflagration if he had not been careful. After this plan also failed, the West immediately began terrorizing about “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide,” which served to frighten some 100.000 Karabakh Armenians into voluntarily moving to Armenia.
The objective behind provoking this large-scale population flow was to utilize these so-called “Weapons of Mass Migration” to pressure the Armenian government to complete its pro-Western anti-Russia orientation, after appearing to be in doubt, or to replace it with a Color Revolution if it refuses. This plan is still ongoing, but if it is successfully implemented and is not offset by a truly patriotic and multipolar revolution, Armenia will likely withdraw from the Russian-led CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization].
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already come to terms with this scenario, after recently describing it as a “sovereign choice” of the country, but the regional consequences will remain manageable as long as NATO does not have reliable access to Armenia. This is where Georgia's renewed strategic importance lies, since its pragmatic conservative-nationalist government is not likely to facilitate the bloc's power game, which is why it is the target of a new attempt to remove it and precisely at this moment.
In short, Armenia's imminent withdrawal from the CSTO will only be substantial if NATO guarantees reliable access to it through Georgia, but the latter's acting authorities are not expected to agree to this. This is why a new round of instability is being prepared through a Color Revolution, under the pretext of “protesting” against the process of impeachment of the liberal-globalist president. If the West wins, a second front could open against Russia in the South Caucasus, which is why it is imperative that this latest power play fails.
*Andrew Korybko holds a master's degree in International Relations from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Book author Hybrid Wars: From Color Revolutions to Coups (popular expression). [https://amzn.to/46lAD1d]
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
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