Why Is Congress Set on Sanctioning Georgia?
Democracy-promotion in a Caucasian country peripheral to American interests is the antithesis of America First.
This past June, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the MEGOBARI Act. The bill would require President Trump levy sanctions on the entire government of Georgia, including every cabinet member and sitting parliamentarian. It is now pending before the Senate, and, if nothing changes, will likely pass with similarly large margins.
This would be a mistake, and, if the MEGOBARI Act does reach Trump’s desk, he should veto it. The bill flies in the face of the America First movement’s policy goals, codifies the democracy-promotion of the Bush and Biden administrations, and would position America poorly in the multipolar world.
The MEGOBARI Act was introduced earlier this year by Congressman Joe Wilson, who ostensibly represents South Carolina. “Ostensibly” because he is, for unclear reasons, obsessed with the nation of Georgia. Since March, he has discussed the country of Georgia in more posts on X than he has his own state of South Carolina and meets frequently with opposition leaders. Earlier this year, he even celebrated Georgia’s Flag Day.
Wilson believes Georgia’s government has repeatedly stolen elections, most recently in 2024. This, as his MEGOBARI Act claims, has damaged “the consolidation of democracy in Georgia,” which is “critical for…United States national interests.” Nowhere does it say why such a consolidation is important: It is simply taken at face value.
It is also wrong. Georgia Dream, a conservative party open to friendly ties with Russia, has won each of their country’s elections since 2012. They did so after 2008’s Russo–Georgian War, which saw Georgia’s pro-EU government get baited into attacking Russia, resulting in the loss of roughly 20 percent of its territory. The loss—plus the corruption of the incumbent government—was so catastrophic that, when the next elections were held, Georgia Dream was catapulted into power.
Georgia Dream had no interest in competition with Russia, especially after Russia’s 2014 intervention into neighboring Ukraine’s Crimea. They continued to pursue, if not friendly relations, then at least non-toxic relations with their significantly more powerful northern neighbor.
This, however, was problematic for the European Union and liberal internationalists in Washington, who wished to rope Georgia into the Western bloc. Western countries funneled millions into NGOs in the country, hoping to influence its politics and media; to combat this, Georgia Dream passed a law in early 2024 requiring any civil society organization that gets at least 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as a foreign agent.
But while this infuriated Brussels and Washington, what Georgia Dream did next was perhaps its most audacious move: It won Georgia’s 2024 elections. Liberal internationalists, like Wilson and then-President Joe Biden, cried foul. But no proof was ever tendered that the elections were actually stolen: Even the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (which was invited to observe the elections by Georgia Dream) could not bring themselves to say the results were actually faked.
It is not hard to imagine why Georgia Dream won. While Western media frequently shines a spotlight on protests in the capital, Tbilisi—which are full of students carrying signs written in English for Western cameras—they rarely venture into Georgia’s many rural villages, which are packed with people who have no desire to see their country crushed in a war with Russia, especially after having watched Brussels and Washington essentially use Ukraine as a tool to weaken Russia’s armed forces. Georgia Dream also campaigned on pushing back against Brussels’ LGBT obsession, passing bills restricting the ability of children to receive sex-change surgeries. Unsurprisingly, the relatively conservative population supported these measures, and in turn supported Georgia Dream.
This history is ignored by Wilson and the MEGOBARI Act. In support of his bill, last month Wilson lambasted Georgia Dream as anti-American, but failed to provide any evidence for these claims. He also explicitly linked the bill to “the global war on terrorism.”
Support for the Global War on Terrorism and making “democracy consolidation” central to American foreign policy is not America First. There is already a name for it: the Bush Doctrine. It is everything that Trump and the wider America First movement stands against. After the Cold War, the United States embarked on a massive effort to promote democracy, buying into absurd notions like the Wilsonian democratic peace theory. Thousands of American soldiers and millions of civilians died, few democracies were created, and America’s image was the worse off for it.
Trump expressly campaigned against these ideas. It would be political madness and philosophical incoherence for Republicans to support the ideas underpinning this bill.
The MEGOBARI Act also puts America at a disadvantage in the multipolar world. While the Bush Doctrine was an arrogant attempt to tell others how to conduct their own affairs, it was at least conceptually understandable in a unipolar world in which America was supreme. But in multipolarity, which requires that the United States be able to talk to anyone, it is nonsensical. Any country which does something America does not like—such as having the tenacity to not want to be invaded by Russia—will instantly be put on notice that relations with the United States are contingent upon conducting their internal affairs as Washington wants. Multipolarity requires flexibility; the United States should not, once again, lock itself into a box where the only acceptable countries are progressive democracies.
The other two poles, Russia and China, do not do this sort of lecturing. And it has paid off for them in spades. Russia has displaced France in Africa, where the latter has decamped its last central African military base, ending centuries of colonial presence. And China will clearly do business with anyone, the result of which has been the globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative, which the United States is only now investigating ways to counter. Those efforts will be immensely hampered if the threat of democracy promotion is hanging behind every diplomatic overture.
It is also unclear why a government somewhat amenable to Russia in Tbilisi is even an inherently bad thing for America’s national interests: Georgia is a tiny country which sits far outside America’s sphere, has no crucial resources, and is clearly more valuable to Russia than it is to the United States. One can wish for the people of Georgia to be as free as possible while also understanding that it is not America’s job to guarantee that. Being able to talk to Russia also does not make one anti-American; and, while the Georgian government has expressed frustration with American funding of NGOs in the past, that does not mean that they dislike America or Trump.
Nor is it clear why the United States should care exactly how free Georgia’s elections are (though it bears repeating that there is still no evidence the elections were stolen). The Trump administration is in the midst of trying to finish the long-sought pivot to Asia; is it really in America’s interests to instead re-focus on elections in the Caucasus? It would also be an irony if the United States were to lambast Georgia for its elections while the West allies itself with Azerbaijan, another Caucasian country that, unlike Georgia, is actually a dictatorship.
Even if a liberal democratic Georgia were in America’s interest, there is no reason to assume that this bill will make the country “freer.” Pushing for sanctions on government officials there will only result in Georgia turning more toward Russia and China, not further away from them.
Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, wrote Trump and Vice President JD Vance an open letter in May of this year asking for a reset in American-Georgian relations and asking why Biden’s sanctions were still in force. While the letter was perhaps too impatient—the Trump administration had only been in office for five months—the United States should heed his call for a reset.
“Megobari” means “friend” in Georgian. If Republicans in the Senate, or the Trump administration, actually want to be friends with Georgia, they should oppose the MEGOBARI Act.
The post Why Is Congress Set on Sanctioning Georgia? appeared first on The American Conservative.
(@ThePatriotOasis) 
