Meanwhile, the EU is also using soft power to try to persuade Georgia to maintain its pro-European course.
Just so there’s no confusion about what hard and soft power are, let’s define them. Hard power is a country’s use of threats or force to bend another country to its will. Soft power is the use of positive inducements — economic help, propaganda pitches, educational and cultural programs, and the like — to do the same.
The year 2016 may help determine whether Russia’s or the European Union’s soft-power efforts prevail in Georgia.
In late December 2015, the EU Commission approved visa-free travel in Europe for Georgian citizens.
The European Parliament and individual EU countries must sign off on the change before it takes effect, and that is likely to require six months.
But Georgians, smelling the roses, are delighted.
Alarmed that the EU might win a major soft-power victory in Georgia, Russia announced that it, too, was willing to give Georgians visa-free travel.
Georgians have wanted visa-free access to Europe for years, believing it could help them make business contacts on the continent that could lead to trade and investment.
Georgia and the EU signed a trade association agreement in 2014 that lifted tariffs on almost all products Georgia exports to Europe.
A visa-free regime will help it realize the potential of the trade agreement, a lot of Georgians believe.
Even before the association agreement took effect, Russia tried to counter it by lifting bans on Georgian wine and agricultural products that Moscow had imposed on Georgia as their relations soured.
A number of journalists and commentators have noted a jump in Russia’s soft-power efforts in Georgia in recent years.
In addition to helping the Georgian economy by lifting the ban on Georgian products, the Kremlin has:
— founded pro-Russian non-governmental organizations in Georgia.
— opened pro-Russian “news” branches in Georgia, including Georgian-language Internet operations of the new Sputnik global broadcasting agency.
— opened Russian-language centers in the country.
— tried to position Russia as the defender of traditional values in Georgia and the rest of the former Soviet Union against pro-gay and other supposedly decadent Western values.
— persuaded Russian and Georgian Orthodox Church leaders to decry the West’s materialism and other values that a conservative society such as Georgia would question.
These soft-power ploys have failed to sway most Georgians toward Russia.
Polls indicate that the vast majority continue to believe, as they have since independence in 1991, that the EU and NATO are their best hope for the future.
A few Western journalists have posited in recent months that many Georgians have become disillusioned with the West, and that the result is that the country is drifting back toward Russia.
I agree with their contention that some Georgians have become irritated with the EU’s stalling on Georgian EU and NATO membership.
But 300 years of Russian domination of Georgia, deep resentment over Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008, the knowledge that Russian troops occupy 20 percent of Georgia’s territory — the separatist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia — and Georgians’ long-held view that they are European will make it hard to change the view that Georgia ought to be part of the EU, not Greater Russia.
The EU’s more than two-decade-old soft-power efforts in Georgia have focused on persuading Georgians that their future lies in embracing democracy and European values.
Those efforts have included the standard Western soft-power fare of foreign aid, democracy-building and anti-corruption support, and educational and cultural ties.
European stalling on Georgian membership in the EU and NATO since the Russian-Georgian war had at one point prompted some Georgians to wonder if the EU was all talk and no action.
That’s why the visa-free travel that the EU will be giving Georgia this year is a crucial soft-power initiative.
Psychologically, it is a clear signal that the EU wants Georgia in Club Europe.
If the visa-free regime increases Europe-Georgia trade and investment, Georgians will see a concrete as well as psychological reward — and become even more positive about partnering with the continent.
I view Russia’s soft-power efforts to prevent Georgia from joining the EU and NATO as too little, too late.
Moscow’s main approach to achieving that goal in the past two decades has been threats and military action.
Russia poisoned the well with that tack, and its soft-power drive of recent years will do little to change the deep-seated distrust that most Georgians harbor toward it.
Armine Sahakyan is a human rights activist based in Armenia. Follow her on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/ArmineSahakyann
