After Georgia refused to grant Russian military officers visas to collect their personal items from their former bases, Russia announced a temporarily cancellation of visas to all Georgians. What does this mean? Nothing for Russia, since Georgia doesn’t have much to offer, outside of average sweet red wine and basic fruits; but for Georgia, this means more meager government salaries being paid from US foreign aid (officially), $5 (average) monthly pensions, no legitimate job opportunities and lots of pride, which can quickly get overwhelmed by hunger.
I supported the movements towards democracy in Ukraine and Georgia, but once these countries decided that they wanted to model their nations according to free markets, they shouldn’t contradict themselves by exploiting nationalism to limit economic relations with their nearest neighbor - which happens to be the biggest, most natural-resource rich country in the world.
Ukraine thus far has been much smarter and more diplomatic in this matter; the Ukrainians took it slow, and the first destination for their new president was Moscow. The Georgians have tried to undermine Russia many times by now, and by doing that they didn’t gain any support or respect from the West, because Westerners are interested in strategic investment opportunities and not in cheap publicity stunts; and now Russia doesn’t care about maintaining relations with obnoxious neighbors who have little to offer.
It’s almost a paradox, that by trying to use nationalism to create democracy, civil society and free trade, Georgians have undermined the free trade upon which the Western market ideology depends.
