On Tuesday, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze published a lengthy open letter addressed to US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance complaining about the lack of high-level talks or communication between their administration and the Georgian Dream government.
Kobakhidze said that he had written a letter to Trump and Vance ‘a few weeks ago’, in which he had expressed his government’s interest in ‘renewing the strategic partnership between Georgia and the US from a clean slate, guided by a specific roadmap’.
He highlighted that nonetheless, his previous attempts to reach out to the Trump administration had gone unanswered, and added that there have been no subsequent high-level talks either.
Kobakhidze then went on to say the silence from Washington was ‘surprising for the Georgian people and Georgian government’, given the long history of close relations between the US and Georgia. Arguing that Tbilisi is the ‘most reliable partner’ for the US in the region, he cited the participation of the Georgian military in US-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming that their deployment ‘saved the US $2.5 billion’, a figure that he said exceeds the total amount of US funding to Georgia.
At the same time, Kobakhidze said that figure excluded money that the US had given the government of former President Mikheil Saakashvili between 2008–2011, arguing that the funds were used to ‘rescue’ Saakashvili’s government after it had started the August 2008 War with Russia on the orders of the ‘deep state’ — a nebulous term for shadowy forces the ruling party claims has been trying to pull Georgia into war and overthrow the government.
Kobakhidze also said the figure of $2.5 billion did not include funding channelled through the US Embassy, USAID, NED, or the ‘Soros Foundation’, which he said was used to ‘to to incite radicalism and hatred, organise revolutions, undermine the image of the Georgian Orthodox Church, encourage religious extremism, weaken state institutions, promote gender and LGBT propaganda, and pursue other such goals’.
In line with previous attempts to curry favour with the Trump administration, Kobakhidze cited the ‘striking alignment’ of values and ideology between the current government in Washington and Georgia, particularly in comparison with the administration of former President Joe Biden.
‘Taking all this into account — and given that your administration actively engages in dialogue and communication with numerous states, including some that are openly undemocratic and authoritarian — your silence with regard to Georgia lacks any logical explanation from our perspective’, Kobakhidze wrote.
Commenting on the recent passage of the MEGOBARI Act by the US House of Representatives, which he called ‘hostile’, as well the maintenance of sanctions against Georgian Dream officials, Kobakhidze said the Georgian ‘people find it perplexing that, while you harshly criticise President Biden’s decisions, you have yet to reverse any of his criminal actions’.
Nonetheless, Kobakhidze concluded his letter by saying that Georgian Dream ‘remains optimistic’ that Trump will ultimately defeat the deep state, a victory that he said would ‘lay the foundation for a reset in US–Georgia relations and the restoration of strategic partnership between our two countries’.
As of the time of this writing, there has been no official answer from the US to Kobakhidze’s letter.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
