Oligarchs’ War?

Two oil pipelines cross Georgia from east to west. The Baku-Supsa pipeline runs from the rich oil fields of Azerbaijan to the Black Sea (the Baku-Supsa pipeline). The BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) pipeline runs north out of Azerbaijan through Georgia, avoiding Armenia, then turning south through Turkey to the Med. The Russian Federation is served by a single pipeline out of Baku in Azerbaijan, running north-west along the Caspian, then to the west north of the Caucasus and terminating at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

Russia has fifty-four billionaires listed by Forbes magazine comprising a modern industrial oligarchy. The Ukraine has three. Georgia has none.

Georgia is a representative democracy, organized as a secular, unitary, semi-presidential republic. It is currently a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, and GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. The country seeks to join NATO and, in the longer term, accession to the European Union.

It looks like Georgia’s autonomy is about to run out. The democratic interlude is over. In Russia the commissars have been replaced by the oligarchs, but for Georgia it looks like the results will be the same: subjugation to Russian rule.