The Failure of Coloured Revolutions

A while ago poemless linked to a Foreign Policy article by Lilia Shevtsova of the Moscow Carnegie Center. In that article Lilia discloses how she was told off by a Western attendee of a conference in Berlin. To her questioning of democratic standards in West-Russia relations, he replied:

'You irritate us, International relations are not about values; they are about power!'

Sadly she did not disclose the identity of the man behind this groundbreaking quote. I was thinking a bit about it in context of the coloured revolutions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. If these were about projecting Western power into the affected countries then I would not be starting this post as the failure is in this case is debatable. Saakashvili is still in power and is still being propped up by some Western powers. Bakiev in Kyrgyzstan might be playing games typical for Central Asian magnate with the American base in Manas. The fact that Americans are not used to this type of treatment doesn't mean that the Russians have any hand in it and it totally doesn't mean that Bakiev is rushing towards Russian orbit. 

But the coloured revolutions were not sold to us, and even to the people taking direct part in them, as a power projection, as replacement of one set of crooks with another set of crooks more favourable to Western interests. They were marketed to us as 'exporting of liberal-democratic revolution' and proof of superiority of the Western model. As inevitable, apocalyptic events which will usher in the neo-liberal 'End of History.' They were about values as far as the masses are concerned. War and meddling in other countries affairs cannot be argued otherwise than through the lens of the secular religion of human rights and democracy. So I decided to look at whether the countries affected by coloured revolutions live up to the ideal. I decided to briefly look at the cases of Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Ukraine.

Kyrgyzstan: Bakiev proved out to be a worse cutthroat than Akayev, the cutthroat before him. And does the US care about it? Of course it doesn't, that would not be geopolitically expedient. I don't think there is anything more to add to it, watch this AlJazeera documentary if you have some time to spare.

Georgia: Due to the Manichean reporting in the Western press of the events of August 2008, in which the democratic Georgians defended themselves against authoritarian Russians, the Georgian regime was able to cultivate the myth of being a beleaguered democracy. But if one scratches the surface of this myth a little he will no doubt arrive at the enlightening discovery that Saakashvili's Georgia is no better to Putin's Russia, which it likes to compare itself against, perhaps worse (1). Even the Voice of America suggests so, there are of course many other sources claiming the same but since VoA is tasked with promoting American values I deem it more authoritative than all the others.

Ukraine: In terms of democracy Ukraine is a success, there are of course points that we could argue with but it is the best of them all. What however is striking is that the villain the Orange revolution was supposed to get rid of was elected president while the so called hero failed epically. This suggests a complete rejection of the ideals of Orange revolutions by close to a half of Ukrainians. Even Timoshenko who was probably the closest remaining symbol of the Orange revolution saved her face by rejecting the hero. Yanukovych seems so far to follow a much more Russia friendly policy than Yushchenko, which will probably result in putting any dreams of NATO membership to a freeze. This was certainly not on the script! The Orange revolution failed in terms of long-term power projection because it failed moraly. Interestingly, as long as the Western man was in power, the West cared little about his radical nationalist views.

...

Now, given that the Russian liberals have no other goal than getting rid of Putin in a coloured revolution fashion it got me thinking. If in case their dreams will come true, will they fail to deliver like the countries above? We all know that they get inspiration and probably other support from certain think tanks over in Washington and want Russia to become part of the West (literally); do they realise than when faced with reality and policy they will have to confront Russian reality and not their Western fantasies?     

1) Frankly I am not a fan of this comparative discussion.

I am going to make two follow-ups to this post! ;-)