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A bureaucratic apparatus composed of charity workers? One can imagine what our statist President, who hates all these NGOs, must feel when he is obliged to deal with this kind of new Georgian officialdom. And also when this American live wire, Kunin-Bakunin, in the presence of Putin, gives advice in his Anglo-Georgian patois to the recalcitrant Saakashvili.

“What does being an American aide of the Georgian President involve?” I ask Daniel, and he replies:

“Offering new ideas 24 hours a day – morning, noon and night. To have dozens of options and proposals on every issue which interests Misha.”

My diagnosis of today’s official Tbilisi is that it has adopted the characteristics of American workaholic management, exactly as portrayed in American films: hamburgers, no deference, with everybody cheery, optimistic and life-affirming. The managers of the country are totally orientated towards the West, without any nuances. No helmsman to the north-west, none of the political unpredictability in which today’s Kremlin court is mired. Georgia under Saakashvili is manifestly anti-byzantine, anti-bureaucratic, anti-hierarchical. It is an anti-colony rejecting the presence of a governing metropolis. The Kremlin, however, is the exact opposite: neo-Soviet byzantinism, arch-hierarchy, nostalgia for an empire which flows over into practical action to subordinate and suborn former colonies, of which the latest example is the $800 million tax gift to Ukraine and Belarus for supporting a quasi-Soviet status quo. And the politics of provocation.

Mikheil Saakashvili really is charming and smiles a lot. He is direct and precise in what he says:

“We asked the Russians, ‘What have we done wrong? Why do you so dislike us?’ We promised to pay pensions and salaries to state officials in South Ossetia. What’s wrong with that? The Russians did not reply and began provocative exchanges of fire. We have American troops here, but we play it down. We say, ‘We do not want an armed conflict,’ and the Russians increase the pressure. But we will not allow the same thing to be repeated as happened here in 1992 [when a four-man Military Council which included Shevardnadze took power]. That stopped reforms. We want to make Georgia attractive. What’s wrong with that? But frankly it is very difficult to tell what Russia wants from us. All its actions in Georgia are irrational. We asked the international community to organise a conference on South Ossetia, on its status, to suggest a political solution. The UN, OSCE and the European Union supported the idea. The Russians turned it down.”

When did you last talk to Putin?

When I phone they don’t put me through. I have sent two letters to Putin. I have had no reply. (A brief, impromptu meeting took place only on September 16 in Astan, Kazakhstan at a summit meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States.)

How did you react to the statement by Putin’s Chechen favorite, Ramzan Kadyrov, that he would send thousands of his troops to South Ossetia and “solve the problem”!

“Fuck him!”

On this high point we pretty much concluded. And now about the atmosphere in the Georgian President’s office, which was not spelled out in words and sentences but which was very striking. He is completely in love with his people. He speaks of the death of Georgian soldiers as a catastrophe: “When 16 people were killed, I had to take a decision.” And he took it: to withdraw the Georgian divisions to a safe distance, so that no more Georgian soldiers would die.*

I emerged staggered by the contrast. In Russia not 16 but 16,000 soldiers can die and nothing would induce the President to save the rest by moving units back to a safe distance. It is not Russia’s size which is at fault here, not its millions of inhabitants, but its mean-spiritedness. Saakashvili’s love for his people must, one supposes, be completely baffling to Putin, who has persuaded himself that he is reviving an empire and must not hesitate to squander lives. Once the supposed road to empire has been embarked upon, colonies