Georgian nationalism gone amuck

Letter to Armenian friend --

Can [the Georgian friend] not admit that his government has bought some shady stuff from the Israelis that the US won't even sell them? The relationship between Georgia and Israel is even getting picked up by the anti-zionist movement. And, I'm sure Lavrov made sure to tell Olmert on his Moscow visit two weeks ago that the Russians will stop selling weapons to Syria and Iran if the Israelis stop selling weapons to the Georgians.

If [the Georgian friend] is one of the more reasonable "Georgian nationalists", I'd hate to try to reason with someone in the Georgian government right now. They're still trying to negotiate back Kodori Gorge and Gali, but the government needs to move on for the timebeing, stop investing in defense, and focus on rebuilding their tourist industry so that they can piggyback off the Russian winter games in Sochi in 2014. For starters, the Georgians need to improve their rail system between Batumi and Tbilisi. Even the Uzbeks have more reliable and modern rail travel than the Georgians. For the amount the MCC and whoever else has wasted on that national highway to make it easier for Turkish truckers to move goods to Azerbaijan and Iran, the Georgians could have had a gold-plated rail system that would easily tie into the Istanbul-Shanghai master rail plan. Or, even better, they could have helped finance a tourist/freight port and ferry that would connect Batumi with Istanbul and the Crimea. The price of a plane ticket to Tbilisi from London or New York is almost double what it is from London or New York to Istanbul. The country could easily double the number of tourists by picking up a fraction of the Europeans and Middle Easterners that pass through Istanbul every year just by creating a little price war with Airzena and Turkish air.

Because Georgian political leadership doesn't see the logic or is incapable of motivating people to follow through in these simple steps to rebuilding the country's economy to where it was during Soviet times, I ultimately have little faith that the economic condition of the country willl improve in the short run, even with all the additional western aid being thrown at it. The war alone has done more damage to Georgia's reputation of being a "safe" Caucasian country, and I'd imagine very few Americans or Europeans will continue to go out of their way to visit the country, or at least not until the Russian winter games revives western interest in the region. I want to say to [the Georgian friend]: It's tourism, stupid. That's how you guys made money in communist times, and that's how you guys still make money. You're the equivalent of Florida to the former Soviet Union, so stop scaring away 99 percent of your tourist base.