America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

What I remember best about meeting Zviad Gamsakhurdia a year ago is the dogs. As the Georgian nationalist's wife served tea to several visitors, she apologized for the growls coming from the walled grounds of the villa. "They're here to protect us," she said, "but sometimes I wonder."

There was an awkward delay in our departure. It took nearly 20 minutes for four burly bodyguards, using the butts of their automatic rifles, to force the huge Dobermans to a corner of the garden so that we could safely reach our car.

I recalled the scene last week, when Gamsakhurdia became the first popularly elected president of a Soviet republic. Georgia has much to fear from diehard imperialists in Moscow, but there is another, internal menace -- a growling presence in the garden. The republic is cursed by its own demography. In that sense, it is a microcosm of the U.S.S.R. More than 80 nationalities share a territory half the size of Arkansas. The new, breakaway leadership tends to behave toward its minorities the way the Kremlin -- starting with the Bolsheviks' first commissar of nationalities, the Georgian Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, alias Stalin -- has treated the more than 100 peoples within the U.S.S.R. No wonder many of Georgia's Abkhasians, Adzhars, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Ossetians and Russians do not regard Gamsakhurdia as their president.

He has given them little reassurance. At best, he is a romantic patriot in the 19th century tradition. "We'll achieve freedom by fighting," he said when I visited him last year. "I expect death for myself and civil war for my country."

At worst, he may turn out to be a dictator. He denounced as "traitors" his own countrymen who dared to disagree with him on virtually any subject. "We cannot tolerate collaborationists." The more he talked, the more inclusive that category became. Those non-Georgians who questioned how they would fare if ruled from Tbilisi rather than Moscow were "nothing but tools of the ((Soviet)) state and will be dealt with as such."

The U.S. accepts the borders of the U.S.S.R. that existed when the Roosevelt Administration recognized the Soviet government in 1933, 12 years after the de facto annexation of Georgia. The forcible incorporation of the Baltic republics came seven years later. Therefore the Bush Administration supports the Balts' claim to independence but considers the Georgian issue a domestic affair of the U.S.S.R.

It's the right policy for the wrong reason.

The Baltic leaders have made progress in reassuring their own minorities, especially ethnic Russians, that they are entitled to full rights of citizenship. A revealing moment came during the central authorities' brutal but abortive crackdown in January. Not only did Kremlin agents fail to goad the Balts into armed resistance, which would have provided a pretext for more bloodshed, but local ethnic Russians also refused to form a pro-Moscow fifth column. Instead many sided with the secessionists.

In the months ahead, the Kremlin is more likely to succeed with provocations and splitting tactics in Georgia. Gamsakhurdia has wasted no time in curbing the press and making it a criminal offense to insult him or his office. If he continues to personify the violent, authoritarian and repressive streak in Georgian nationalism, he may get the civil war he predicted -- inside Georgia itself.

Promoting the Wilsonian ideal of self-determination should be a goal of U.S. foreign policy, but not when one nationality uses the fulfillment of its own aspirations as an excuse for the suppression of others.