Caucasus

I recently discovered Rock ‘n Roll – a relatively unknown stage play from 2006 by Tom Stoppard, an intellectual playwright. Set in the period between 1968-1990, it addresses the struggle with communism waged by students in Eastern Europe.

The old fox Henry Kissinger once made an offhand remark that is worth pondering: it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal. Quite a few countries have come to appreciate the wisdom of his observation, Azerbaijan being perhaps the latest.
The long cordial relations between the United States and Azerbaijan (since the dissolution of the Soviet Union at least) have lately taken some interesting twists and turns.

I consider that Kelly Dengan, the pending US Ambassador appointment to Georgia covers lots of territory, as I wrote to the daughter of a journalist who is helping her mother writing an article on Georgian-Ukrainian relations and he asked for some insight—from the perspective of an outsider and English speaker.

Carrying on the discussion about US ambassadors and the role they play in enforcing Washington’s “rule based order”, it’s hard to omit the fact that the White House has recently announced that Donald Trump nominated Kelly C. Degnan to be US ambassador to Tbilisi, the position that has been vacant since last spring.

This is a saying that sex offenders and those closest to them, such as Prince Andrew and others, should know. The Jeffrey Epstein case is still not dead, as another similar one just broke in Tbilisi, Georgia, which is even more insidious.

For centuries, the Caucasus, which was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, has been an arena of interaction and struggle between various, often opposing, political and economic interests. Located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, the region is a convenient base for the expansion of the US and the EU in the Middle East, as well as in the basins of the Caspian, Black and Mediterranean Seas. At the same time, it is a link between these regions.

Both history and borders are not constant. They are often in flux, especially if conflicts can serve some not so hidden agendas.

They will never cease to amaze me, the new depths, even as reported by the BBC … the so-called Georgian media can reach when spurring out carefully scripted hate speech for political ends. Take the case of the Rustavi2 TV station, on a programme aired nationally in Georgia, PS, PostScript, on Sunday July 7th.