It is of course a great
honour and a profound responsibility to address the
sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly on behalf
of my people.
The United Nations is the international
community’s great legacy of the past century, an
institution resulting both from history’s most
outrageous crimes and from humankind’s capacity to
confront, reckon with and overcome the consequences
of such crimes. Such human contradictions — “the
highest heaven and the deepest abyss”, to quote
Friedrich Schelling — are symbolized by the two
remarkable anniversaries we commemorate this year. I
am surprised that no one in the Hall has mentioned that
this year marks the twentieth anniversary of the
collapse of the Soviet Union, which freed captive
nations and emancipated oppressed peoples, unleashed
the dreams of millions, put an end to decades of cold
war and an apocalyptic nuclear race and heralded a
new era of international relations. It was clearly not, as
one nostalgic leader put it, the biggest geopolitical
catastrophe of the twentieth century. Nor was it, as
some analysts and diplomats dreamed, the end of
history.
Ten years later, in this very city, another major
event took place, this time a real catastrophe. It
reminded us in the most horrific way that history was
not over and that it remained tragic. On that terrible
day, even those who had failed to pay heed to a decade
of grim wars in the Balkans and the Caucasus, in
Africa and in Afghanistan, had to abandon their
illusions that a new world order free of conflicts had
emerged for good.
The attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.,
were not aimed at a single country, but instead targeted
a set of values and a way of life — freedom and
democracy. That day, 11 September 2001, reminded us
that the world remained a true battlefield — a
battlefield not among religions, as many people claim,
or of nations, but a battlefield within every religion,
every nation and every culture; a battlefield between
those who try to build and those who seek to destroy,
between those who choose freedom and those who
pledge to eradicate it; a battlefield between nihilism
and the very idea of civilization.
Ten years later, the remarkable upheavals in the
Arab world have offered us yet more proof that there is
no end to history, nor is there a clash of civilizations.
Instead, a universal call to freedom is rising even in
places where some doubted it could ever rise. It is
being met by a monstrous effort to quell it. As we
speak, the highest heaven and the deepest abyss are
once again in conflict. It is our duty as leaders to weigh
in and speak out, to decide and to act.
The first anniversary I evoked earlier — the fall
of Soviet tyranny — continues to reverberate today in
important ways. When the moment came 20 years ago
for us, the former subjects of the Soviet bureaucracy —
students, artists, dissidents, workers, men and women,
old and young — it was hardly the end of history; on
the contrary, it was a new beginning of history.
Communism had frozen our will in a cold and closed
museum. When it collapsed, the doors of history swung
open again. We found ourselves confronted at once by
both the best and the worst. The best transpired for
those nations quickly integrated into the European
Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The
others — like the people of my country, Georgia —
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were left to the mercy of failed States, civil unrest,
wars, ethnic cleansing and foreign occupation.
Two years ago, from this very podium, I
suggested that there were two ways to leave
communism behind and to re-enter history — the way
of Vaclav Havel and the way of Slobodan Miloševic,
the way of liberal democracy and tolerance, on one
side, and the way of authoritarianism and ethnic
nationalism, on the other. There are, in other words,
men who embrace freedom and men who erect mental
and physical walls against it.
To the latter, who still see the extension of the
European Union and NATO as a threat, I would like to
say that the Cold War ended in December 1991 and
that they should not be afraid of having democratic
neighbours who wish to join wider democratic clubs.
There is no hidden agenda or secret plot in any of those
capitals to undermine the sovereignty of big nations.
The Cold War ended 20 years ago and, slowly — too
slowly — new rules are emerging. And even those
rules are still too rarely applied.
Little by little, tyrants are beginning to fear that
they could one day be held accountable for their
crimes. I am convinced that there will be less and less
tolerance for the ethnic cleansing and other war crimes
that have stained my country and so many others. That
is the very reason for the existence as the United
Nations, is it not? The United Nations exists to make
the world a little better, to finally enforce the rules,
charters, laws and principles upon which we have all
come to agree.
It is time to understand that the world has
changed and that an army, as powerful as it might
seem, cannot ultimately deny the will of the people;
that a Government, as strong as it might look, cannot
unilaterally and freely dismember sovereign nations;
and that we are not in 1938 or in 1968, but in 2011.
As I speak, the Russian Federation militarily
occupies 20 per cent of sovereign Georgian territory, in
violation of international law and the 12 August 2008
ceasefire agreement. As I speak, almost 500,000
internally displaced persons and refugees in a country
of less than 5 million people continue to suffer because
they are denied their right, a right reaffirmed over a
dozen times by this very body, to return to their homes
and villages. They cannot go back because, in Moscow,
a foreign leader has decided that their home is no
longer their home.
To such cynicism and brutality we respond with
calls for justice and commitments to peace. Last year,
on 23 November, I addressed the European Parliament
and solemnly pledged that Georgia would never use
force to liberate those of its regions currently occupied
by the Russian Federation. Even though the United
Nations Charter gives us the authority to do so, as we
well know, we definitively renounced military means
to restore our territorial integrity. The commitment I
made before the European Parliament is legally
binding; I have sent relevant letters to the Secretary-
General of the United Nations and to other
international organizations.
It will soon be one year since Georgia renounced
the use of force. One year has passed, and we are still
waiting for Russia’s leadership to reciprocate this
gesture of peace. Unfortunately, instead of dialogue,
the response we have received has come in the form of
a dozen terrorist acts targeting Georgia, attacks directly
organized and supervised by confirmed officers of the
Russian secret services, which has been authenticated
by different international actors.
The Cold War is over, but some leaders have yet
to realize that fact and stop reasoning in terms of
spheres of influence, near-abroad domination and zero-
sum games. The Cold War is over, but embargoes,
blackmail and brutal diktats are still used against
Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. The Cold War is over,
but even the Baltic States have to deal with
manipulation of their democratic political landscape
and neo-colonial games with their minorities. The Cold
War is over, but the old Soviet habit of playing on
ethnic and religious hatreds is still alive. That is
especially true in the black hole that the North
Caucasus has become, with brutal violence,
displacement and the killing of hundreds of thousands
of inhabitants.
Georgia is responding to these brutal and
dangerous policies by opening its borders, inviting
people to come to engage in exchange, debate and
dialogue, by trying to overcome the information
blockades, by trying to rebuild bridges between
nations — those essential bridges that others are
systematically trying to destroy. Georgia is responding
to military build-up with programmes to lift children
out of poverty through access to modern technologies —
computers, the Internet — and with new hotels and
new boulevards and cycling paths. Georgia is
responding to methods of the past by embracing the
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promises of the future, and many others as well — new
health-care systems, hundreds of new hospitals,
advanced programmes to deal with communicable and
non-communicable diseases, and insurance for all.
The end of the Cold War launched an era of
opportunity and turbulence, liberating local dynamics
in ways both tragic and exultant, and leading to a
constant flux in the world order. It has unleashed
hatred, ethnic conflict, mass terror, genocide and many
other human calamities. But it has also generated
fantastic emancipations.
Think of the “coloured” revolutions in Eastern
Europe, the dazzling development of Asia, the progress
of democracy in Africa or, more recently, the Arab
Spring; none would have been possible if the Soviet
Union still existed as a global player and a global
threat to all the continents, including Africa, Asia and
Europe alike. Since 1991, history has become more and
more unpredictable, swinging violently between the
highest heaven and the deepest abyss that Schelling
referred to. Indeed, who could have anticipated the
global consequences of a desperate act by a 26-year-
old Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, in the remote town
of Sidi Bouzid?
One poor man, in an unknown place, was denied
his rights by an imperious police and, like a distant
echo of the Czech Jan Palach in front of the Russian
tanks in 1968, he immolated himself. This breathtaking
act of despair has literally turned the world upside
down.
Some dictators are jailed or on the run; regimes
considered untouchable have collapsed; new
constitutions and orders are being born. An entire
region and culture derogatorily labelled as unfit for
democracy by some people in more developed
countries has given the whole world, including the
developed world, a lesson in freedom.
Such historical eruptions always come as a
surprise. They require from us all the radical
astonishment that Aristotle considered as the very
beginning of philosophy, the first step towards true
wisdom and a radical emancipation from our prejudices
and dogmas.
Very few predicted the revolutions that swept
across Eastern and Central Europe in 1989, or the
“coloured” revolutions that followed 15 years later.
Even fewer predicted Tunis, Cairo, Benghazi and
Tripoli. The popular call for freedom that has shaken
the world in 2011 is the best and most definitive
answer to the hatred that motivated the attacks against
this very city 10 years ago.
When aspiring populations are free to live their
lives, practice their trades, raise their children, voice
their ideas and press their grievances, the space for
terrorists to recruit or demagogues to sow ethnic hatred
starts to evaporate.
International police, military and intelligence
cooperation in the war against Al-Qaida over the past
decade have been, and still are, essential in protecting
our freedoms. I am proud that Georgia has borne more
than its share in the international effort in Afghanistan.
I am proud of our thousands of soldiers who risk
everything in order to defeat the international
movement of hatred — and I want to pay tribute to
those who have died on the battlefield. I am proud of
our police who are engaged in the struggle against
nuclear trafficking. I am proud that Georgia has
become a provider, not just a consumer, of
international security.
I am proud of all of this, but I am also very aware
that extremism will not be defeated and terrorism will
not be eradicated by military and police means alone.
Terrorism and extremism can be defeated only if
freedom, democracy and prosperity extend their reach
in the world.
This is why we welcomed so genuinely the
efforts of President Obama and President Rousseff in
launching the Open Government Partnership. The
world has to respond to the universal call for freedom
and justice, and only a coordinated response to this call
can guarantee our common long-term security.
Georgia is ready and willing once again to take
on more than its share in this international effort. Our
experience of radical post-revolutionary transformation
over the past eight years could very well be useful for
the newly liberated lands.
We were not always free. We were a totally failed
State, a dying economy, a country destroyed by
corruption and authoritarian structures. In 2003, a
peaceful, popular revolution brought to power a young
team of reformists. From one day to the next, we were
in charge of a fragile country in a hostile geopolitical
environment. We discovered quickly that the slogans,
roses, flags and other tools we used as opposition and
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civil society leaders would no longer suffice. We
discovered, in fact, that revolutions are not only, and
not even mainly, about the crowds gathered in the
streets, but that they consist essentially of the long and
difficult process of reform that follows the uprising.
This is the main challenge that Tunisia, Egypt and
Libya now face. The uplifting images of people
celebrating liberation in Tahrir Square, or Libyan
citizens dancing in Muammar Al-Qadhafi’s palaces, are
already in the past. The success of those revolutions
will depend on what happens after the legions of
reporters from CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera have left.
This is precisely the moment when our Georgian
experience — both successes and shortcomings —
could prove useful. Of course we hardly succeeded in
everything, and we made many mistakes. But we have
also had astonishing results.
In the aftermath of the Rose Revolution, we fired
100 per cent of our entire police force. Georgia lived
for three months without a single policeman.
Amazingly, during that period, crime rates went down
dramatically. Why? Not only because the police were
responsible for a large part of our crime rate, but also
because there was a shared feeling that our citizens
finally had a stake in their country and that they were
living actors in a very specific moment of our nation’s
history — a moment when everything seemed possible,
when values became the basis of politics and when one
had the feeling of inventing one’s own future. This
feeling is the true engine of history and our best ally
against extremists. But it is a fragile feeling that has to
be nurtured and sustained.
In Georgia, we have managed to keep this feeling
alive until now by a permanent process of reform with
clear benchmarks. Thanks to radical changes in our
police force, customs, tax service and bureaucratic
structures, and thanks to the widespread feeling among
people that they own these transformations, we have
made greater progress on Transparency International’s
Corruption Perceptions Index since 2003 than any
other State in the world. We are the second or third
least corrupt State in Europe, according to the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(EBRD) survey.
We have built a highly favourable investment
climate based on efficiency, transparency and the rule
of law. As a result, we are now ranked as one of the
easiest places in the world to do business. The World
Bank ranked Georgia, based on five years of records,
as the world’s number one economic reformer. No
other country has progressed in that five-year period as
we did. We are ranked first in Eastern and Central
Europe in terms of business, as I said, as one of the
easiest places in the world.
The 2011 EBRD survey on countries in transition
singles out Georgia as the most successful country in
our region in terms of institution-building, on par with
developed European countries.
There is still a lot to be done, obviously. We are
more committed than ever to pursuing our path of
reforms and to continuing to build our democracy, even
as the barrels of hostile tanks point at us just
40 kilometres away from our capital.
Of course, the path to efficient democratic
Government is difficult, but it is the only path. Of
course, people will be impatient and disappointed, but
there is no alternative to the success of this call for
freedom. This is why it is so important to support this
call and to deter those who want to suppress it.
This is why we supported the NATO-led
intervention in Libya at the initiative of the United
Kingdom, France and the United States. The very fact
that the National Transitional Council is now sitting
here, in the Hall, and that Al-Qadhafi can no longer
speak from this rostrum should give hope for the future
to all of us. The very fact that this effort was approved
by the Security Council has shown that that institution
can actually be the essential framework for the defence
of human rights.
The two anniversaries we are marking — the
anniversary of the fall of the Soviet empire and the
anniversary of 9/11 — continue to confront us with this
central question: how can we ensure that the new
spaces that have opened in our world in the past
20 years thanks to the fall of dictators and thanks to the
spread of new technologies are filled by peace rather
than violence, by tolerance rather than extremism and
by freedom rather than new forms of enslavement?
History will judge our generation by how actively
we help to answer this question, particularly in a series
of pivotal arenas, in what people call abusively frozen
conflicts in and near my own region, in the many
countries in the international community that remain
under tyranny’s yoke and in the places like those Arab
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States that have achieved a new spring of freedom and
are starting the difficult work of reforms.
Wael Ghonim, the young Egyptian Google
executive who helped connect and mobilize so many of
his country’s people to stand up for freedom, recently
said that the new revolutions, like the one his country
experienced, are a little like Wikipedia: they are grand,
open projects to which everyone can contribute.
The need for participation applies to us as well.
As national leaders and as key decision-makers, we can
contribute and we must contribute. Let us rise to that
historical imperative. Let us all make our contribution,
so that, together, we may avoid the deepest abyss and
strive instead for the highest heaven.