Recently, Chubais's RAO UES has had the lead role in integrating Georgia into Russia's "liberal empire." When the Georgian authorities announced plans to privatize the Inguri Power Plant and renew construction of the long-stalled Khudoni Power Plant, slated to become Georgia's largest, RAO UES immediately began staking out a dominant role for itself in both projects. The combination of massive pressure from the Russian side and silence from the West could leave Georgia's entire power system -- both gas and electricity -- in Russian hands.
Russia's scheme to rehabilitate the rail line from its territory into the secessionist Georgian province of Abkhazia similarly mixes economics with neo-imperial aspirations. Even though it is focused on land that the UN recognizes as part of Georgia, the main beneficiaries of this project would be Russia and Armenia.
If the international community allows this scheme to go forward, it will have endorsed Russia's effort to separate Abkhazia from Georgia. Parallel with this, Russia and Armenia are planning a new rail link to Iran.
Besides its obvious benefits to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's retrograde government, this will deftly weaken the South Caucasus' links with the West, which the US and Europe have spent a decade fostering.
Thus, Russia's effort to entrap Georgia and its neighbors in the nets of its new "liberal empire" is part of a well coordinated attempt to reorient the South Caucasus as a whole towards the anti-Western coalition of Russia and Iran.
Western countries, and the US in particular, must provide firm backing and support to the South Caucasus to prevent Russia from realizing its destabilizing and dangerous neo-imperial dream.
Vladimer Papava is a former Georgian minister of economy and author of Necroeconomics, a study of post-communist economic problems. Frederick Starr is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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