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Global War Party

Tagsconspiracydelegitimizationrepression justificationdisinformation tactic

Also writtenparty of warwar partysecond frontdeep state

EquivalentsRUглобальная партия войны

Definition

Section titled “Definition”

The “Global War Party” (Georgian: globaluri omis partia) is the signature conspiracy theory of Georgian Dream, Georgia’s ruling party: a nameless, faceless force that supposedly controls Western institutions — the European Parliament, the EU bureaucracy, US agencies, the NGO world — over the heads of elected governments, and that seeks to drag Georgia into a “second front” against Russia, using the Georgian opposition, civil society, and independent media as its local agents. Since 2025 the label has increasingly merged with an imported synonym, the “Deep State.”

The term is unique in this dictionary: it was not coined in Moscow. It is a domestic ruling party’s franchise of the Kremlin’s core frames — the conspiratorial Collective West, the revolution-phobia of Color Revolution, the agent-hunting of Foreign Agent — rebuilt for a society that is overwhelmingly pro-European and that Russia invaded in 2008. Because roughly 80 percent of Georgians want EU membership,1 the government cannot attack “the West” by name; it attacks a hidden “war party” that has allegedly hijacked the West. The construction lets Georgian Dream pursue an anti-Western policy while insisting it is still pro-European — merely rescuing Europe from its captors.

Origin and history

Section titled “Origin and history”

The “second front” prelude (2022). The narrative’s core predates its brand name. From the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, then-Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili claimed that Kyiv, Western actors, and the Georgian opposition were trying to drag Georgia into the war — that pro-Ukraine rallies and even the EU’s refusal of candidate status were parts of a plot to “open a second front” in Georgia.2 Russian state media amplified each iteration; TASS has run the “West demanded Georgia open a second front” claim under approving headlines ever since.3

The coinage (November 2022). The phrase itself was introduced by Irakli Kobakhidze, then Georgian Dream’s chairman, in a television appearance on 9 November 2022: there exists “a global war party,” he said, whose representatives are “odious MEPs” whose only goal is “to provoke the processes in Georgia that are happening in Ukraine.” Media monitors tracing the term’s spread date its first appearance to precisely this moment.4 What began as a jab at critical European parliamentarians steadily inflated: soon the “war party” ran NGOs, then embassies, then the EU itself.

Canonisation (29 April 2024). During mass protests against the Foreign Agent law, Georgian Dream’s founder and honorary chairman, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, made the conspiracy the party’s official worldview. Speaking at a government-organised counter-rally, he claimed the “Global War Party” had a decisive hand in NATO’s 2008 refusal to admit Georgia and Ukraine — deliberately leaving both exposed to Russia — and had then sought to push both into war as expendable material; the foreign-agent law’s critics were its agents, and after the October elections the “collective UNM” (the opposition, tarred with the former ruling party’s name) would face “strict political and legal judgment.”5

Everything becomes the war party (2024). In May 2024 Kobakhidze, by then prime minister, blamed the conspiracy for the assassination attempt on Slovak premier Robert Fico and claimed an EU commissioner had threatened him in the same breath — “You’ve seen what happened to Fico,” he quoted commissioner Olivér Várhelyi as saying, which Várhelyi called a statement taken “out of context.”6 The October 2024 election campaign was built entirely on the frame: billboards juxtaposed bombed Ukrainian cities (“No to war!”) with intact Georgian ones (“Choose peace!”), reducing the ballot to a choice between Georgian Dream and incineration; Ukraine’s government condemned the use of its ruins as campaign material.7 In Gori, near the occupation line, Ivanishvili went further: the 2008 war had been started by the UNM “on orders” from abroad, its instigators would be tried, and Georgia would “find the strength” to apologise to “our Ossetian brothers and sisters” — the aggressor state vanishing from the story of its own invasion (see Peace Enforcement Operation, Liberation of Sokhumi).8

After the election (2024–2026). Having claimed victory in a vote international observers found deeply flawed, Georgian Dream suspended EU accession talks on 28 November 2024, igniting the largest protests in Georgia’s modern history; the crackdown that followed was justified as defence against a war-party-orchestrated revolution.9 The United States sanctioned Ivanishvili on 27 December 2024 for having “eroded democratic institutions” and derailed Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic course.10 After Donald Trump’s return to office, the party rebranded its enemy in MAGA vocabulary: the “Deep State” now controlled Brussels and the previous US administration, and Kobakhidze declared that “Trump must destroy the ‘deep state,’ otherwise it will destroy both the USA and Europe.”11 Under the same banner, the machinery turned on domestic critics: by late 2025 rights groups counted at least 60 protesters, journalists, and politicians jailed, and after an opposition rally on local-election day, 4 October 2025, prosecutors charged five opposition leaders with attempting to overthrow the state.12

Function in propaganda

Section titled “Function in propaganda”

The frame is used to:

  • attack the West while claiming to be pro-Western — the conspiracy splits “Europe” (good, aspirational) from its alleged captors (evil, warmongering), so that blocking EU integration can be sold as saving it;
  • render itself unfalsifiable — every criticism from Brussels or Washington, every resolution, visa warning, or sanction becomes fresh proof that the war party is attacking Georgia; the theory feeds on its own rebuttals;
  • convert the opposition into enemy agents — as the war party’s “collective UNM,” opponents are not rivals but traitors preparing a war, which reframes elections as existential referendums and pre-legitimises their prosecution (see Fifth Column, Foreign Agent);
  • justify repression as war prevention — the foreign-agent law, protest crackdowns, and mass arrests are presented as blocking a “second front” and a Color Revolution, not as silencing dissent;
  • weaponise real war trauma — Georgia’s memory of 2008 and Ukraine’s visible devastation are converted into a fear appeal in which peace is only available through obedience;
  • rehabilitate Russia by inversion — if the war party engineered 2008 through its UNM agents, then Russia is absolved of its own invasion, and the occupier quietly becomes the default guarantor of peace (see Russophobia);
  • align with Moscow without naming Moscow — each element mirrors a Kremlin claim about Anglo-Saxons puppet-masters and Western proxy wars, which Russian officials and state media approvingly amplify.3

The claim has never been substantiated. No document, official, or testimony evidencing a Western demand that Georgia open a “second front” has ever been produced; the EU and US have repeatedly denied it, and when pressed for the war party’s membership, Georgian Dream names only its critics — parliamentarians, commissioners, NGOs.13 The “war party” West meanwhile granted Georgia EU candidate status in December 2023, and Georgia’s own constitution (Article 78) obliges state bodies to pursue EU and NATO integration. Fact-checkers and researchers — EDMO, EUvsDisinfo, DFRLab, Georgia’s Media Coalition — classify the narrative as a conspiracy theory converging with pro-Kremlin messaging.13 The one power that has actually made war on Georgia, and that occupies roughly a fifth of its territory, appears in the story only as the threat Georgian Dream is protecting the country from — by accommodating it.

Key examples

Section titled “Key examples”

The coinage (9 November 2022). Kobakhidze’s “odious MEPs” remark introduced the term as a shield against European criticism: the European Parliament’s resolutions were recast as the interference of a hidden war lobby.4

The 29 April 2024 speech. Ivanishvili’s address — delivered to a bussed-in crowd as riot police were dispersing foreign-agent-law protesters — remains the doctrine’s fullest statement: the war party rules the West, sacrificed Ukraine, covets Georgia as a second front, and operates through the local opposition, which will be punished after the elections.5

The Fico “threat” (May 2024). By attributing an EU commissioner’s warning about political polarisation to a war party that had just allegedly shot a European prime minister, Kobakhidze demonstrated the frame’s elasticity: even an assassination attempt in Slovakia became evidence in Tbilisi.6

The war-or-peace campaign (September–October 2024). The bombed-Mariupol billboards, the “No to war! / Choose peace!” ballot imagery, and the Gori promise to apologise for 2008 fused the conspiracy into a single electoral proposition: a vote against Georgian Dream is a vote for your city in ruins.7

From “war party” to “deep state” (2025–2026). The post-election rebrand — same conspiracy, new Trump-era vocabulary — shows the frame’s opportunism: the enemy’s name updates with the news cycle, while the function (justifying the jailing of opponents and the freeze of EU accession) stays constant.11

Why it matters

Section titled “Why it matters”

The Global War Party narrative matters first as a case study in narrative laundering: Kremlin frames voiced not by Moscow but by the elected government of a country Russia invaded and partially occupies. Delivered in Georgian, by Georgian officials, wrapped in the language of peace and sovereignty, the same claims that would be dismissed as enemy propaganda arrive as domestic common sense — a model available to any ruling party that finds Western scrutiny inconvenient.

It matters, second, because it worked — at ruinous cost. A country whose population supports EU membership at rates near 80 percent, and whose constitution mandates that goal, was steered out of its accession process within a year of the conspiracy’s canonisation, with its founder-patron under US and Baltic sanctions and its jails holding opposition leaders awaiting “coup” trials. The unfalsifiable structure is what makes this durable: each new sanction or resolution is absorbed as further proof, and each escalation of repression arrives pre-justified as war prevention.

Finally, the frame inverts Georgia’s actual security position. It locates the threat of war in Brussels and Washington — which have never fired a shot at Georgia — and locates peace in deference to Russia, which occupies Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region and fought a war against Georgia within living memory. A narrative that turns a country’s anchor into its enemy and its invader into its guarantor is not a peace policy; it is the occupier’s case, translated.

Naming it accurately

Section titled “Naming it accurately”

A quick reference for reporting — what to write instead of the Kremlin’s framing.

See also

Section titled “See also”

Sources

Section titled “Sources”

Mentioned in

Section titled “Mentioned in”

Footnotes

Section titled “Footnotes”

  1. IRI’s March 2023 Georgia poll found 89% of Georgians fully or somewhat supporting EU membership; NDI surveys have for years put support for EU integration at or near 80%. ↩

  2. “PM Again Talks ‘Second Front’ and Criticizes the Opposition,” Civil Georgia; “No ‘second front’ in Georgia amid the war in Ukraine,” agenda.ge, 2022 — Garibashvili’s recurring claims that Kyiv, Western actors, and the opposition sought to drag Georgia into the war. ↩

  3. E.g. “West offered Georgia weapons for opening second front against Russia — ruling party” and “Tbilisi admits West demanded opening second front against Russia,” TASS; Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly praised Tbilisi’s “courage” in resisting Western pressure (“Lavrov: GD Authorities Want to Avoid Being a Pawn of the West,” Civil Georgia). ↩ ↩2

  4. Kobakhidze on air, 9 November 2022: “There is a ‘global war party’, whose representatives are odious MEPs…” (InterPressNews). Media monitors (EDMO; Media Coalition Georgia, “The Global War Party Conspiracy”) date the term’s first appearance to this statement, aimed at MEPs critical of the government. ↩ ↩2

  5. “Domestic Reactions to Ivanishvili’s Address at April 29 Government’s Rally,” Civil Georgia, April 2024; “Georgian Dream Takes On The ‘Global War Party’,” RFE/RL, May 2024; “Ivanishvili touts conspiracy theories at massive pro-government rally in Tbilisi,” OC Media, April 2024. ↩ ↩2

  6. “Georgian PM Says Threatened By EU Commissioner, Who Says His Comments Taken Out Of Context,” RFE/RL, 23 May 2024; “EU’s Várhelyi says mix-up led to Georgian PM’s death threats claim,” Euronews, 24 May 2024. ↩ ↩2

  7. “Georgian Dream promotes images of bombed Ukrainian cities as an electoral fearmongering tactic,” DFRLab, 4 October 2024; “‘It is regrettable to watch’ — Ukraine condemns Georgian ruling party’s latest use of war footage,” The Kyiv Independent, 2024. ↩ ↩2

  8. “In Gori, Ivanishvili Blames Outsiders, UNM for 2008 War, Broaches Apology ‘to Ossetian Brothers and Sisters’,” Civil Georgia, September 2024; “Anger in Georgia after Ivanishvili vows to apologise to South Ossetians for 2008 War,” OC Media, September 2024. TASS relayed the promise approvingly (“Georgia to apologize for war that Saakashvili started against Ossetians — ruling party”). ↩

  9. “Georgia to suspend EU accession talks until 2028,” Al Jazeera, 28 November 2024; “Georgia is suspending its EU integration process,” OSW, 29 November 2024 — on the suspension, the nationwide protests, and the violent dispersals that followed. ↩

  10. OFAC designation of Bidzina Ivanishvili under E.O. 14024, 27 December 2024; US statements said Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream “eroded democratic institutions, enabled human rights abuses, and curbed the exercise of fundamental freedoms in Georgia” (“US sanctions oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili,” JAMnews). Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia had already imposed entry bans. ↩

  11. “GD Rails Against ‘Deep State’, ‘Global War Party’,” Civil Georgia, 2025; “‘Trump must destroy the ‘deep state,’ otherwise it will destroy both the USA and Europe’ — Irakli Kobakhidze,” JAMnews, 2025; “How Georgia’s Ruling Party Gambled on Trump — and Lost,” Carnegie Endowment (Politika), February 2025. ↩ ↩2

  12. “Georgia: Elections marred by severe reprisals and risk of further violence,” Amnesty International, October 2025 — at least 60 jailed on criminal charges over the protest movement; “Five Georgia opposition leaders charged with ‘coup’ attempt after protests,” Al Jazeera, 7 October 2025. ↩

  13. “The fearmongering ‘Global War Party’ and other tools of the Georgian ruling party’s propaganda to discredit the US and the EU,” EDMO, 2024; “‘Global War Party,’ ‘Second Front,’ ‘Unprecedented election meddling’ from the West, and other propaganda narratives dominating Georgian information space in the run-up to the key 2024 elections,” EDMO, 2024; “Twists and turns: Georgian Dream rhetoric on the EU,” EUvsDisinfo, 23 October 2024. ↩ ↩2