WASHINGTON — Eduard Shevardnadze’s two dramatic resignations from high office are landmarks in a protean career that spanned and touched the most significant changes in global politics of the last two decades. But his centrality to our times did not prevent Shevardnadze from finishing that career as an outcast and a failure in his own land.
The strategic consequences of Shevardnadze’s ouster last weekend as president of the small Caucasus republic of Georgia loom large. That nation of 5 million is a cockpit for the war on global terrorism, for international oil politics and, most urgently, for U.S.-Russian relations.
But this is also an intensely personal saga and a cautionary tale for politicians, many of whom seem oblivious to the dangers of wearing out their success. There are second acts in the lives of politicians, as Richard Nixon proved. Too often the play ends as tragedy, as Richard Nixon proved. Shevardnadze confirms this political rule of thumb.
To watch Shevardnadze on his first trips to the West after his 1985 appointment as Soviet foreign minister was to encounter an unexpected new force on the world stage. His most important job until then had been as boss of some of the KGB’s nastiest thugs in Georgia. But as a diplomat, he displayed an eloquence and commitment to change that quickly erased his previous image as an expert in fingernail-pulling.
As Mikhail Gorbachev’s most trusted associate, Shevardnadze was instrumental in developing glasnost and perestroika and in loosening the reins of the Soviet empire. In 1989, when East Germany’s Stalinist leaders suggested that troops were needed to keep the Berlin wall in place, Shevardnadze and Gorbachev refused to intervene.
I asked him about that decision in our last encounter, which occurred 30 months ago in the crumbling presidential palace in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. It was easy, he in effect said. It was doubtful the Red Army, smarting from the disasters of Afghanistan, would have followed orders to intervene.
He abruptly quit as foreign minister in December 1990 as Gorbachev vacillated in a political whirlwind. "Reformers have gone and hidden in the bushes," Shevardnadze told a shocked Duma. "Dictatorship is coming." Instead, Boris Yeltsin faced down a reactionary coup nine months later and then set in motion the Soviet Union’s dissolution.
That breakup gave Georgia and other Soviet republics their independence. Reviled as the most hated man in Russia because of his perceived role in the Soviet collapse, Shevardnadze went home to be pushed into the presidency to halt Georgia’s sporadic civil war.
Despite the many and contradictory roles he took on, there was none of the chameleon in Shevardnadze. He applied his energy and talents to the next tasks before him and soon became them. From KGB overseer to visionary reformer to playing out his last days as a marginally authoritarian, somewhat corrupt minor despot in Georgia’s broken, pathetic capital, he lived his varied existences from the inside out. He touched highs and lows unimaginable to other politicians of his time.
He was present at the destruction of the Soviet empire and played a central role in ending the Cold War. As former Secretary of State Jim Baker says, Shevardnadze was vital to a smoothly run German reunification and to getting the support of the United Nations for the first Gulf War in 1991.
The Clinton administration made Shevardnadze crucial to its strategy of preventing a re-Sovietization of Georgia and the other ex-republics, giving him generous economic aid and a privileged relationship with NATO. And after 9/11, Shevardnadze sought to make Georgia an important factor in President Bush’s war on global terrorism.
But Bush, convinced he needs Russian President Vladmir Putin more in that struggle, conducted an ambivalent policy of kind words but limited support for Shevardnadze. When political outrage over rigged elections boiled over last weekend in Georgia’s Parliament, Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the Russians in implicitly suggesting to Shevardnadze that it was time for him to go.
Shevardnadze reached that same conclusion when it became clear to him that once again, he could not count on an appeal for military intervention being heeded by his army.
Quitting while ahead does not seem to occur very often to master-class politicians. Without second terms Nixon would not have known the shame of impeachment and resignation, Ronald Reagan would have avoided Iran-contra and Bill Clinton would not have had to fight the Lewinsky scandal in the White House. These are precedents that George W. Bush probably should consider — and almost certainly won’t.
Jim Hoagland is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him by writing to
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