Swift out? If Mdinaradze has his way, the

Fancy a bit of geopolitical madness for breakfast? Then today we're once again serving you Mamuka Mdinaradze, chief ideologist of the Georgian governing majority and master of unintentional satire. In his latest interview, the MP muses that the potential abolition of visa liberalization with the EU is "the last bullet" in the alleged Western "blackmail arsenal" – and that if Georgia survives that, "nothing more can happen." Except perhaps... a nuclear attack?

If visa liberalization is “the last bullet” – what is Swift?

One might almost ask: What would be the next logical step in this geopolitical endgame, Mr. Mdinaradze? Abandoning the SWIFT system? Separating Georgian banks from the international financial system? Completely decoupling from Western payment systems? Or, even better, converting all pension payments to gold ducats and Russian rubles?

If you're already dreaming of no more "blackmail" (instruments of extortion), then let's take the thought experiment to its conclusion. What happens if visa-free travel is followed by economic measures? Would you be willing to ban Georgian banks from international payments—to strengthen "sovereignty," of course?

And is the Georgian people ready?

For all the pathetic rhetoric about "sovereignty" and "Western blackmail," a much simpler, very practical question arises: Who pays the price? Is it, once again, not the government members with their EU visas in their drawers and real estate in Spain, but the ordinary Georgians whose children are studying in Europe, whose family remittances are processed via SWIFT, whose everyday lives depend on stability and connectivity?

Does Mdinaradze know what it means when the West actually begins to tighten the economic screws? Or is this, as so often, just populist saber-rattling for a domestic audience that has long sensed how dangerous the government's political course has become?

The last game with the last trump card?

If the EU does one day suspend visa liberalization, it won't be because it wants to "blackmail" – but because the Georgian government is betraying everything that was the foundation of this liberalization: the rule of law, the separation of powers, media freedom, and a modicum of democracy. And if there's no answer left to that other than "Well, fine, they'll just blow us up," then there's probably nothing left to add to the argumentative suicide.

Mdinaradze asks what might happen next. We ask: Is he also prepared to go all the way – including bank decoupling, economic collapse, and international isolation? And above all: Is the Georgian people prepared to pay this price for an authoritarian government project that hides behind phrases like "sovereignty" and "resistance to blackmail"?

Or is it about time that Mdinaradze and his friends stop playing chess with the future of an entire country, while they themselves have long since been sitting in the spectator box?

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