Globalaffairs

Issue 11/October-November 2008
By Johannes Olschner

With the opening of hostilities in Georgia on 7 August, the PR agencies of the opposing sides went into overdrive. With this, a new front was opened in the war between Georgia and Russia, and the size and sophistication of Tbilisi’s PR operation soon became apparent. President Mikhail Saakashvili is alleged to have paid a Brussels PR agency €500,000 to brush up Tbilisi’s pro-Western image, emphasising its desire for NATO accession and democratic credentials. But there are many question marks hanging over possible membership. It is a country with few oil and natural gas reserves, has a small and weak military, is unstable and corrupt, and is not quite so democracy and civil liberties friendly as many in the West are led to believe. Moreover, support for this state is doing much damage to already strained Russo-Western relations. So why is NATO (and Washington in particular) so keen to bring Georgia into the Euro-Atlantic Alliance?

Giorgi Badridze, Acting Head of the Georgian embassy in London, claims that what Georgia has to offer NATO is a modern military; it has, he says, a small, well-equipped and well-trained military, “the most modern army of the states of the former Soviet Union”. But with NATO’s member countries at the forefront of military technology, Georgia’s relative modernity relies on assistance from NATO countries. As James Nixey, manager of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House in London states, “Georgia wouldn’t add anything in terms of military capacity”.

GEOGRAPHICAL CONVENIENCE AND PIPELINE POLITICS

Badridze argues that another dimension to Georgia’s appeal to NATO is its geographical location, as it “provides the link to the Caspian Basin and Central Asia”. So although Georgia has little of value in terms of natural resources, it is compensated by a convenient geo-strategic position. Bordering Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, and Turkey, it has traditionally been an important trading route due to its position on the Black Sea and close proximity to the Caspian. With the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 the importance of Georgia’s location was augmented. NATO bases were set up in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as staging posts for operations in Afghanistan, which turned the South Caucasus into a key transit route for ferrying supplies to these bases. With Iraq and Iran also a focus of NATO policy, Georgia’s close proximity to these countries further magnifies its geographical importance. As a result, Georgia has become a small – albeit integral – part of NATO’s security structure, purely by geographical location.

With Georgia sitting conveniently next to Azerbaijan it is also a pivotal link in the chain of energy supply from the Caspian to the West. With Russian dominance over Eurasian energy transportation routes and a desire to reduce dependency on Middle Eastern and Russian supplies, alternative sources and routes are being pursued; this means tapping into the energy rich but land locked states of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus. As Dr Peter Duncan, Senior Lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, pointed out, NATO (especially the US) decided to build pipelines in the Transcaucasus in order to establish non-Russian energy transportation routes. The result so far has been the construction of two oil pipelines (Baku-Supsa and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) and one gas pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum), whose combined length totals 3,290km. These projects have secured Georgia a place in Western energy security planning, and with plans to link these pipelines to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan its importance is set to grow.

The importance of Georgia’s geographical location is highlighted by the fact that it is an inherently unstable state. Since independence, Tbilisi has had to deal with three separatist regions on its territory (all of which still need resolving) and a civil war. Any pipeline running through Georgia is therefore subject to a realistic security threat. Building pipelines through Georgia is a risk worth taking though due to its location and the geopolitical realities facing NATO policy makers.

AMERICAN WISHES AND NATO OVERTURES

The NATO Bucharest Summit in April 2008 highlighted the fact that the US and former Soviet bloc countries were the driving force behind Georgian NATO membership within the Alliance. Whilst President Bush called on Tbilisi to be granted a Membership Action Plan (MAP), another faction led by France and Germany defeated this. But Washington has helped Georgia militarily outside of the NATO framework and has been one of Tbilisi’s staunchest supporters throughout the August crisis. In 2002, US Special Forces trained several thousand Georgian troops in anti-terror operations as part of a $64 million programme aimed against pipeline sabotage. With Russia’s seizure of US made Georgian weapons, the extent of America’s assistance has become more apparent. On 15 August General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a Russian military spokesman, said that 1,728 weapons (including 664 M-16 rifles) had been captured at a military base in Senaki, western Georgia.

But NATO nevertheless agreed at Bucharest that Georgia would eventually gain accession. Indeed, since Saakashvili came to power in 2003 a number of agreements between Tbilisi and NATO have been signed bringing possible Georgian entry closer to reality. In October 2004 Georgia became the first country to sign the Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) designed to ease cooperation, and four months later signed the Partnership for Peace agreement. Although a number of former Soviet states have signed agreements with NATO, James Nixey says that Georgia is far more ready to join, citing internal reform like placing the Georgian Ministry of Defence under civilian control, a prerequisite to membership. He also points out that while Georgia’s democratic credentials were questioned in the run up to the 2008 presidential election, it remains more committed to democracy than Russia and the other countries in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. But Peter Duncan said that although the Bush administration is the driving force behind NATO enlargement, Georgia is also pushing for this.

GEORGIAN DESIRES

Tbilisi has made little attempt to hide its desire to join NATO; nor is it a particularly new policy. Badridze stressed that NATO membership has been a Georgian foreign policy priority for years, and even under former President Eduard Shevardnadze Georgia was cooperating with NATO militarily. In 1999 it contributed to the Kosovo Force (KFOR), and hosted two Partnership for Peace military training exercises between 2001 and 2002. This collaboration continued under Saakashvili, resulting in a Georgian contribution to the multilateral force in Afghanistan, the signing of the IPAP, and the hosting of a NATO/Partnership for Peace air exercise in 2007. Tbilisi even got itself extra brownie points in Washington by contributing a sizeable contingent to coalition forces in Iraq. As Giorgi Badridze, Acting Head of the Georgian embassy in London, says, “it has been Georgia’s foreign policy priority to join NATO for years”. Indeed, James Nixey argues that Tbilisi even puts NATO membership above EU accession.

Although Badridze claims that Tbilisi’s desire to join NATO is not primarily motivated by a “short-term security fix”, there is no doubt that this is exactly what membership would provide. He argued that NATO’s decision at the Bucharest summit in April 2008 concerning Georgia “gave Putin the green light to attack Georgia”.

RUSSIAN CHAGRIN

From Moscow’s perspective NATO inroads in territory formerly under its control is extremely threatening (especially when paired up with parallel developments in Eastern Europe with the missile defence shield), and Russia has responded correspondingly. Fears of NATO encirclement have been enhanced because Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Moldova have also signed the IPAP. Although all of these countries have reiterated that they have no desire to join NATO, Azerbaijan has spoken of this ambition in the past; it is also difficult to ascertain whether such statements are merely paying lip service to the Kremlin or not. Russia’s policies and aims in Georgia now are therefore to prevent it from joining the Euro-Atlantic Alliance and to reassert greater control over it. Peter Duncan points out that Russia wants to secure Abkhaz and South Ossetian independence (later becoming part of Russia), and to try and find some way of maintaining control over Georgian air space. But although Moscow is looking to increase its control over Georgia, James Nixey believes that “Russia doesn’t specifically want regime change but is exploring ways to exert power and influence”.

But with Moscow vying for greater control over its small neighbour, it comes into direct conflict with NATO. Over the years the Alliance has become more concerned with energy security, and at the Bucharest Summit its members agreed to engage in “supporting the protection of critical energy infrastructure”. Considering the frequency with which Moscow has turned off the energy tap in the past, NATO will probably see any increased Russian power over Georgia as a threat. When seen in the context of difficult NATO-Russia relations, Georgian membership is therefore highly desirable for reasons of energy security and regional geopolitics.

Johannes Olschner
Graduated in East European and Russian history at University College London
Editor of a monthly publication (Veche) focusing on the current affairs of these regions.
Freelance journalist specializing in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

Global Affairs is not liable for author’s opinion