The Messenger, Georgia
May 9 2005
What Saakashvili can ask from Bush
By Zeyno Baran*
George W. Bush will be the first ever US president to visit Georgia
this week. The inclusion of Tbilisi in President George W. Bush’s
itinerary built around the 60th anniversary of the end of World War
II celebrations in Moscow is the clearest statement of support to
Georgia’s reformist government. It is also a firm message to Russia
that this freedom-loving county’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity needs to be respected and supported.
Following the November 2003 Rose Revolution, Georgia made enormous
progress in its pro-EU and pro-NATO direction. Considered to be a
“failing state” just prior to the revolution, the young and dynamic
team of the 36-year old President Mikheil Saakashvili managed to
completely turn around the country’s image.
President Bush’s key message to the Georgian people, to be delivered
in the Freedom Square on May 10, will be America’s commitment to
“advance freedom, prosperity and tolerance in Europe and beyond” and
reaffirming Georgia’s place as a critical part in this vision.
Freedom Square, the site of the peaceful Rose Revolution, is expected
to have nearly 100,000 people to listen to Bush; being welcomed with
the traditional Georgian hospitality and admiration for his freedom
and democracy agenda will be a nice change for the U.S. president
whose freedom agenda is denounced in some other parts of the world.
In Tbilisi, Bush will once again see that Saakashvili and his team
share the same values and vision of promoting democracy. Similar to
Bush, Saakashvili believes in his mission to expand the community of
democracies-he helped his friend Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine ahead
of the Orange Revolution, supported the pro-EU direction of his
Moldovan counterpart, sent encouragement to the Kyrgyz opposition and
has joined the U.S. and the EU in supporting the opposition in
Belarus.
The historic visit by Bush should nonetheless be considered by the
Saakashvili government as the celebration of the end of the
post-revolutionary period in the country and the beginning of the
next, more mature phase of governance. Overall, the Saakashvili
government has been greatly successful, but has also made mistakes
resulting from lack of experience and the near impossibility of
dealing with the magnitude of the problems inherited by the previous
government. That said, it is clear that the government has the
political will and the intention to resolve the remaining major
problems of the country-with the continuing help of the United
States.
The peaceful resolution of the Abkhaz and South Ossetian conflicts is
a priority for the Saakashvili government; its importance will be
underlined by Bush as well. As long as there are frozen conflicts in
its territory, Georgia will not be taken seriously by the EU as a
candidate. Occasional provocative remarks by the Georgian government
cause concern in the U.S. and the EU, and are also used by the
separatists and some in Russia to claim that the Georgian government
is not serious in its commitment to resolving these conflicts
peacefully.
It would therefore be critically important for Saakashvili to both
reassure Bush of his commitment to a peaceful way forward, and also
ask his help convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin that it is
in Russia’s interest to cooperate with Georgia in helping it restore
its territorial integrity.
By going to Tbilisi after Moscow, Bush would have seriously upset
Putin as the Russian President will be concerned of being perceived
as weak by his domestic audience. Yet, Putin must realize, especially
after his colossal misjudgment during the Ukrainian elections, that
ongoing close partnership with the U.S. requires a serious policy
change in Russian policy vis-à-vis the former Soviet republics. He
can start by cooperating with the U.S. in helping ensure Georgia’s
security and stability. It is hard not to notice the strangeness of
Russia’s backing the separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in
Georgia, when it has huge concerns over Chechen separatism in its own
country.
A second area Saakashvili can ask Bush’s support is in encouraging
the Kremlin to agree to a withdrawal of its military bases in
Georgia. Despite weeks of negotiations, lack of meaningful progress
on this issue made it impossible for Saakashvili to attend the May 9
events in Moscow. Georgia rightly wants to be free from a non-NATO
base presence to underscore its own sovereignty.
It is interesting, to say the least, that as the Georgian-Russian
negotiations are getting serious, there have been protests against
the base withdrawal in the predominantly Armenian region of
Samtskhe-Javakheti. The local ethnic Armenian population near the
Russian military base is concerned that they will lose their main and
only source of employment if the base is closed. Those who do not
want the base to be closed play not only on these fears, but also
exacerbate the situation by suggesting that Russian base would be
replaced by a Turkish base, which is an anathema for the Armenians.
Fully aware of the potential instability the region could face by
provocations of ethnic nature, Saakashvili has promised to invest in
road rehabilitation that will connect the Samtskhe-Javakheti region
to Tbilisi, and in turn bring economic improvement to this
desperately poor area. This is another area the U.S. can help by
providing financial assistance.
A third and critically important area Saakashvili should ask for
Bush’s assistance is in support for energy security. At the end of
this month, the first leg of the so-called East-West energy corridor
to transport Caspian Sea oil and gas to Western markets will launch
with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline ceremony in Baku. Georgia
will thanks to this major oil pipeline become a pivotal energy
transit country. Next year, a parallel gas pipeline will start
operating as well. Until then, Georgia will remain almost fully
dependent on Russian gas for its energy needs; given that at
politically tense times Georgia has repeatedly experienced gas
cutoff, this dependence is clearly worrisome.
Due to the mistakes and corruption of the previous government,
Georgia is in an extremely vulnerable position today-if the
Saakashvili government cannot keep the lights on, it can hardly
sustain the legitimacy required to implement tough reforms. If the
threat of gas and electricity cut offs remain, Georgian decision
makers will have a much weaker hand in negotiations with the Russians
over the frozen conflicts and the base withdrawal-especially during
the cold winter period.
Saakashvili should therefore ask Bush for much-needed financial
assistance to improve the existing energy infrastructure. It should
also procure more gas from a non-Russian source.
There are clearly other important issues the Saakashvili government
needs to tackle and would require ongoing U.S. support. Still, if
these three key issues are resolved successfully, Georgia’s chance of
remaining a beacon of inspiration for many other freedom fighters
across the world will be much higher.
* Zeyno Baran is Director of International Security and Energy
Programs at The Nixon Center in Washington DC and contributed this
comment to The Messenger.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress