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Is NATO Ready for Georgia?
[12:27 pm] 01 December, 2006

A week before the first summit of a 26-member NATO in
Riga, Georgia has been buoyed by support from the US
Senate for its NATO aspirations. But questions remain
as to how ready Georgia is to join the alliance.

Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has declared
2006 `the year of NATO’ and promised that Georgia will
join the alliance before his first term finishes at
the end of 2008. Saakashvili said that progress
towards membership was `irreversible’ after Georgia
was invited in September to move to the next phase of
cooperation with NATO known as `intensified dialogue’.

On November 16, the US Senate gave Saakashvili a boost
by unanimously passing a bill expressing support for
the accession of Albania, Croatia, Georgia, and
Macedonia into NATO. The bill says promises 20 million
US dollars of aid for the four aspirants, half of
which will go to Georgia.

`Potential NATO membership motivates emerging
democracies to make important advances in areas such
as the rule of law and civil society,’ said Senator
Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. `A closer relationship with NATO
will promote these values and contribute to our mutual
security.’

The next day, a session of the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly, meeting in Canada, called on alliance member
states and partners `to support fully Georgia’s
aspirations for Euro-Atlantic integration and its wish
to move, in due course, to the next level of
co-operation with NATO, namely the Membership Action
Plan (MAP). ‘

NATO expansion is not formally on the agenda at the
November 28-29 summit in Riga, which will be dominated
by NATO’s operations in Afghanistan and other issues.
But the Georgian government has been encouraged by a
statement by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer, who said an `encouraging signal’ would be
given at the summit to the new aspirant countries.

Of the four countries mentioned by the Senate, Georgia
is furthest back in the queue and can only hope that
the Riga summit will bring it an invitation to begin a
MAP that will lead towards eventual accession.

Many American experts and politicians are promoting
Georgia’s NATO ambitions on the grounds that it will
buttress Georgian democracy and strengthen NATO in the
Black Sea region.

Ambassador David Smith, who is director of the
Georgian Security Analysis Centre, said that Georgian
accession would create an arc in the Black Sea region
(with the potential of becoming a ring, if Ukraine
also becomes a NATO member), which will bring
stability both to the alliance itself and to the
entire region.

Smith said that creating a ring of NATO Black Sea
members would be able to fight international crime
(illegal trade in drug, arms, trafficking, etc), as
well as terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear
weapons.

However, many European countries are more cautious,
citing worries about how Russia and the breakaway
territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will react
to potential Georgian membership of the alliance. At a
recent European summit meeting in Finland with Russian
leader Vladimir Putin, France’s president Jacques
Chirac said that relations with Moscow were a higher
priority than the issue of Georgian-Russian relations.

Russia has explicitly warned against the expansion of
NATO, which it still regards with suspicion as an
anti-Moscow alliance formed during the Cold War.

`NATO plans to enlarge, but we consider this to be a
mistake, although we perceive it as a reality,’ said
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in September.
`In the era of global challenges, which we all face,
instruments of the Cold War are no longer effective.’

For most Georgians, joining NATO means being protected
from Russia. Opinion polls suggest that more than 70
per cent of Georgians support accession to NATO, with
only a tiny number – around two per cent in one recent
poll – against.

`For Georgia, NATO means alleviation of the threat
coming from Russia,’ said David Darchiashvili,
executive director of the Open Society-Georgia
Foundation. `After Georgia is admitted to NATO, the
threat will be neutralised, as any threat to Georgia
will be translated as a threat to the alliance. Also,
accession to NATO will mean irreversibility of the
course towards democratic development.’

However, much needs to change before Georgia actually
qualifies for NATO membership.

De Hoop Scheffer has repeatedly said that `although
the doors of the alliance are always open’, he could
not predict when Georgia would be judged ready
actually to pass through them. No timetable has been
set.

With regard to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, de Hoop
Scheffer, said that NATO must recognise Georgia’s
territorial integrity and that `intensified dialogue
(for Georgia) means everyday efforts to find ways for
peaceful resolution of the conflicts’.

Some argue that Georgia’s drive towards NATO will only
push the two breakaway territories further away and
into the embrace of Russia.

Georgian experts respond that it is unacceptable to
make peaceful resolution of the Abkhazia and South
Ossetia conflicts a condition of Georgia’s NATO
accession, as that is tantamount to giving Russia a
veto on the process.

`While the conflicts may pose an obstacle to Georgia’s
admission to the alliance, they are also a tool for
Russia to obstruct Georgia’s integration into
Euro-Atlantic structures,’ said Temuri Yakobashvili,
executive vice-president of the Georgia Foundation for
Strategic and International Studies. He argued that if
Russia tried to use this tool, it should trigger a
`political decision in Brussels’ to support Tbilisi.

`Statements that accession to NATO means a loss of the
territories for Georgia are absolutely groundless,
both politically and legally,’ argued Darchiashvili.
`NATO supports a peaceful resolution of the two
problems. So accession to NATO will speed up the
peaceful resolution of the problems.’

Another vital issue is how well equipped Georgia is
technically to join NATO. A NATO evaluation mission
made a cautious assessment of the state of the armed
forces after visiting Georgia in March this year,
saying that changes had evidently been made, but
substantial reforms were still needed.

Military expert Vakhtang Kapanadze said progress had
been made on institutional reforms and that the
structure of the general staff was now in line with
NATO standards. But he gave a downbeat assessment of
the overall professionalism of the defense ministry.
`They need professionally qualified staff with the
appropriate military education, preferably from
western military academies, and the military
experience. But nowadays the ministry is mainly
staffed by policemen,’ he said.

Kapanadze said the other major issue was civilian
control of the armed forces `expressed through control
of the appointments of the staff to high military
posts, control over expenses and the use of force’.

Nika Tarashvili is a correspondent for 24 Hours
newspaper in Tbilisi. Institute for War and Peace
Reporting, Caucasus Reporting Service