BATUMI-POTI
Beril Dedeoglu

Daily Georgian Times
.do?haberno=151283
Aug 27 2008
Georgia

Even if the fighting phase has come to an end in the Georgian war,
other parts of this conflict are far from over.

The US has been pressuring Turkey since the beginning of the 2000s
about the Montreux Convention, which regulates passage through the
Turkish Straits, because Washington has decided that it should have
a presence in the Black Sea region. The covert crisis between Turkey
and the US was about the total tonnage and number of military ships
that the US wanted to send through the straits, their purpose for
reaching that sea and the port where they would cast anchor. Finally,
the Georgian war had assured the US of having an excuse to fly its
flag in the Black Sea.

The presence of the US Navy in the Black Sea is an important political
development on its own, even if this doesn’t mean the modification
of the Montreux regime or the breaching of this convention at this
point. Officially, the US is sending humanitarian aid to Georgia;
but in fact, these ships’ essential task is to demonstrate that the US
supports Georgia in the Russian-Georgian war. When someone talks about
humanitarian aid, the US, governed by neocons, is probably the last
country that comes to mind. Furthermore, a country that wants simply to
send help wouldn’t usually choose ways that would put other countries
such as Turkey into difficult diplomatic positions. Additionally,
it’s not mandatory to send diapers, milk powder, food or medicine
exclusively by sea. However, when the hidden objective is to provoke
Russia, which wants to sign a missile defense shield agreement with
Belarus and to renew its traditional alliance with Syria, then the
presence of the American battleships in the Georgian territorial sea
becomes necessary.

While the US ships unload their humanitarian aid cargo in the port of
Batumi, a city next to the Turkish border, Russia does exactly the
same in Poti, next to Batumi. How nice that Georgians receive that
much aid! In the context of NATO operations, American and Russian
battleships have worked together in the past without any problems,
but today, to have them in two close ports is too risky because of
the growing military tension between them. Additionally, Russia has
just decided to freeze its relationship with NATO.

These recent events have also put Azerbaijan and Armenia in an
uncomfortable position. Important social segments in these countries
were trying to westernize their states without making Russia too
angry. But following the latest developments, Russia seems to be
furious and this will undoubtedly affect not only Georgia, but also
Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

If two major powers apply pressure to a region at the same time, the
possibility of eruption of local armed conflicts based on ethnic,
religious and territorial problems diminish. It is likely that the
Russian-American pressure has delayed the expansion and deepening of
several regional conflicts in the Caucasus for now. But this situation
doesn’t help to resolve the existing problems. Mutual deterrence
can help to freeze conflicts but cannot remove the risk of future
explosions. This means that we may witness more problems in Caucasia
over the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia or between Armenia
and Turkey. Moreover, the pressure applied by leader countries to
their allied nations can cause a deterioration of the mutual trust
within old alliances, as we have witnessed with the Turkish Straits
situation between the US and Turkey. It’s hard to predict what
societies’ reactions will be in the face of this distrust because
actual international conditions are not what they were during the
Cold War. Most important of all, pressures on states and on societies
don’t always produce similar results.