SAAKASHVILI-YUSHCHENKO “BORJOMI DECLARATION”: EUROPE FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE CASPIAN
by Vladimir Socor
Eurasia Daily Monitor — The Jamestown Foundation
Monday, August 15, 2005 — Volume 2, Issue 159
On August 12 in Borjomi, Georgia, Presidents Mikheil Saakashvili
of Georgia and Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine signed a declaration
broadening the horizon of European and Euro-Atlantic integration to
the entire “Baltic-Black Sea-Caspian” area, and called on the leaders
of all countries within this area who share that vision to create a
Community of Democratic Choice. Saakashvili and Yushchenko propose
holding a founding summit of the heads of state of this Community
this autumn in Ukraine.
In his remarks at the signing ceremony, Saakashvili noted that the
Borjomi spa resort had in its time been frequented by members of
Russia’s imperial family and later by leading figures in the Soviet
hierarchy. “Not even in their worst nightmares could they have
imagined that an independent Georgia and independent Ukraine would
exist, let alone sign in this very place a declaration on promoting
freedom,” he commented (Imedi TV, August 12). As if to accentuate
the symbolism, Russian forces had only days earlier passed by Borjomi
while withdrawing from Georgia to Russia.
The Borjomi Declaration notes that the Baltic-Black Sea-Caspian area,
“which belongs in Europe,” has a unique potential to offer to Europe
in terms of human resources, energy supplies, and access from Europe
to Asia. Thus, democracy and stability in the Baltic-Black Sea-Caspian
area is a condition to stability and security in Europe as a whole. A
Community of Democratic Choice in this area can become a major factor
in “freeing our region from all remaining lines of division, from
violations of human rights, from frozen conflicts, opening a new era
of democracy” in this area in the interests of “the whole of Europe,
from the Atlantic to the Caspian Sea.” Thus, the vision of Europe
from the Atlantic to the Caspian forms the core of this initiative.
Pledging to “conduct policies in Ukraine and Georgia based on
those principles,” Yushchenko and Saakashvili jointly invite the
leaders of all the countries in the region to become co-founders of a
Community of Democratic Choice, with a view to turning the Baltic-Black
Sea-Caspian area into a “fully integrated region of Europe and of the
Atlantic community.” The European Union and Russia (both referenced as
“close neighbors” to the area in the document) and the United States
(defined as exponent of democracy) are invited to endorse this regional
undertaking by attending the founding summit as observers.
The declaration is cautiously formulated so as to steer clear of
irritating Russia and to avoid any suggestion that certain countries
in the region are being asked to choose between Russia and the West.
For similar reasons, but also for political consensus building
in the region, the document refrains from mentioning NATO or the
anti-terrorism coalition. (Although many countries in the region
are NATO members or aspirants and anti-terrorism coalition members,
a few are not). Thus, the document’s emphasis falls overwhelmingly
on unexceptionable democratic values.
Saakashvili had initially proposed holding the regional summit in Yalta
to underscore the demise of the Yalta system of division of Europe and
the need to consolidate freedom in what used to be Moscow’s sphere of
influence (“Time for a Return to Yalta,” Washington Post, May 10). The
Ukrainian-Georgian declaration, however, does not mention Yalta
either for symbolism (as Saakashvili did with reference to Borjomi
in his own remarks) or as a possible venue for the proposed regional
summit. This caution clearly reflects the Ukrainian leadership’s
concern to improve its relations with Moscow and Russian voters in
Ukraine during the parliamentary election campaign, which will be in
full swing in Ukraine by the time the summit convenes there.
Rather than hosting a Yalta-demise summit in Crimea, therefore,
Yushchenko announced in Borjomi that he would soon be hosting a
Soviet-nostalgia event with Russian President Vladimir Putin in
Crimea to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the
Soviet “pioneers” camp in Artek (Imedi TV, August 12). The Community
of Democratic Choice founding summit will, in any case, also mark an
“end to the history of division in Europe, of domination by force and
by fear, and mark a new beginning of neighborly relations based on
mutual respect, confidence, transparency” ().
With Georgia as initiator, the Georgian-Ukrainian declaration is the
first interstate public document to use the term “Europe from the
Atlantic to the Caspian” and to sketch, if only in broad outline,
a concept to substantiate this vision.
–Vladimir Socor