GEORGIA’S NATO TEST
By Koba Liklikadze in Tbilisi
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), UK
March 16, 2006
The Tbilisi government wants Georgia to join NATO by 2008, but question
marks remain.
A visit by a NATO assessment team has left the country with
contradictory predictions about whether Georgia has a good prospect
of joining the North Atlantic alliance.
The NATO mission, which left on March 9, after four days of intensive
meetings, is due to deliver its verdict in mid-April as to whether
Georgia should be allowed to embark on NATO’s Membership Action Plan,
MAP, which would bring it one step closer to full membership.
The Georgian authorities are already announcing ahead of time that
the conclusion will be positive and that the country will become a
candidate for membership of the alliance by the end of the year.
In his New Year’s address, President Mikheil Saakashvili announced
that 2006 would be the “year of NATO in Georgia”, and stressed that
the country would enter NATO during his first presidential term,
which runs to the end of 2008.
Some influential voices in Washington are lobbying for Georgian
membership. Ambassador David Smith, chairman of the Georgia Forum in
the United States, has said that it would be in NATO’s interests to
welcome the country into its ranks.
He told Radio Liberty, “We, the 26 members of the alliance, have a
strong geopolitical reason to see friendly democratic countries to
the east of the Black Sea, including Georgia, as allies.”
Smith said it was significant that President George W Bush had chosen
Tbilisi to make a rallying call for freedom last May and that Georgian
troops were serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.
According to opinion polls, 70 per cent of the Georgian population
supports the country’s entry into NATO. The government has been
enthusiastically promoting the idea.
“NATO entry will increase Georgia’s security guarantees, which is
essential for political stability, economic progress, to attract
investment, and for strengthening democratic institutions,” Minister
for European Integration Giorgy Baramidze told IWPR. “If Georgia is
a safe country with a secure economy, she will be able to restore
her geographic integrity by peaceful means more quickly.”
Georgia was the first country of the South Caucasus to sign an
Individual Partnership Action Plan or IPAP with NATO, in December
2004, soon to be followed by Azerbaijan and Armenia. Under an IPAP
a country chooses its own timelines and tasks, which it must fulfil
in order to move to the next stage of entry, the MAP.
Georgia has set itself the most ambitious plan, and has told NATO it
will implement it within two years. It has embarked on a big increase
in military spending, with the budgets for security ministries
increasing eight times in the last two years.
The NATO assessment mission which visited last September, found,
however, that “the glass was half empty”. As a result, the arrival
of the latest mission in early March was keenly awaited. The group
contains seven people who have spent a year meeting not only Georgian
officials, but also opposition parties, non-governmental organisations
and representatives of the independent media, and received exhaustive
information about events in the country.
The government was upbeat about the team’s visit. “This week will have
an important place in the NATO-Georgia history textbook, which our
children will read in the future,” said Deputy Defence Minister Mamuka
Kudava. “Important progress has been recorded in all directions. As
you know, the defence chapter is very important, this is one of the
most important chapters in the IPAP and our experts, and colleagues
from NATO have approved this document on the development of defence
reforms.”
Frank Boland, the head of the mission and chief of NATO’s department
for politics and defence planning, was more cautious.
“The process of overcoming the problems which have fallen to its lot,
is an extremely complicated one for any nation,” said Boland. “It
is important to acknowledge openly that its low economic level is
constraining the possibilities of the government of Georgia to carry
through many changes it would like to make. But in spite of these
limitations, we are genuinely struck by how much has changed, and
how much the Georgian authorities plan to change in the future. And
I am sure that the 26 members of NATO and Georgia will be entirely
in agreement on this.”
Big questions remain, however, not least the issue of the unresolved
conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. General Nikola Kolev, chief
of staff of the Bulgarian army, told Georgian journalists last year,
“The criteria are clear. Internal ethnic and religious conflicts have
to be resolved. The state ought to be stable.”
Several Georgian analysts are also sceptical about Georgia’s fitness to
join NATO. “This is to do both with the existence within the defence
and interior ministries of secret funds, and with military purchases
and endless reshuffles in the defence ministry, as a result of which,
officers who have been educated in military academies in the West,
leave the system,” said analyst Irakly Aladashvili.
“Military intelligence has been abolished, no kind of land forces
has been formed, the military academy has been abolished, and the
drain of professional officers continues,” said Shalva Tadumadze,
a military expert with the Rights and Justice organisation. “When
this lie of the ministry of defence is exposed, the country will find
itself in an awkward position.”
Tadumadze drew attention to the recent appointment of a man under
investigation for allegedly beating up a journalist as head of a
department of the National Guard.
“At present, the case is with the prosecutor’s office. And the
appointment of a criminal suspect to a position of responsibility
demonstrates just how true the Georgian authorities are to European
values,” he said.
Shalva Pichkhadze, who heads the non-governmental organisation Georgia
and NATO, said the Georgian government had made real progress in
military reform but it should be more realistic about the short
timescale it had set itself for joining NATO.
“The question of a country’s joining the 26 member NATO alliance is
decided by consensus,” said Pichkhadze. “In spite of the substantial
interest in Georgia, there are countries which have their doubts about
Georgia’s joining, particularly because of its unresolved military
conflicts. Consequently, the process of Georgia’s entry into NATO
could go on for years. And this could cause serious disappointment
amongst the public.”
Koba Liklikadze is a reporter with Radio Liberty in Tbilisi.