Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
Georgia will be presented at the NATO summit in Wales not by the Prime Minister, Irakly Garibashvili, who has real power in the country, but President Georgy Margvelashvili, who is a symbolic figure in the state.
It is no accident. The Prime Minister is sending a message to Brussels that Georgia is not satisfied with the decisions made on its further integration into NATO. Tbilisi accepted that the country wouldn’t get a MAP in Wales, i.e. a road map on joining the alliance, but it expected serious steps to be taken by its partners on the outlines of the common security system and the involvement of NATO in Caucasus affairs.
Now Georgia has got into a “diplomatic fog.” Three days before the event, NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, who is due to leave the position soon, stated at a press conference that “a package of intensive cooperation” had been developed for Georgia. It is interesting that the Secretary General mentioned the package only after persistent questions by Georgian journalists. He didn’t want to draw attention to the topic. According to him, “probably NATO would construct a military training center in Georgia,” as well as a center for studying defense necessities, which would help the country with reforming the defense and security system.
“NATO will intensify its work on improving the defense capacities of Georgia,” the Secretary General carefully stated. He meant weapons supplies to Georgia. However, this doesn’t concern real weapon transfers. Two years ago the U.S. Congress adopted a resolution on supplies of anti-armor systems to Georgia. But President Barack Obama didn’t want to spoil relations with Moscow and presented a performance: he didn’t reject the resolution (which had a recommendatory character), but referred to a negative report by the Pentagon. The funniest thing was that Georgian politicians and experts took the performance seriously.
The Secretary General didn’t mention the involvement of Georgian troops in the Rapid Deployment Forces of NATO, which would be established by members of the alliance.
Probably Brussels hasn’t decided yet on the terms which make use of Georgian guys in hotspots legal without taking any responsibility toward Georgia, where the Russian army is situated 35 km from the capital.
It is also unclear what “the center for studying defense necessities” means. There are such centers already, and Georgian suggestions are well-known in Brussels, the Western countries are aware of the needs of the Georgian Defense Ministry – anti-armor, anti-aircraft and missile defense weapons. And there is no progress in the sphere.
As for “the training center,” there is a center for training mountain shooters in the Sakhcher base. Soldiers of the alliance are trained there before being sent to Afghanistan. But the main question is who will train there and who will be the trainers? According to some information, Rasmussen meant a center for aspirant countries of NATO. Whether instructors from the NATO countries will be sent or whether they will live in Georgia, where the center will be constructed, what kind of a training programme it will be, what difference between the new and the previous programmes is – all these questions are without answers.
And the point is that there is nothing new in establishing such a training center for soldiers. In 2001 the U.S. decided to send several dozen experts to Georgia to prepare Georgian soldiers for anti-terrorist activities in the Panki Gorge near the Chechen part of the Georgian-Russian border.
So, despite the diplomatic fog, Georgia is politically far from NATO. The alliance doesn’t want a new headache in the context of the events in Ukraine and Iraq, even though it is happy to use thousands of Georgian guys, while dozens of them were killed in Afghanistan, where the Georgian contingent remains after 2014 for fulfillment of a “useful mission for the European Atlantic Community.”
