NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership

Transcription

1 NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership Page 1 NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership by Marion KIPIANI For more than a decade, since the bloodless Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia has stood out from among its South Caucasus neighbors due to its determinedly pro-western foreign policy orientation. The cornerstone of this orientation has been the approximation to, and desired integration into, Euro-Atlantic structures and has principally remained constant after the change of government in Tbilisi in October However, the past three years have shown that the Georgian government increasingly seeks to balance its foreign policy by maintaining close alignment with the European Union and United States, while also repairing relations with the Russian Federation and bolstering ties with emerging regional and global players in the South Caucasus, such as China and post-sanctions Iran. With parliamentary elections scheduled for October 2016 and polls indicating an open and vigorous political competition, this analysis is the first part of a series examining the foreign policy of the Georgian Dream government. It focuses on relations between Georgia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO. Upon coming to power amidst the November 2003 Rose Revolution, the government led by the United National Movement (UNM) party under President Mikheil Saakashvili put Georgia s alignment with the European Union and the United States at the core of its foreign policy agenda. Newly independent Georgia had joined NATO s Partnership for Peace (PfP) upon the program s establishment in 1994, but ties had not markedly progressed under the presidency of Eduard Shevardnadze until the early 2000s. While the country had sent peacekeepers to serve in NATO s Kosovo Force (KFOR), Georgia-NATO security cooperation was balanced by Tbilisi s membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States and its Council of Defense Ministers that coordinates military cooperation of the CIS member states. It was also hampered by the weak capacities of the Georgian armed forces. However, with the UNM s advent to power, it became clear that Georgia was henceforth seeking close security and defense cooperation with the U.S. and, as a logical extension, the integration into the North Atlantic Alliance, even at the expense of Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies (BILGESAM) Mecidiyeköy Yolu Caddesi, No:10, Şişli -İSTANBUL bilgesam@bilgesam.org Phone: Fax: All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied, transmitted without the written permission of BILGESAM.

2 NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership Page 2 a further deterioration of already tense relations with the Russian Federation. From 2004 onward, institutional ties with NATO grew rapidly: Georgia made increasing use of the tools and mechanisms for military transformation it had been offered by the Alliance in the 1990s -- such as the PfP Planning and Review Process (PARP) -- and was the first country to elaborate an Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP) in In the same year, a NATO Liaison Officer for the South Caucasus was placed within the Georgian Ministry of Defense. In parallel, the Saakashvili administration sought continuous U.S. assistance to train and advise the Georgian Armed Forces (GAF) in order to build military capacities. It underlined the country s readiness to join NATO by dispatching troops to Iraq in the framework of the international coalition carrying out Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). By mid-2008, more than 2,000 Georgian soldiers were deployed to that country, mainly in infantry units serving alongside U.S. Forces. 2008: Zenith of ambition and disappointment The political process of integrating Georgia into NATO arguably reached its zenith at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, in April The U.S. administration under George W. Bush was in favor of granting Tbilisi a Membership Action Plan (MAP), and thereby a clear road map to integration, as were most of the new NATO members in Central and Eastern Europe. They were opposed mainly by Germany, France, and Italy, who feared that Russian reactions to NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union beyond the Baltic States could endanger peace and stability in Europe. Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Moscow had become increasingly vocal in its criticism of what it termed NATO s encroachment on Russia s Near Abroad. Relations between Putin and Saakashvili were famously bad, with Saakashvili accusing Russia of meddling in Georgia s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin, in turn, regarded the UNM government in Georgia as a result of Western designs to bring to power in his neighborhood anti-russian political forces through a series of color revolutions. In the event, the opponents of a MAP for Georgia won the day in Bucharest but peace in the South Caucasus was shattered regardless -- or, as Georgia s NATO proponents would have it, precisely because the Alliance had dithered over giving the country a clear path to membership. After a series of provocations and tit-for-tat ceasefire violations between Georgian security forces and South Ossetian militias, war broke out over the break-away territory in the night of 7/8 August Russia, ostensibly to protect its citizens in the region and to retaliate for the loss of Russian peacekeepers killed in a Georgian attack on Tskhinval(i), intervened in the hostilities. Within a few days, Russian troops pushed Georgia s army out of South Ossetia and moved further into Georgian territory through both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, ransacking Georgian army bases in the process. Russian fighter jets bombed military and civilian targets in Georgia s west, south, and center regions. The Georgian navy and coast guard were all but annihilated in the Russian onslaught. The five days of war in August 2008 had devastating consequences for Georgia s military infrastructure, revealed severe deficiencies in

3 NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership Page 3 military strategy, doctrine as well as command and control, and effectively put a lid on the country s ambitions to join NATO. While the Alliance has since upheld its commitment at Bucharest that Georgia will become a NATO member, the effective timetable for membership has continued to slip. Nevertheless, Tbilisi has remained steadfast in its commitment to NATO integration: it has expanded institutional mechanisms for military cooperation through an Annual National Program (ANP) and the Military Committee with Georgian Work Plan (MC+GEO Work Plan). In addition, Georgia has joined various NATO programs that seek to enhance NATO- GAF interoperability and the further education and professionalization of Georgian service members and defense sector staff. Most visibly, since 2009 Georgia has contributed substantial troop contingents to NATO s missions in Afghanistan, first as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and, since early 2015, within the Resolute Support Mission (RSM). Not only did Georgia send the largest troop contribution of any non-nato member state and the largest per capita troop contribution of any country (with more than 1,500 service members deployed at its peak). Tbilisi also did not put national caveats on its contingents, resulting in them serving in the most dangerous and volatile areas of Afghanistan. More than 30 Georgian soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice in the framework of NATO s Afghanistan mission. A steady course since 2012 After the Georgian Dream coalition won the October 2012 parliamentary elections and replaced the UNM in government, Tbilisi kept up its overall course toward NATO integration, repeatedly demanding a MAP (or, failing receipt of this instrument, an alternative path toward membership) and continuing support to ISAF and RSM. Both the change of government in Georgia and the crisis in Ukraine, specifically Russia s annexation of Crimea and involvement in the armed conflict between Kiev and pro- Russian separatist rebels in the Donbas since early 2014 has, however, influenced the nuances of Georgian foreign and security policy. On the one side, the Georgian Dream government is a coalition of disparate political forces with vastly different outlooks on Euro-Atlantic integration processes. The defense portfolio has continuously been in the hands of avowedly pro-western political figures: first in those of Irakli Alasania, leader of Our Georgia -- Free Democrats, and -- after an alleged corruption scandal that precipitated Alasania s dismissal and the exit of his party from the governing coalition -- since April 2015 by Tinatin Khidasheli, Georgia s first female defense minister, a leading member of the Republican Party and wife of parliament speaker David Usupashvili. Khidasheli and Usupashvili, just like Alasania before them, have been particularly vocal in urging NATO to provide a clear road map for membership, warning of the risks Georgia (and its pro-western political forces) are facing in an unstable neighborhood marked by Russian bullying. 1 1 Parliament Speaker on Georgia s NATO Integration, Civil Georgia, July 23, 2015, php?id=28458; Georgian Defense Minister Urges NATO Enlargement, Civil Georgia, August 20, 2015,

4 NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership Page 4 For the first time since 2003, however, there have been voices within the Georgian governing coalition that have publicly called into question the country s NATO ambitions in the face of the Alliance s continued refusal to extend a firm and concrete offer of membership. 2 In between these end points of the coalition s spectrum of opinions, new Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili is steering a course that affirms Tbilisi s commitment to integration into Euro- Atlantic structures, albeit with a more moderate tone. The Prime Minister acknowledged during his visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels in December 2015 (then still as the country s Foreign Minister) that while Georgia would continue moving firmly and consistently on this path towards NATO membership, there had to be readiness within the Alliance itself to take a decision in favor of Georgia s accession. 3 On that count, Russia s actions in Ukraine have fueled fears, particularly among NATO members in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), about President Putin s designs to regain and strengthen Russia s influence over the countries of the former Soviet Union that Moscow still calls and regards as its Near Abroad. The Alliance moved to bolster reassurance measures in its CEE member states through NATO troop s rotations and beefed up maritime and air patrols. Nevertheless, it soon became clear that there was ge/eng/article.php?id=28511; Tbilisi Asking U.S. To Store Weaponry In Georgia, Eurasianet.org, December 11, 2015, 2 After 10 Years And 30 Deaths, Georgians Question Their NATO Ambitions, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, June 11, 2015, 3 Georgian FM Visits Brussels, Speaks of NATO Integration, Civil Georgia, December 1, 2015, civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=28821 little appetite to extend the security guarantees enshrined in Article V of the Washington Treaty to additional states at Russia s periphery, least of all to such putative members that would be hard to defend militarily and the incorporation of which would draw additional ire from Moscow. So, while NATO at the foreign ministerial of December 2015 invited Montenegro to start accession talks, it also reiterated that Georgia would not be able to skip the MAP process, as suggested by Defense Minister Khidasheli. The foreign ministers instead held out the promise that the 2016 Warsaw Summit would propose new mechanisms of intensified cooperation, over and beyond the substantive NATO-Georgia package put together at the Wales Summit in September Interestingly enough, while Defense Minister Khidasheli has kept demanding a firm commitment and timetable for Georgia s NATO membership, Deputy Foreign Minister David Dondua acknowledged at a meeting with opposition parliamentarians in October of last year that Georgia was again unlikely to receive the coveted MAP at the Warsaw Summit. In his remarks to lawmakers, Dondua said Georgian officials were continuously emphasizing the need for a MAP for Georgia in their talks with their NATO counterparts not because we have high hopes that we will be granted MAP, but because [of] bargaining purposes in order to have something significant as a result of the summit. 5 According to Dondua, this strategy 4 NATO Tells Georgia: MAP Remains Integral Part of Membership Path, Civil Georgia, December 2, 2015, 5 Georgian Deputy FM: MAP Not Expected at NATO Warsaw Summit, Civil Georgia, October 9, 2015,

5 NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership Page 5 was already applied in the run-up to the Wales Summit that resulted in the substantive package of reinforced cooperation extended by the Alliance. In terms of the implementation of this package, Georgia has received praise for the significant progress made since fall The most publicly visible component of the package has been the establishment of a Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC) accredited to provide capacity building for the enhancement of GAF interoperability with NATO forces and facilitate the participation of, and hosting by, Georgia of NATO military exercises. JTEC was inaugurated in August 2015 at the Krtsanisi National Training Center but little information on its precise scope of operations has been made available at this point. According to information released by NATO, training of Georgian military units at the Center should start in mid-2016 and be conducted also at Vaziani, Orfolo and Sachkhere training grounds. 6 The Georgian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment on the status of preparation and the extent of training envisaged at the JTEC in January Besides the establishment of JTEC, Georgia s annual bilateral military drills with U.S. forces Agile Spirit were in July 2015 transformed into NATO-Georgia exercises within the framework of the substantive package. In reality, the largest contingents of the approximately 1,000 troops were still provided by Georgia and the U.S., while Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania civil.ge/eng/article.php?id= Открытие центра НАТО в Грузии нагнетает напряженность с Россией, Caucasian Knot, August 28, 2015, each sent a platoon-sized contribution to the drills. 7 It is undeniable that the Georgia and NATO are developing ever closer institutional linkages, and that the GAF have become an important partner in NATO s out-of-area missions. Together with Sweden, Finland, Australia, and Jordan, Georgia is a member of the Enhanced Opportunity Partner s Group, through which partners are invited to closer military cooperation and enhanced political dialogue with the Alliance. In addition, a GAF infantry unit was certified in 2015 to participate in the NATO Response Force (NRF), a high readiness and technologically advanced force comprising land, air, sea, and special forces units capable of being deployed on short notice. Conclusion Without a doubt, NATO-Georgia military cooperation will continue and the partners will devise further tools and mechanisms to support Georgia s military transformation and the professionalization of its defense structure. A membership invitation, however, will not be forthcoming in the short and medium term, given the geopolitical focus of attention on stabilizing Ukraine and containing crises in the Middle East as well as Russia s strategy to check and, where possible, roll back Western influence in its neighboring countries. Recent rhetoric out of Tbilisi suggests that Georgian leadership for the most part realistically assesses the current limitations on its Euro-Atlantic strategic ambitions and aims to pragmatically 7 Военные из шести стран участвуют в учениях НАТО в Грузии, Caucasian Knot, July 8, 2015,

6 NATO and Georgia: The Ever Closer Partnership Page 6 maximize the benefits to be had for the defense sector in partnering with NATO. Watch out for careful political balancing acts in 2016 as Georgia, in the words of its new Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze, turns its challenges [into] opportunities by maximally present[ing] its positive role for the entire region. 8 8 Foreign Minister-Designate Speaks of Priorities, Civil Georgia, December 28, 2015, php?id=28888 About BILGESAM Established in 2008, the Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies (BILGESAM) is one of the leading think tanks in Turkey. As a non-profit, non-partisan organization BILGESAM operates under the guidance of a group of well-respected academics from different disciplines, retired military generals and diplomats; and aims to contribute regional and global peace and prosperity. Closely following the domestic and international developments, BILGESAM conducts research on Turkey s domestic problems, foreign policy and security strategies, and the developments in the neighbouring regions to provide the Turkish decision-makers with practical policy recommendations and policy options. About Author Marion Kipiani is a freelance consultant and expert on conflict transformation and post-conflict recovery, with recent assignments in Georgia, Jordan, and Egypt. She holds a MA in Peace Studies from the University of Hagen and a MSc in Busines Studes. Her research interests cover human rights, civilian peacebuilding, and good governance/democratization in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. She has published articles on conflicts in the Caucasus and Caspian Basin regions, Euro-Atlantic integration and regional security cooperation in the wider Black Sea region, and good governance, peace building, and civic engagement. In addition to her native German, Ms. Kipiani speaks English and French fluently; Spanish, Russian, and Georgian on basic conversational level.