Georgia Renews NATO Push
Georgia's defense minister is visiting Washington this week as the United States tries to bolster the defenses of its allies on Russia's borders.
Other than speaking at the Atlantic Council’s “Toward a Europe Whole and Free” conference, Defense Minister Irakli Alasania is scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and White House and State Department officials, though it's not known exactly what is on the agenda for these meetings.
Earlier this month, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Derek Chollet testified before Congress that the U.S. was seeking to support Georgia, among other countries, in the wake of Russia's aggressive moves in Ukraine:
Russia’s actions have also increased the sense of direct threat to our other non-Allied partners in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, particularly Moldova and Georgia. The Administration is already exploring ways to support these important partners. The U.S. government has tools at its disposal to contribute to this support effort, including security assistance resources, senior leader engagement, and defense cooperation activities. Notably, senior DoD and State officials visited Moldova last week, to review with Defense Ministry officials our continuing defense cooperation, and an interagency delegation plans to visit Georgia later this month.
It's not clear whether that delegation has taken place; if so, it appears not to have been reported publicly.
What is clear is that the Ukraine crisis has reinvigorated Georgia's quixotic quest for NATO membership. “It’s time for Georgia to receive an unequivocal and well-deserved signal that its integration to NATO is progressing,” State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Alex Petriashvili told Bloomberg. “As long as there’s uncertainty and ambivalence about NATO’s integration prospects, Georgia will be at risk of recurrent provocations on Russia’s part.” Georgia also has reportedly developed a proposal aimed at circumventing one of the most vexing issues related to its NATO prospects, the fact that it doesn't control parts of its territory.
While the U.S. has been a long-time supporter of Georgian accession into NATO, many U.S. officials say that the need for Georgia's NATO integration has been heightened by the Ukraine crisis. At the same hearing where Chollet testified, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that giving Georgia a NATO “Membership Action Plan” (MAP) at the alliance's upcoming summit in Wales would send “a very strong signal to both Russia and our allies.” Other senators like Marco Rubio (R-FL) and John McCain (R-AZ) have recently called for NATO membership for Georgia. And the U.S. State Department in February officially endorsed awarding Georgia a NATO MAP.
But Western European NATO members led by France and Germany have been more skeptical. And since NATO can only accept new members on a consensus basis, that means membership remains unlikely. “Georgians are well aware that they do not have consensus in the Alliance and that they have work to do to convince, particularly some of our western European allies, of their worthiness for the Membership Action Plan,” said Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, responding to Murray. “We are supportive of the Membership Action Plan,” Chollet added. “But as you know very well this is an Alliance’s decision, that’s not a decision the United States will make alone. We work closely with our Georgian partners through this process and it’s something that clearly will be a subject of conversation in months ahead as we lead up to the Wales summit.”
Speaking at the Atlantic Council conference, Alasania asked for greater U.S. support for NATO membership: “It is also important for the United States to show leadership… to make sure that next steps that NATO will make, for example at the summit in September, will be adequate response to what’s happening in Ukraine... We are talking about the Membership Action Plan, but we don’t really know how these discussions will end up, while, honestly, in fact after [developments in] Ukraine we should be talking about accession talks of Georgia and other aspirants to NATO."
NATO's flirtation with Georgia has long been a sore point in relations between the U.S. and Russia, and NATO expansion generally has become a flashpoint on both sides of the Ukraine crisis, with Russia citing its expansion as one of the main threats that Moscow was forced to confront in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his address announcing the annexation of Crimea, dwelled at length on NATO:
Our colleagues in the West... have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed us before an accomplished fact. This happened with NATO’s expansion to the East, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They kept telling us the same thing: 'Well, this does not concern you.' That’s easy to say...
We have already heard declarations from Kiev about Ukraine soon joining NATO. What would this have meant for Crimea and Sevastopol in the future? It would have meant that NATO’s navy would be right there in this city of Russia’s military glory, and this would create not an illusory but a perfectly real threat to the whole of southern Russia. These are things that could have become reality were it not for the choice the Crimean people made, and I want to say thank you to them for this.
But let me say too that we are not opposed to cooperation with NATO, for this is certainly not the case. For all the internal processes within the organisation, NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our backyard or in our historic territory. I simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course, most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round.
President Obama, who has rarely weighed in on Georgia's NATO membership prospects, said in March – in response to Putin's comments – that Tbilisi “was not on a path to NATO membership,” and while that was more a statement of fact than a recommendation, it nevertheless caused consternation in Tbilisi. But it seems clear the U.S. is planning some sort of concrete support for Georgia; we should find out soon whether or not it involves NATO.