TOL Georgia

MAP-ShMAP and other woes

April 12th, 2008 by jibs

Georgia’s hopes to gain the NATO Membership Act Plan at the Bucharest summit last week were dashed by a polite refusal from the alliance members. In exchange for the setback, Georgia was promised that the door which was open for it all these years, would now be wide open.

MAP has been on Georgians’ minds for a long time now. Ever since the Rose Revolution which brought into power the Western educated Mikheil Saakashvili, it all looked like a fairytale: a young democracy is was going to be rescued by the benign West.

MAP was going to be one of those rescue missions Georgians have been expecting for a long time. Only Georgia was refused, but with some encouragement: around December his year we will be having another tea gathering and we will look over this issue once more. Thank you, keep trying.

So why was Georgia refused MAP?

MAP is a process of preparing the country for entry into the NATO, which can take years — Albania for example kept it under the pillow for the whole 9 years. With Georgia’s territorial conflicts, uneasy neighborhood and explosive regional dynamics, to match Albania’s 9 years in the waiting line  for NATO would be an act of flabbergasting optimism.

This being said, MAP would only be the first step towards the NATO membership, which could be dragged out endlessly. It is essentially a political decision and without a strong political will within the alliance of a couple dozen countries with different views, there always will be something to point at. Even so, Georgia did not even get that green light which could be blinking for years.

In the meantime, some voices from the NATO are calling for reforming the whole idea of MAP — have something along the lines of “doors wide open, but no guarantees”. How cynical would that be if Georgia finally received a reformed MAP which would not guarantee the membership at the end of the day!

Another facet of refusal just has to be Georgia’s recent “hiccups” - situation in the country which saw a carefully crafted image of Beacon of Democracy fall under the category of “one of those special post Soviet democracies”.

The November 2007 events that grew into dispersal of the demonstrators, state of emergency, forceful shut down of TV stations, political reprisals and questionable presidential elections — just gave the NATO skeptic members superb arguments to postpone Georgia’s aspirations for another few annual meetings.

And it does make sense: NATO countries don’t want to worry about such things happening within their alliance. Four years ago, if one listened to Saakashvili, such a mess would be automatically excluded as “democratic institutions would ameliorate conflicts in a consensual manner”. But, things change…

There is of course the Russia factor. Russia has been vehemently opposing NATO’s expansion to its borders. Recently Russians have even threatened to use “all means” to stop this from happening. With oil and gas being a very handy commodity for the Europeans, it is unlikely that many would want to upset the reemerging and resourceful Russian bear.

But, it would be far fetched to say that Russia had pressured some of the alliance’s heavy weights to refuse MAP for Georgia. Hard to imagine that Germany’s Merkel or France’s Sarkozy would submit to blackmail from Russia, all while secretly dreaming of Georgia’s entry into NATO.

One other major factor is, of course, Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The temperature in these regions is usually high, and one would wonder, what would make the French for example worry about the South Ossetian rocky hills?

Georgia gaining MAP does not look likely in the near future. The alliance members have also specifically pointed to the May 21 parliamentarian elections as a test for Georgia’s readiness to join the elite club. Judging from the current stand point, the relationship between the authorities and the opposition is unlikely to bore an example that the Europeans would applaud to with excitement.

One way or another, if one shares Saakashvili’s vision, things are not that bad — even more, Georgia will become member of NATO within a couple of years, and had Georgia gotten MAP now, it would share the fate of those forever at NATO’s door losers such as Albania… And if only it weren’t for Russia…

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