The problem with Georgia

Let’s start with a fairly simple and obvious observation – if the United States had wanted the Republic of Georgia in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the invitation would have been offered years ago. As we know, however, no such invitation ever arrived. Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili may be correct when he asserted that the Russians wouldn’t have invaded had Georgia secured NATO membership, but the beginning of this current conflict perhaps illustrates why Georgia wasn’t invited in the first place.

The ostensible reason Georgia is waiting for NATO membership is the unresolved disputes with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but there are hints that these outstanding issues are merely a pretense for delay. Given Article 5 of the NATO charter, which considers an attack against one member as an attack against all, there are heavy responsibilities that the political leadership of each NATO nation must bear. When so much, collectively, is riding on the responses and reactions of individual leaders, NATO members simply cannot have serious doubts about the wisdom and levelheadedness of their fellow members. There is a need to speak with one voice and a need to act in a coordinated way. There is no room for loose cannons in NATO, because one idiot move, much like Sarajevo in 1914, could embroil the world in pointless warfare.

As a group, US journalists are pretty ignorant concerning Georgia, and this is both bad and good; it’s bad in the sense that they are challenged to inform Americans about the historical and current events that have shaped the region, but good in the sense that there is no cultural baggage associated with the country. Compare the typical bland American opinion or news piece with the following, an editorial from a German newspaper titled “Of Helpless Hotheads and Half-Baked Warriors”:

Mikhail Saakashvili, the young hothead sitting in the president’s chair in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, wants to rein in two breakaway provinces lost in the bloody wars of secession in the early 1990s, a period when hundreds of thousands of his countrymen were forced to leave their homes overnight. One of Saakashvili’s key campaign promises was to enable them to return to their ancestral home, an understandable wish that no Georgian president could ignore. It is as if the Lusatian Sorbs, a tiny Slavic ethnic group that settled in the border region between modern-day Germany and Poland in the 6th century A.D., had suddenly taken control of a slice of the German state of Brandenburg and driven everyone else out, or as if the Bavarians ... But let’s leave it at that.

The essay also characterizes the Georgians as “choleric” and “once-so-cosmopolitan.” Characterizations of this kind have been repeated several times in the European press and give voice to a certain stereotype concerning the Georgians (hotheaded and unpredictable). We can debate whether there is any truth in the stereotype, but, as StrategyPage.com asserted yesterday,

It’s not yet clear what the Georgian government was thinking when they allowed the border skirmishing to escalate to a military effort to restore government control over South Ossetia. It didn’t work, as the Russians promptly counterattacked and drove the Georgian troops out of South Ossetia. The Georgians can try a guerilla war, and hope that their new relationship with the United States and the European Union will add some measure of protection. That’s a false hope.

That’s just the thing – the Georgians weren’t thinking at all, and we can’t have NATO members going off the rails and provoking nuclear-capable foes. This conflict might have the effect – if Mr. Saakashvili survives it – of accelerating Georgian membership in NATO, but I would have reservations about having the Georgians join us if they can’t keep their tempers in check.