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Russia Profile, Russia
June 1 2007
Intent to Remain
By Daria Vaisman
Special to Russia Profile
Georgia Wants Out of the CIS, but Not Quite Yet
This February, the Georgian parliament's ruling majority voted once
again to postpone a vote on a proposal calling for the country's
withdrawal from the CIS, after an earlier postponement of the same
vote two months previously. Opposition members, who had initiated the
bill but softened its wording to encourage President Mikheil
Saakashvili to push it through, reacted with the usual mixture of
frustration and incredulity to what they perceived as the ruling
party's needless intransigence on the issue of withdrawal. `I cannot
understand why we can't cut those hidden ties that still keep us in
the CIS,' MP Zviad Dzidziguri, speaking on behalf of the opposition
Conservative Party, told parliament. `I cannot see any reason, any
argument that can speak in favor of our CIS membership.'
Rather than disagree with this assessment, however, the ruling party
responded to the vote's demurral by promising that CIS withdrawal was
a reality whose time would eventually come. `We will quit the CIS,'
parliamentary chairperson Nino Burjanadze said, `but will do that
only when it is most beneficial for Georgia.'
But when? For the past year, the ideal timing for Georgia's
withdrawal from the CIS has topped the list of public debates,
further fractionalized both the opposition and the ruling party, and
galvanized the publicÑsurprising, perhaps, considering the general
perception that the CIS serves little practical purpose, nor impedes
Georgia's westward integration in any meaningful way. Both Georgian
opposition and ruling party politicians have dismissed the CIS as a
moribund institution with few quantifiable benefits in political,
economic, or security spheres; they claim that the organization is
little more than a vehicle for CIS superstate Russia to dominate the
policies of its other members.
Moving Away From Russia
The intensity of the debates, however, lies in Georgia's overwhelming
desire to further distance itself from Russia. CIS withdrawal is
considered to be one of the final steps in the country's long and
laborious divorce from Russia, following the removal of two Russian
bases from Georgia's territory last year. That move, and the promise
of CIS withdrawal, has received overwhelming support from a public
perhaps more antagonistic to Russian influence than even
Saakashvili's pro-Western party. `It's good for Misha that the
opposition is pushing to leave CIS sooner rather than later,' said
Georgian analyst Ghia Nodia. `It demonstrates that while people say
he is radical, the opposition is more radical and he is more
reasonable and prudent.'
Georgia had made gestures towards leaving the CIS before - in
November 2004, when Defense Minister Giorgi Baramidze justified his
absence from a Moscow-based CIS defense ministerial meeting by
calling the organization `yesterday's history' - but the fiercest
debates on withdrawal only began in earnest during the first signs of
Georgia's worsening relationship with Russia this past year.
Discussions over CIS withdrawal have since followed an arc that
parallels the country's mercurial relationship with its northern
neighbor. Following Russia's wine and water embargo on Georgia in May
of last year, Saakashvili set up a high-level committee to assess the
economic repercussions of leaving the CIS. Countering whispers that
withdrawal was imminent, however, Saakashvili concluded that
membership better served Georgia's interests for the time being.
Looking Towards Nato
In part, Saakasvhili is working on the premise that while CIS
membership may serve little practical benefit, it does not pose any
major obstacles to Georgia's future plans, at least for the time
being. In 1999, Georgia declined to renew its membership in the
CIS's main military body, the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO), opting instead to focus more heavily on GUAM, a security
alliance made up of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova that was
created as a counterpart to the CIS and seen as a way to counter
Russia's influence in the region. Leaving the CSTO - which stipulates
that members are not able to join other military alliances - has
removed the greatest obstacle to Georgia's most immediate foreign
policy objective, which is eventual integration into NATO. Last
February, Georgia withdrew from the CIS's other military arm, the
Council of Defense Ministers, with Saakashvili pronouncing that
Georgia `has taken a course to join NATO' and would not be part of
two military structures simultaneously.
With the defense council and CSTO out of the way, CIS membership is
no longer incompatible with NATO, which has not demanded that Georgia
withdraw from the CIS even as Georgia has entered a fast-track stage
toward NATO membership. `Whatever the history was, now that the CIS
is neither an alliance nor a collective security organization, it's
not clear that there is any reason for it to be in opposition to
NATO, which is both an alliance and a security organization,' said
Jonathan Kulick, director of studies at the Georgian Foundation for
Strategic and International Studies, a Tbilisi-based think tank.
Ironically, it was Georgia's desire to reap the benefits of a CIS-led
security force that was behind the country's original motivation for
joining the organization. Georgia was the last of the CIS members to
join the organization, signing up only in May 1993 when Eduard
Shevardnadze needed to bring in CIS peacekeepers, who could subdue
the violence that had shaken the conflict zones of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. `They had to accept the peacekeepers,' said Stephen Blank,
professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College
Strategic Studies Institute. `I don't think they had a choice. The
country was falling apart, and it stopped the war.'
Now, it is the continued presence of these same peacekeepers in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia that has created one of the few real
drawbacks to Georgia's CIS membership and has been a source of much
of the ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia. Georgia has
continued to agitate for the removal of CIS peacekeepers in both
conflict zones, to be replaced by an international peacekeeping
force, yet has been unable to secure international support to call
for their removal. But while the mandate negotiated in 1993 provides
for a CIS peacekeeping force, others question its legitimacy to date.
`According to international law, there is some dispute over whether
the CIS has devolved all of their military functions,' said Kulick.
`People argue that the CIS mandate for peacekeeping in Abkhazia is no
such mandate - not to mention that the CIS just rubberstamped what
was a Russian operation.'
Trying to Find a Reason to Stay
For Georgia, the most compelling reason to remain in the CIS has been
its desire to extend a fig leaf to Russia after the fallout from the
public expulsion of four Russians accused of spying, along with
general criticism that Georgia has been excessively provocative
towards Russia. In recent months, Georgia has tried to repair some of
the damage, refraining from making overt anti-Russian statements and
initiating several bilateral meetings where the possibility of
reopening transport links was discussed.
Georgia's political elite worry that withdrawing from the CIS now
will be taken as another provocation against Russia, and the decision
not to antagonize Russia needlessly - at least until Georgia has an
equally strong ally in the form of NATO - is seen as the most
politically expedient choice. `Just leaving the CIS would be used
against Georgia for being provocative, which we do not want to be and
which we are not. We are only reacting in the cases when our real
national interests are at stake,' said influential Georgian National
Party MP Giga Bokeria. Nodia agrees: `I think the thinking of this
government - and I agree with it - is that the CIS is a marginal
organization and not very important,' he said. `On the other hand, it
doesn't make sense to leave the CIS, because Georgia should not be
seen as too radical or doing something to spite Russia. So why not
demonstrate that we are rational?'
Speaking to politicians and analysts, an apparent paradox emerges:
Georgia's perception of the CIS as a weak institution has been
precisely the reason it has delayed withdrawal. `They can make those
sorts of concessions precisely because it is a largely meaningless
organization that doesn't have any practical function,' said Kulick.
`If in fact CIS membership would actually preclude NATO membership or
put up any sort of barrier to it, I don't think they'd spend ten
seconds deliberating whether to leave or not.'
Others, such as Blank, point out that CIS membership offers Georgia
more than mere symbolic value as a placeholder vis-a-vis Russia - CIS
membership gives Georgia a forum to negotiate on its own behalf.
According to Blank, `the benefit of being in the CIS is that it is
essentially an area where they can talk to and about Russia all at
once. The Georgians leaving the CIS deprives them of a way of talking
to and about Russia to the successor states.' If Georgia had not been
a CIS member this past year, he suggests, the fallout from worsening
Russian-Georgian relations might have been more severe. `If Georgia
isn't in the CIS, they have no way of influencing CIS policy against
them, and may be vulnerable to its decisions. There's a French
proverb that says the absent ones are always wrong.'
Others disagree, pointing out that Russian policies against Georgia
were initiated regardless of the position of other CIS member states.
`This row with Russia showed that if Russia thinks differently [than
the other CIS countries], being in the CIS is useless, or of a very
limited benefit,' said Nodia. Kulick agrees. `I don't see how being
in the CIS makes Georgia any less obstinate from Moscow's
perspective, or how leaving the CIS would preclude any opportunities
for reconciliation,' he said.
While relations with Russia have worsened this past year, Georgia has
managed to strengthen its ties to several other CIS countries -
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan in particular. `The [CIS]
relationship is beneficial both for Georgia and our other partners in
the CIS,' said Bokeria. Ukraine, a fellow GUAM member, remains a
strategic partner with a long-standing friendship with Georgia,
despite recent changes in leadership. And Kazakhstan has quickly
become Georgia's largest investor, putting up hundreds of millions of
dollars to build hotels and resorts in Tbilisi and in the Black Sea
town of Batumi. In March, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev
announced that the country is considering buying a $1 billion oil
refinery in Batumi's port. Most promising, perhaps, is a growing
alliance between Azerbaijan and Georgia, as the two countries build a
South Caucasus trade and energy corridor that links Azerbaijan
through Georgia to Turkey and straight to Europe. This will give many
countries an energy export route that bypasses Russia and will also
improve trade links between the countries of the South Caucasus, with
the exception of Armenia, which has been cut out of such projects due
to its conflicts with both Azerbaijan and Turkey. Azerbaijan will
fund Georgia's $220 million share of a new Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan
railroad, and stepped in this winter to provide low-priced gas from
its Shah Deniz field when Gazprom promised to double Georgia's energy
prices.
But while Georgia has benefited from bilateral relations with its
fellow CIS countries, Bokeria points out that these deals were
negotiated outside the framework of the CIS. As for the number of CIS
treaties that provide favorable customs and tax benefits to Georgia
vis-a-vis its member states, he says that these will be renegotiated
as bilateral treaties if and when Georgia decides to withdraw. `The
things which are together with the CIS can be replaced - all of them.
It will just be technical work, nothing else,' he said. For the time
being, however, Georgia sees no point in drawing up such treaties.
`There are no immediate plans to leave the CIS right now,' said
Bokeria, `although there is a very wide consensus that it's not our
future. Our future is somewhere else - NATO and Europe, not within
the CIS.'
http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=Int ernational&articleid=a1180619791
June 1 2007
Intent to Remain
By Daria Vaisman
Special to Russia Profile
Georgia Wants Out of the CIS, but Not Quite Yet
This February, the Georgian parliament's ruling majority voted once
again to postpone a vote on a proposal calling for the country's
withdrawal from the CIS, after an earlier postponement of the same
vote two months previously. Opposition members, who had initiated the
bill but softened its wording to encourage President Mikheil
Saakashvili to push it through, reacted with the usual mixture of
frustration and incredulity to what they perceived as the ruling
party's needless intransigence on the issue of withdrawal. `I cannot
understand why we can't cut those hidden ties that still keep us in
the CIS,' MP Zviad Dzidziguri, speaking on behalf of the opposition
Conservative Party, told parliament. `I cannot see any reason, any
argument that can speak in favor of our CIS membership.'
Rather than disagree with this assessment, however, the ruling party
responded to the vote's demurral by promising that CIS withdrawal was
a reality whose time would eventually come. `We will quit the CIS,'
parliamentary chairperson Nino Burjanadze said, `but will do that
only when it is most beneficial for Georgia.'
But when? For the past year, the ideal timing for Georgia's
withdrawal from the CIS has topped the list of public debates,
further fractionalized both the opposition and the ruling party, and
galvanized the publicÑsurprising, perhaps, considering the general
perception that the CIS serves little practical purpose, nor impedes
Georgia's westward integration in any meaningful way. Both Georgian
opposition and ruling party politicians have dismissed the CIS as a
moribund institution with few quantifiable benefits in political,
economic, or security spheres; they claim that the organization is
little more than a vehicle for CIS superstate Russia to dominate the
policies of its other members.
Moving Away From Russia
The intensity of the debates, however, lies in Georgia's overwhelming
desire to further distance itself from Russia. CIS withdrawal is
considered to be one of the final steps in the country's long and
laborious divorce from Russia, following the removal of two Russian
bases from Georgia's territory last year. That move, and the promise
of CIS withdrawal, has received overwhelming support from a public
perhaps more antagonistic to Russian influence than even
Saakashvili's pro-Western party. `It's good for Misha that the
opposition is pushing to leave CIS sooner rather than later,' said
Georgian analyst Ghia Nodia. `It demonstrates that while people say
he is radical, the opposition is more radical and he is more
reasonable and prudent.'
Georgia had made gestures towards leaving the CIS before - in
November 2004, when Defense Minister Giorgi Baramidze justified his
absence from a Moscow-based CIS defense ministerial meeting by
calling the organization `yesterday's history' - but the fiercest
debates on withdrawal only began in earnest during the first signs of
Georgia's worsening relationship with Russia this past year.
Discussions over CIS withdrawal have since followed an arc that
parallels the country's mercurial relationship with its northern
neighbor. Following Russia's wine and water embargo on Georgia in May
of last year, Saakashvili set up a high-level committee to assess the
economic repercussions of leaving the CIS. Countering whispers that
withdrawal was imminent, however, Saakashvili concluded that
membership better served Georgia's interests for the time being.
Looking Towards Nato
In part, Saakasvhili is working on the premise that while CIS
membership may serve little practical benefit, it does not pose any
major obstacles to Georgia's future plans, at least for the time
being. In 1999, Georgia declined to renew its membership in the
CIS's main military body, the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO), opting instead to focus more heavily on GUAM, a security
alliance made up of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova that was
created as a counterpart to the CIS and seen as a way to counter
Russia's influence in the region. Leaving the CSTO - which stipulates
that members are not able to join other military alliances - has
removed the greatest obstacle to Georgia's most immediate foreign
policy objective, which is eventual integration into NATO. Last
February, Georgia withdrew from the CIS's other military arm, the
Council of Defense Ministers, with Saakashvili pronouncing that
Georgia `has taken a course to join NATO' and would not be part of
two military structures simultaneously.
With the defense council and CSTO out of the way, CIS membership is
no longer incompatible with NATO, which has not demanded that Georgia
withdraw from the CIS even as Georgia has entered a fast-track stage
toward NATO membership. `Whatever the history was, now that the CIS
is neither an alliance nor a collective security organization, it's
not clear that there is any reason for it to be in opposition to
NATO, which is both an alliance and a security organization,' said
Jonathan Kulick, director of studies at the Georgian Foundation for
Strategic and International Studies, a Tbilisi-based think tank.
Ironically, it was Georgia's desire to reap the benefits of a CIS-led
security force that was behind the country's original motivation for
joining the organization. Georgia was the last of the CIS members to
join the organization, signing up only in May 1993 when Eduard
Shevardnadze needed to bring in CIS peacekeepers, who could subdue
the violence that had shaken the conflict zones of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. `They had to accept the peacekeepers,' said Stephen Blank,
professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College
Strategic Studies Institute. `I don't think they had a choice. The
country was falling apart, and it stopped the war.'
Now, it is the continued presence of these same peacekeepers in
Abkhazia and South Ossetia that has created one of the few real
drawbacks to Georgia's CIS membership and has been a source of much
of the ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia. Georgia has
continued to agitate for the removal of CIS peacekeepers in both
conflict zones, to be replaced by an international peacekeeping
force, yet has been unable to secure international support to call
for their removal. But while the mandate negotiated in 1993 provides
for a CIS peacekeeping force, others question its legitimacy to date.
`According to international law, there is some dispute over whether
the CIS has devolved all of their military functions,' said Kulick.
`People argue that the CIS mandate for peacekeeping in Abkhazia is no
such mandate - not to mention that the CIS just rubberstamped what
was a Russian operation.'
Trying to Find a Reason to Stay
For Georgia, the most compelling reason to remain in the CIS has been
its desire to extend a fig leaf to Russia after the fallout from the
public expulsion of four Russians accused of spying, along with
general criticism that Georgia has been excessively provocative
towards Russia. In recent months, Georgia has tried to repair some of
the damage, refraining from making overt anti-Russian statements and
initiating several bilateral meetings where the possibility of
reopening transport links was discussed.
Georgia's political elite worry that withdrawing from the CIS now
will be taken as another provocation against Russia, and the decision
not to antagonize Russia needlessly - at least until Georgia has an
equally strong ally in the form of NATO - is seen as the most
politically expedient choice. `Just leaving the CIS would be used
against Georgia for being provocative, which we do not want to be and
which we are not. We are only reacting in the cases when our real
national interests are at stake,' said influential Georgian National
Party MP Giga Bokeria. Nodia agrees: `I think the thinking of this
government - and I agree with it - is that the CIS is a marginal
organization and not very important,' he said. `On the other hand, it
doesn't make sense to leave the CIS, because Georgia should not be
seen as too radical or doing something to spite Russia. So why not
demonstrate that we are rational?'
Speaking to politicians and analysts, an apparent paradox emerges:
Georgia's perception of the CIS as a weak institution has been
precisely the reason it has delayed withdrawal. `They can make those
sorts of concessions precisely because it is a largely meaningless
organization that doesn't have any practical function,' said Kulick.
`If in fact CIS membership would actually preclude NATO membership or
put up any sort of barrier to it, I don't think they'd spend ten
seconds deliberating whether to leave or not.'
Others, such as Blank, point out that CIS membership offers Georgia
more than mere symbolic value as a placeholder vis-a-vis Russia - CIS
membership gives Georgia a forum to negotiate on its own behalf.
According to Blank, `the benefit of being in the CIS is that it is
essentially an area where they can talk to and about Russia all at
once. The Georgians leaving the CIS deprives them of a way of talking
to and about Russia to the successor states.' If Georgia had not been
a CIS member this past year, he suggests, the fallout from worsening
Russian-Georgian relations might have been more severe. `If Georgia
isn't in the CIS, they have no way of influencing CIS policy against
them, and may be vulnerable to its decisions. There's a French
proverb that says the absent ones are always wrong.'
Others disagree, pointing out that Russian policies against Georgia
were initiated regardless of the position of other CIS member states.
`This row with Russia showed that if Russia thinks differently [than
the other CIS countries], being in the CIS is useless, or of a very
limited benefit,' said Nodia. Kulick agrees. `I don't see how being
in the CIS makes Georgia any less obstinate from Moscow's
perspective, or how leaving the CIS would preclude any opportunities
for reconciliation,' he said.
While relations with Russia have worsened this past year, Georgia has
managed to strengthen its ties to several other CIS countries -
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan in particular. `The [CIS]
relationship is beneficial both for Georgia and our other partners in
the CIS,' said Bokeria. Ukraine, a fellow GUAM member, remains a
strategic partner with a long-standing friendship with Georgia,
despite recent changes in leadership. And Kazakhstan has quickly
become Georgia's largest investor, putting up hundreds of millions of
dollars to build hotels and resorts in Tbilisi and in the Black Sea
town of Batumi. In March, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev
announced that the country is considering buying a $1 billion oil
refinery in Batumi's port. Most promising, perhaps, is a growing
alliance between Azerbaijan and Georgia, as the two countries build a
South Caucasus trade and energy corridor that links Azerbaijan
through Georgia to Turkey and straight to Europe. This will give many
countries an energy export route that bypasses Russia and will also
improve trade links between the countries of the South Caucasus, with
the exception of Armenia, which has been cut out of such projects due
to its conflicts with both Azerbaijan and Turkey. Azerbaijan will
fund Georgia's $220 million share of a new Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan
railroad, and stepped in this winter to provide low-priced gas from
its Shah Deniz field when Gazprom promised to double Georgia's energy
prices.
But while Georgia has benefited from bilateral relations with its
fellow CIS countries, Bokeria points out that these deals were
negotiated outside the framework of the CIS. As for the number of CIS
treaties that provide favorable customs and tax benefits to Georgia
vis-a-vis its member states, he says that these will be renegotiated
as bilateral treaties if and when Georgia decides to withdraw. `The
things which are together with the CIS can be replaced - all of them.
It will just be technical work, nothing else,' he said. For the time
being, however, Georgia sees no point in drawing up such treaties.
`There are no immediate plans to leave the CIS right now,' said
Bokeria, `although there is a very wide consensus that it's not our
future. Our future is somewhere else - NATO and Europe, not within
the CIS.'
http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=Int ernational&articleid=a1180619791