Georgia and NATO: So Close, No Matter How Far

Just get in better democratic and military shape and you are almost there, guys, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization told ever-aspiring NATO member Georgia during a November 9-10 visit to Tbilisi.  The country may have heard this line before, but, for many Georgians, it still sounds like music to their ears.

"Georgia has come a lot closer to NATO" since the alliance's 2008 Bucharest Summit, asserted NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. “Further reform will be Georgia’s ticket to membership. And NATO is here to help.”

Parliamentary Speaker Davit Bakradze took it a notch higher, saying “boldly” (in the words of one Georgian news service) that Georgia is now “closer to NATO than ever.” He expressed hope that the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago would bring Georgia still closer to the military club.

And, to sweeten the pitch, Tbilisi pledged to beef up its military presence to NATO's Afghanistan campaign still further next year, with another battalion. At 937 personnel, it currently ranks as the second largest non-NATO contributor (after Australia at 1,550). Even after the loss of ten personnel, it looks like Georgia wants to top the charts.

But, as it pulls itself toward the alliance -- ever closer, ever closer -- Georgia remains mired in a conflict with Russia and two separatist regions that make NATO accession far from a paint-by-the-numbers project.

The mere thought of NATO expansion into the South Caucasus gives Moscow a fit of paranoia, and some heavyweight NATO members are not exactly keen to make Georgia’s headaches their own.

Yet such realpolitik matters are largely glossed over during NATO's recurring Tbilisi visitations. Rasmussen, expressing thanks for the Afghanistan assistance, declared that the country has come a long way “in ensuring that the military is properly sized and structured,” and that its democratic credentials are looking better. Meanwhile, he's keeping an eye on the 2012 parliamentary election as a "key benchmark" for democratic reform.

Whether the progress in either area will ever be sufficient to result in an actual membership offer -- Moscow be damned -- remains unclear, however.

But Georgians can be stubborn. To paraphrase a local saying, if you keep asking a tree to die, it will die eventually.