Pentagon Official In Tbilisi Working Out "New Level" Of Defense Cooperation

Georgia MoD

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili visits Afghanistan Feb. 20

A top Pentagon official is visiting Tbilisi this week, and high on the agenda will be hammering out the details of the much vaunted "new level" of defense cooperation between the U.S. and Georgia. As was the case during President Mikheil Saakashvilil's recent visit to Washington, there was a rhetorical disconnect between the U.S. and Georgian sides about what is the way ahead for military ties between the two allies.

The Georgian side again focused on the concept of "self-defense capabilities," i.e. weapons. “The United States is very much interested in increasing Georgia’s self-defense capabilities,” said Nino Kalandadze, the deputy foreign minister.

The American side, by contrast, focused on more institutional reforms in the Georgian military, as could be seen in the speech the Pentagon official, Celeste Wallander, gave at Georgia's National Defense Academy. While Wallander said that the two sides are "advancing our relationship into new areas of cooperation," she spent far more time lecturing the cadets on the need for the military to be apolitical, suggesting that was more important than any hardware:

There are some out there who question the progress being made here. We want to emphasize to you that from our perspective, the most important and most effective step you could take to convince these skeptics is to unequivocally demonstrate that you clearly understand and are capable of the appropriate conduct and the proper role of a military in a democracy. This is more important than acquiring any weapons or military hardware, gaining any critical combat skills, or becoming interoperable with any coalition forces. To pass the ultimate test of your Euro-Atlantic integration aspirations, you must demonstrate that the Georgian military understands its role in a fully democratic, European Georgia - the kind of country I know all citizens of Georgia are now working hard to create.

And she made explicit the connection between U.S. and Western support for Georgia's military and the fair conduct of upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections:

Nothing, I believe, would undermine support for your NATO aspirations or empower those already skeptical of your European integration more than behavior or activities that are inconsistent with a democratic, modem, European country. This year and next year, more than ever, the world is watching Georgia to see if your current reform efforts will support a competitive campaign environment and elections that result in a free and fair democratic transition of power that represents the will of the Georgian people.

In an unhappy coincidence, just before Wallander arrived in Tbilisi three Georgian solders were killed in Afghanistan, raising the death toll among Georgians there to 15. Saakashvili has been pretty explicit about the fact that Georgian soldiers are in Afghanistan to gain points with the U.S., and the longer that Georgia fails to get anything concrete for that sacrifice the harder it will be politically for him to maintain the huge commitment Georgia demonstrates in Afghanistan. No doubt mindful of that, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called his Georgian counterpart Bachana Akhalaia to express his condolences, and then put out a press release on the call.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, in a meeting with Russian army commanders, spoke at length about what he called the "open secret" that the U.S. is already rearming Georgia, reports Civil.ge:

[Putin] said that the U.S. started “rearming” Georgia “immediately” after the August 2008 war.

“I think it’s a huge mistake, because the current leadership of Georgia carries out clearly an aggressive policy and supply of arms to the armed forces of a country, which carries out aggressive policy always inevitably encourages it on aggressive actions...”

“We know that, we see that and we react appropriately, but not publicly, on that,” the Russian Prime Minister said.

“We judge not based on words, but based on concrete actions, which are easily traced not only through foreign intelligence but through GRU [Russia's military intelligence service] too… Movement of vessels, volume of cargo – all these are controlled quite easily with the help of satellite and other means of surveillance – I have been showed some of these [means] here today,” Putin said.

“We are constantly raising the issue with them [the U.S.]. I very much hope, that the Georgian side will have enough common sense and lesson taught for adventurous policy of the Georgian leadership will not be in vain and I hope these weapons will not be used for new aggressive actions,” Putin said.

The Bug Pit has been closely following the U.S.-weapons-to-Georgia issue, and has yet to uncover any evidence that there have been any arms supply to Georgia. And the world's many excellent investigative journalists have yet to discover this "open secret," either. Georgia, in fact, has been complaining that there is a de facto arms "embargo" on their country. (The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, incidentally, made a statement responding formally to other parts of Putin's speech but ignored his claims about arms supply altogether, perhaps hoping that letting those claims stand might boost the perception of a "new level" of U.S.-Georgia defense cooperation.)

So, Vladimir Vladimirovich: should you ever decide you want to leak any of the information your intelligence services have gleaned about secret U.S. arms transfers to Georgia, you know where to write.