Russia will be holding a series of military exercises in the North Caucasus, Armenia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia this fall, reportedly in preparation for a possible U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. The exercises, called Kavkaz-2012, will be held in September and won't be tactical/operational but strategic (i.e. won't involve large numbers of troops). The exercises will, however, include officers from the breakaway Georgian territories. The focus on surveillance, air defense and logistics suggests that Russia is tailoring the exercise to prepare for a U.S.-Israel-Iran war, says Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta:
As suggested by the head of the Center for Military Forecasting, Colonel Anatoly Tsyganok, "Preparations for the Kavkaz-2012 exercises seems to have begun already largely due to the increasing military tensions in the Persian Gulf." "In a possible war against Iran may be drawn some former Soviet countries of South Caucasus. How, then, to ensure the viability of Russian troops stationed abroad, for example, in Armenia? Apparently, the General Staff will plan some proactive measures, including learning to organize in critical logistic supply of troops," said the expert.
Georgia has released its new "National Security Concept" document, updating it from the 2005 version which said there was “little possibility of open military aggression against Georgia." Now, unsurprisingly, Russia dominates the document (pdf): of the twelve "Threats, Risks and Challenges to the National Security of Georgia" it identifies, ten are tied to Russia and its role in the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Equally unsurprisingly, the U.S. tops the list in the document's section on "Strengthening foreign relationships." But the rest of the list is interesting to peruse. Ukraine is the second country mentioned, ranking as a "strategic partner." Turkey is next, as "Georgia’s leading partner in the region," with cooperation in trade, energy and military spheres. It then cites the importance of relations with "Central and Southeast European and Scandinavian states," as well as Moldova and Belarus, but for whatever reason doesn't mention Western Europe at all (though of course the EU and NATO as organizations are prominently featured). There is a whole paragraph on Latin America and the Caribbean, but no mention of France, Germany, the UK? No doubt the Western European reluctance to admit Georgia into NATO is the major factor there.
A new U.S. law mandating a "normalization" of defense relations with Georgia won't change anything between Washington and Tbilisi, says a U.S. diplomat. Philip Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, gave a press conference for foreign press on Monday and a Russian reporter asked him about the new law:
[O]n Georgia, I don’t think it changes our approach so far. We have a security relationship with Georgia that has significantly been focused on education and training, and on Georgia’s hugely important commitment to Afghanistan. Georgia, on a per capita basis, is one of the most, either first or second, biggest contributors to Afghanistan. They have, even in recent days, taken casualties. And it underscores the risks that they are taking on our common behalf, protecting common security, and we will continue to work with Georgia on that basis.
Where specific weapons sales are concerned, we treat it like we do with other countries. They’re taken a case-by-case basis, taking a lot of factors into account. But we’ll continue that security relationship with Georgia in all of those ways.
This puts a little meat on the skeleton of President Obama's signing statement, in which he declared his intention to ignore the law. Civil.ge, reporting on Gordon's comments, notes that they are in line with what the Obama administration has been saying all along:
The presidential campaign in the U.S. has begun in earnest, with Republicans in New Hampshire going to the polls tomorrow to choose who they want to challenge Barack Obama in November. If, as expected, Mitt Romney wins there (as he did in Iowa last week) it will come pretty close to guaranteeing that he is the Republicans' candidate. So, what do we know about what a President Romney might do in The Bug Pit's world?
Not much. The biggest clue is his rhetoric on Russia which, not surprisingly, is hostile. From his campaign's foreign policy white paper (pdf):
Upon taking office, Mitt Romney will reset the reset. He will implement a strategy that will seek to discourage aggressive or expansionist behavior on the part of Russia and encourage democratic political and economic reform.
The two greatest impacts that the reset has has on the Caucasus and Central Asia are 1. allowing cooperation with Russia over the Northern Distribution Network to transport military materiel to Afghanistan and 2. holding Georgia at somewhat arm's length (at least compared to the enthusiastic embrace of Obama's predecessor, President Bush).
Romney suggests he'd be much less conciliatory on missile defense than Obama has been, which could put the NDN into jeopardy (Russia has frequently suggested that those two issues are linked). Would Romney risk it? One could plausibly argue that a missile shield encircling Russia would be more useful to the U.S. in the long run than a supply route to a doomed theater of war which the U.S. is supposed to start withdrawing from in 2014, anyway. But his military advisers would no doubt push him to not do anything to threaten the NDN.
"C'mon, Barry! Just a few anti-tank missiles. Please!"
President Obama has said he will treat as non-binding a law calling on him to "normalize" defense relations with Georgia, including selling defensive weapons to Tbilisi. In a presidential signing statement* first reported by Civil.ge, Obama said that Section 1242 of the defense authorization bill, the part dealing with Georgia, would interfere with his authority to carry out foreign policy:
Sections 1231, 1240, 1241, and 1242 could be read to require the disclosure of sensitive diplomatic communications and national security secrets; and sections 1235, 1242, and 1245 would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with foreign governments. Like section 1244, should any application of these provisions conflict with my constitutional authorities, I will treat the provisions as non-binding.
When the bill was passed by Congress, it was a bit of a mystery why Moscow wasn't going ballistic (metaphorically) over it and Tbilisi wasn't gloating. This may be the answer. U.S. diplomats probably were telling their interlocutors: "We don't intend to actually do this." So, it looks like Georgia, in its effort to get a hold of some new American weapons, is back to square one.
*If you're not familiar with signing statements, they're basically an extra-legal way for the president to tell Congress "Thanks for the advice, but no."
The government of Georgia has agreed to pay the Israeli defense contractor Elbit $35 million to settle a lawsuit. In April, Elbit announced that they were suing Georgia for $100 million for failure to pay for equipment it bought in 2007. Neither side has commented much on the suit, but it would appear to be related to Georgia's purchase of 40 Hermes 450 aerial drones from Elbit. From an Elbit press release:
Elbit Systems Ltd. announced today, further to its announcement dated April 8, 2011 regarding the filing of a lawsuit against the Government of Georgia ("Georgia"), that the Company and Georgia have signed settlement agreements for settling all claims and disputes.
According to the settlement, Georgia will pay the Company an amount of approximately $35 million and will also return to the Company certain equipment and sub-systems, that were supplied to Georgia by the Company in the past, against the full release of the initial claims.
So are they returning some of the drones?
Earlier this month, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili also pardoned two Israeli businessmen and settled the case they were jailed for, an episode that had strained relations between the two countries. It's not clear whether the Elbit settlement is related to that, but the timing is suggestive.
Jamie Kirchik, writing in The Tablet, says the resolution of the case of the jailed businessmen opens the door for an improvement of Georgian-Israeli relations, which also have been strained over various arms sales between Russia, Israel, Georgia and Israel's foes (including Syria and Iran). One sign of the improving relationship:
When news broke last week that the U.S. Congress had mandated that the Obama administration "normalize" military relations with Georgia, which would include the sale of defensive weapons to Tbilisi, it seemed inevitable that this would spark a furious reaction from Moscow. The Kremlin had said that this, more than anything else, was the issue that would ruin the reset. And Russia has been overreacting to all sorts of related issues lately, like a slight shift in NATO's rhetoric towards Georgia. The Kremlin tried to gin up a controversy about Georgia harboring anti-Russia "terrorists," and has made several threats about the U.S.'s European missile defense plans.
And yet, it's now a week after Congress passed the law, and the response from Moscow is... crickets. I've asked a variety of knowledgable sources in Moscow, Tbilisi and Washington for their theories on this. Here are some of their ideas:
-- Russia is too occupied with its own domestic crisis to worry about Georgia. This might have something to do with it, but if so, it would invalidate Georgians' theories that the recent "terror" plot was a ploy by the Kremlin to rally the Russian public around an external enemy. If they were looking to do that, this very real action by Congress would have been a lot more useful a foil than an apparently imagined terror plot.
Georgians nostalgic for the sweet, Christmas smell of a fir tree might feel a lot like Charlie Brown this holiday. While “big, shiny aluminum” trees abound, homegrown Georgian fir trees are a rarity in Tbilisi this year.
The lack of real fir trees is somewhat ironic for Georgia, given the country’s reputation as a vital source of cones for fir tree nurseries in Denmark. But new regulations, and higher fines, for illegally cutting fir trees could be having a Grinch-like effect on the local market.
While the city appears flooded with artificial trees, there are currently less than a handful of fir tree sellers braving the December cold to sell the genuine article.
Two of Tbilisi’s four official Christmas tree lots are empty; a third boasts one lone seller with two scraggly trees cut from his front yard in western Georgia.
A new, stricter policy to weed out illegal logging could be to blame for the lackluster selection of local Christmas trees. Higher fines, more forest monitoring and a document registering the origin of the tree are all designed to tighten control over illegal logging, noted Nino Endukidze, a deputy minister at the Georgian Ministry of Energy and National Resources.
The new fines start at 500 lari (approximately $300) for the first offense if the fir tree has been cut down for personal use, and double to 1,000 lari ($600) if the tree has been illegally cut down by a registered business, she said. But Endukidze denied that the restrictions are to blame for the apparent lack of fir trees this season.
The military spending bill passed this week by Congress includes a provision calling on the U.S. to "normalize" military relations with Georgia, including the sale of weapons. The timing of the bill (which still has to be signed by President Obama) is provocative, coming as U.S.-Russia relations have been going through a rough spell and the Kremlin accused Georgia of harboring anti-Russian terrorists on its soil. Meanwhile, things seem to have been going Georgia's way; in addition to this news, the U.S. and NATO have noted "significant progress" in Georgia's NATO accession process, and NATO officially designated Georgia as an "aspirant" country for the first time.
The bill (pdf) includes a section 1242 (full text below) on Georgia, which calls on the Secretaries of Defense and State to develop a plan within 90 days "for the normalization of United States defense cooperation with the Republic of Georgia, including the sale of defensive arms." It also calls on NATO and NATO candidate countries "to restore and enhance their sales of defensive articles and services to the Republic of Georgia as part of a broader NATO effort to deepen its defense relationship and cooperation with the Republic of Georgia."
Russia's Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev claimed that Georgia is harboring anti-Russia terrorists, in an interview with the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty on Wednesday:
“The multi-ethnic peoples of Russia and Georgia are inextricably tied to each other. Saakashvili is carrying out a policy that is far from the interests of the Georgian people. More and more Georgian soldiers are being sent to take part in combat operations abroad [in ISAF operation in Afghanistan]. Training of individuals for carrying out terrorist acts in Russia is conducted on the territory of Georgia”, Patrushev said.
To some observers, the timing of that statement is suspicious, coming just days after the huge protests that have made the Russian government look vulnerable for the first time since Vladimir Putin took power in 2000. The Georgian government-run PIK-TV suggested that Patrushev's comments were meant to distract people from internal issues and rally around the central government. Their video report is in Russian, but helpfully subtitled in English. They interview Giorgi Baramidze, minister for Euro-Atlantic integration:
“Unfortunately it is not the first stupid and groundless statement that the Russian government has made. It is likely to have been caused by the intensified tension in its internal politics.”
And Alexey Malashenko, of the Carnegie Moscow Center:
