NATO stirs the pot in Georgia

Here's one for the truly bad ideas file - next month NATO is planning to hold a large-scale exercise in Georgia. The exercise, dubbed "Cooperative Longbow 09/Cooperative Lancer 09" (and who is in charge of naming these things over at NATO anyway?), will bring together more than a dozen nations at a site just 12 miles from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

The NATO exercise comes less than a year after the Russia-Georgia conflict last August, and just as NATO-Russia relations were showing some signs of improvement. As you can expect, Russia, which views NATO's presence in neighboring countries Ukraine and Georgia as a threat to Russian security, is not happy.

NATO points out though that the exercises were planned more than a year ago (before the August 2008 conflict) and that Russia was even invited to participate. Besides, they say, it’s basically just a logistics exercise - no heavy or light weaponry will be involved, so there is no threat at all to Russian security.

NATO and Georgia are eager to go forward with the exercise to prove to Russia that it doesn't have veto power over where or with what countries NATO operates. But there is another issue in play that the folks at NATO are ignoring. Right now there are ongoing protests in Georgia against the rule of President Mikhail Saakashvili, who the opposition not only blames for (from Georgia's point-of-view) the disastrous August war, but who they are also slamming for mismanaging the economy and failing to deliver on long-promised democratic reforms.

Unfortunately there is no way that Saakashvili isn't going to try to use next month's NATO exercises to his advantage in dealing with the opposition protests. I'd expect Saakashvili to push the NATO exercise as a way to legitimate his own rule (i.e. would NATO be partnering with Georgia if I wasn't a democrat?); I wouldn't be surprised if Mikhail were also to use them as a justification for cracking down on the so-far peaceful protests under the banner of 'national security'. And then there's the self-governed breakaway region of Abkhazia, which is threatening to hold its own military exercises in response to the NATO operation.

This is why NATO should steer clear of Georgia for the time being - not to appease Russia, but because Georgia's democracy isn't stable enough or developed enough to justify partnership with the organization. By going forward with the exercise, NATO is inserting itself into Georgian politics, it’s another mission bound to blow up in their face.