On Saturday, May 26, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said he hopes Georgia will join the NATO by 2021. Thus, he not only confirmed the foreign policy aspirations of the Georgian establishment, but also for the first time announced the time when this misalliance could take place. If his words are not a private opinion and in fact reflect the real mindset of the Georgian political elite, and also assuming that they will turn into an objective reality after the specified period, and will not remain a loud declaration, today a fundamentally new one is being created in the South Caucasus region a political configuration that will have strategic consequences not only for the Black Sea-Caucasus region as a whole, but it will have an impact on the fate of the whole of Eurasia.

 

Georgia entered the path of a gradual rapprochement with Western civilization and integration into NATO structures almost 15 years ago, immediately upon the arrival of Mikhail Saakashvili in this country. The socio-economic upheavals and political cataclysms that have taken place in this country over the past decade and a half have quite prepared it for this step in full, although in previous years the American military and NATO presence in Georgia was strong enough. But now the country has finally turned into an economic desert, very convenient for the deployment of foreign military bases on its territory and the reorientation of its infrastructure to provide them.

 

Frankly speaking, Georgia has been exhausted in all respects so much in all respects that there are no forces left in its social structure and resources in the economy to somehow counteract this process. The result is more than obvious - there is not a single internal or external obstacle on the way of Georgia's integration into NATO, and it is already absolutely not important whether such a situation is pleasant to any of the neighboring countries.

Possibilities to exert political, economic or military influence on official Tbilisi are not there anyway, and therefore they will have to adapt themselves in the very near future to a completely new expression of the face of the Close Caucasus region.

 

There is not the slightest doubt that Georgia could easily join NATO this year, even though this organization today has serious difficulties with financing its activities from its member countries. The point here is clearly not in finance, since the adoption of a political decision with a delayed date of its execution is like a delayed traf in hockey - there is no need for large expenditures of money resources, there would be a desire. Nevertheless, the Georgian prime minister publicly announced 2021 as a preliminary date for his country's entry into NATO. In favor of meaning, rather than spontaneity of such a statement there are several reason to, each of which by itself is a good reason to Georgia's integration into NATO took place in that year.

 

First, there is a very important political reason for this. In 2020, the next presidential election will take place in the United States, in which Donald Trump will undoubtedly seek to extend his powers for one more constitutional term - until 2024. Therefore, for him and the entire Republican Party of the United States, Georgia's accession to NATO in the year 2021 will be a serious foreign policy trump card in the election campaign, when Trump, referring to American voters, can say: "give me a chance to finish what I started, and I, as promised, hagonyu Russia in a bearish corner, extending the line of NATO's bahs through Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea itself. " Of course, if Georgia's accession to NATO will take place before, ir it will also be a victory Trump administration, and reckoned it a history of asset notogda it will cease to be trump in the election race in the United States, and throw on the table trump card ahead of time so pranmatichny businessman how is President Trump, obviously will not. Therefore, the Prime Minister of Georgia Giorgi Kvirikashvili, calling his country the date of accession to NATO, obviously guided by the calculations of the current ozyaina White House, accompanying him on the political perspective.

 

Secondly, there is also a military-technical reason, without which the full-scale integration of Georgia into NATO is impossible. This reason is the 102nd base of the Russian Defense Ministry in the Armenian city of Gyumri. Despite all the flawedness of its military-strategic position, it is an important and significant factor in Russia's political influence in the South Caucasus region, and in the Pentagon, having the unfortunate experience of conducting a "remote" war in Russia against other people's hands, it is a war in South Ossetia in 2008 - take this factor into account. In order that Georgia could be fully integrated and not integrated into the military-technical infrastructure of NATO, it is first necessary to liquidate the Russian base in Armenia following the example of how President Saakagvili made his time in Georgia. There is no doubt that the new Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan received an order from his overseas sponsors for this, but it takes time to implement it, and more time than in the case of Saakashvili, since Russia supports - not directly but indirectly - the occupation the regime in Karabakh. Therefore, three years is quite an adequate period for Pashinyan and his supporters so that they can reformat the consciousness of the Armenian society and prepare it for breaking allied relations with Russia. The propaganda trump card he has for this is more than strong: "Georgia is in NATO, we are on the turn." "Great Armenia" under the US protectorate will be one step closer. " I do not think that anyone today will doubt the inevitable success of such propaganda and the inevitable removal of the Russian military base from the territory of Armenia.

 

The idea of   recreating the "Great Armenia" for all its historical absurdity today is very beneficial to the United States as an instrument of its geopolitical influence on its main competitors, opponents and obstinate allies - it is about Russia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan, for which the implementation of this idea in practice potentially with serious territorial losses. Submission of Armenia to the United States is fraught with the transformation of the Caucasus, the entire Caucasus - not only Southern, but also Northern - into a region of military and political turbulence. Russia receives a threat of Armenian political separatism and secret terrorism in the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions and the Rostov region, in some administrative regions of which the Armenian population is prevalent in number, which will undoubtedly weaken its military and political potential, even if it retains its territorial integrity. Iran can also face Armenia's claims to the regions of Urmia, Salmas and other north-western regions as a payment for opening the front in the north. Territorial claims of Armenia to the north-eastern regions of Tuotia - from Arzrum and Trabzon to Hakkari and Diyarbekir - are known throughout the world for a century. Azerbaijan, which has already lost a sixth of its territory as a result of the 1988-1994 Karabakh war, is potentially at risk of remaining.

 

Oleg Kuznetsov

Political analyst