BOOK CHAPTER: Georgia and the Wider Black Sea

By Jonathan Kulick and Temuri Yakobashvili; in Daniel Hamilton and Gerhard Mangott (eds.), The Wider Black Sea Region in the 21st Century: Strategic, Economic and Energy Perspectives, Washington: Center for Transatlantic Relations, 2008

A more-fully realized “Wider Black Sea” region — one that is broadly recognized as a coherent, organic region, with functional institutions and infrastructure — holds tremendous promise for Georgia. Indeed, it is central to Georgia’s agenda for ensuring its stability and prosperity. In turn, this regional identity will allow Georgia to provide greater benefits to its neighbors and to other parties with interests in the region — and beyond.

As with all states at crossroads of civilizations and trade, Georgia has borne many regional identities. When subordinated to one empire or another, an identity was imposed to suit the purposes of the controlling power. In the aftermath of the Soviet dissolution, Georgia’s regional identity was left adrift. “Former Soviet Union” and “Newly Independent States” bore too heavily the burdens of history, and did not suggest a promising future. The “South Caucasus” better reflects elements of shared geography, culture, and politics, but, as the sole or principal regional identity, is terribly constraining — the interstice among three regional powers and two seas, with deep internal fissures and an implicit yoking to the beleaguered North Caucasus (moreover, it too reflects a hegemon’s perspective, as a less parochial revision of the “trans-Caucasus”).

This confusion was not limited to Georgia. Even as new embassies are opening in Tbilisi, non-resident ambassadors to Georgia are located in Moscow, Kyiv, Baku, Yerevan, and Ankara. If nothing else, this dispersal suggests that Georgia is regarded as part of a Wider Black Sea region. For Georgia, at least, this is not a contrivance, as it was known to the ancient Greeks and others on the western shores of the Black Sea as Colchis, the land of the Golden Fleece. Restoring these associations is part and parcel of Georgia consolidating its statehood and identity, after centuries of subordination.

While the practical consequences of Wider Black Sea integration are paramount in Georgia’s strategy, the symbolic value should not be discounted. Recognition of a “Wider Black Sea region” will put another dent in popular (and elite) skepticism in much of the West as to whether Georgia is rightly “Western.” We harbor no illusions that solidifying Georgia’s Black Sea identity will cement its integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures; it is one essential component of a broad-based strategy. Regional cooperation for its own sake is a worthy goal, but nearly all of the Georgian political elite see Europe and “the West” as the brass rings. In Georgia’s fractious (and, most recently, circus-like) political culture, support for NATO accession is a shibboleth. Somewhat less urgently, but no less ardently, Georgia seeks the greatest participation available in European institutional frameworks, especially instruments of the EU’s European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), and the EU’s evolving “ENP-Plus” and “Black Sea Synergy” strategies.

As we noted, Georgia has had multiple identities. As a natural crossroads it will continue to have multiple identities in the future. As Georgia strengthens its identification with the Wider Black Sea, it is not turning its back on its neighbors to the east and south, with which it shares a great heritage. Rather, it can better serve as a hub for relations between east and west — and north and south — if it is secure in its identity within concentric and overlapping structures.

What does Georgia bring to its partners in the Wider Black Sea region, and by extension to more distant parties? By good or ill fortune, Georgia is implicated in developments in energy, trade, and transit; security and conflicts; and governance, throughout the Wider Black Sea region and beyond. In the last several years Georgia has instituted a thorough reform agenda that has yielded tremendous positive attention and investment from the international community but has been less broadly popular domestically, has fed a growing opposition and fueled unrest. We will consider Georgia’s role in the region, the status and implications of domestic reforms, and the development and consequences of the political crisis of 2007.