Mikheil Saakashvili has clearly been binging on the freedom cool aid as these are the words that he has just spoken at the Young Atlanticists Summit in Bucharest. They were preceded by, “yes I believe you should privatize everything.”
Saakashvili is in Bucharest this week to try and get Georgia a membership action plan for NATO, a measure that is the first, but definitely not irreversible step on the path to membership. His Bushian rhetoric is clearly symptomatic of the fact that America is the most forceful backer of closer ties with Georgia.
However as we know, Georgia will not have any concrete progress towards NATO tomorrow, out of the 26 members of the alliance only 18 favor giving MAP to Georgia and France and Germany have threatened the veto.
There are many complex reasons why the major European powers have opposed this move, many of which involve the ambiguous nature of Georgia’s breakaway provinces Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Russia’s interest in the region.
On this matter Saakashvili was on the offensive today, comparing the timidity of the Europeans with the appeasement of Nazi Germany. He went on to say that the enlargement of NATO should be be about principal and not politics.
Speaking with one of his assistants after the speech I was told that no one in the Georgia expects them to be offered MAP at this summit, but the fact that 18 countries supported it was definite progress and that they could be hopeful.
One might wonder why Saakashvili would choose to aggravate the very people he is hoping to persuade to support membership in the future with such caustic remarks. But as Dan Fried, President of the Atlantic Council of the US reminded us in introducing the Georgian President, he is a revolutionary.
(originally posted at The Seminal)
