Tedo Japaridze

Alternate Director General

International Center for Black Sea Studies

 

Ambassador Japaridze has served as Georgia’s ambassador to the United States, that country’s national security advisor and foreign minister, and Secretary General of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC).  He currently is an Alternate Director General at the International Center for Black Sea Studies (ICBSS) in Athens.  The following text represents a revised and updated version of an article he published in “Central Asia and the Caucasus.”  Like that article, it reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of the government of Georgia or the ICBSS.

 

As many commentators and analysts have pointed out, GUAM was the brainchild of those countries – Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova – which joined the Commonwealth of Independent States but which were interested in pursuing a more Western orientation than the other eight members.  Its birth mother, if you will, was the Conventional Forces in Europe talks, where the four first made a joint declaration about their orientation.  

  

At the same time, we should recognize that NATO and especially the United States played a role as foster mothers or babysitters as the organization took its first steps.  But there is one important comment that should be made here: GUAM did not emerge as an internal dissenter within the CIS as some in Moscow continue to suggest.  The member states had a broader agenda than that. 

 

Evidence of that is not hard to find: despite Uzbekistan’s decision to leave GUAM and the often unclear messages about Moldova’s future role, GUAM with all its occasional confusion and clumsiness nonetheless remains a more dynamic, possibly because more chaotic structure than some other more rigid but completely unproductive organizations in the post-Soviet space.

When GUAM was set up, many of us expected that it would become an important actor not only on that space but beyond, but our expectations at least so far have not been realized at least in full.  And it is important now to ask why that was the case, examining carefully where GUAM succeeded and where it has failed and what impact it has had on integration processes across the region.  Those are some of the questions I want to consider here in this informal essay. 

Because we have been disappointed by what GUAM did not achieve, we sometimes forget to acknowledge what it has achieved.  Indeed, considering the landscape, we need to acknowledge that despite everything, the organization has succeeded in becoming a genuine and functioning international organization, with a well-articulated structure and a clearly defined strategic agenda.  Those are no small things.  

Moreover and perhaps even more important, GUAM has delivered a message to the world that its members want and expect to be treated as sovereign and independent countries, each with its own national interests and goals, rather than as part of something that no longer existed or through the prism of another country’s claims.  In short, GUAM has helped to change the mental maps that governments around the world have about the post-Soviet region.

But that is clearly not enough, and now it is time for GUAM to move from changing people’s perceptions to changing the reality within which its member states operate.  And that quite obviously is no easy task because it may require that GUAM become a very different organization than it has been up to now.  If that is to happen, then GUAM and its member states must overcome some outdated ways of thinking, some dating from the Cold War and others from the difficulties of the 1990s, and focus on the ways in which they can promote security in a world where the quality of hotels and banks matter far more than the quality of even the best tanks.

How then to awaken GUAM from its current somnolent, if not moribund condition?  By promoting strong economies in order to support the kind of military and other security capabilities that will protect the national security of its members and their neighbors, rather than by racing after the latter in the name of the former.  This does not mean any downgrading of the importance of military power but rather thinking strategically about the nature of power relations in the 21st century.  And that will require that GUAM and its members adopt a strategic way of thinking, something they have not all done up to now. 

 

If that happens – and it won’t be easy given the multiple and competing challenges of life in post-Soviet Eurasia – then GUAM could become a complementary partner with the European Union (which, by the way, BSEC due to its political diversity and vibrancy has failed to acknowledge up to this moment) and a pole of attraction for countries in other regional organizations.  So far, however, the EU considers GUAM only occasionally and considers it with a certain neutral curiosity in the best of times – although there are a few politicians in Old Europe who think of GUAM as a kind of institutional enfant terrible or spoiler of what is becoming a new status quo.

To overcome that skepticism, GUAM needs to begin offering the EU and other possible partners certain modest but sustainable and doable cooperation projects as confidence building measures if nothing else.  In this, GUAM may want to consider the difficult but ultimately effective contacts between the BSEC and the EU over such cluster issues as transportation, ecological protection, and the fight against organized crime and corruption.  If BSEC can do this, so too can GUAM, although there appears little interest in taking such steps now.  And if GUAM does more in this direction, then such an engagement strategy will allow GUAM to become part of the EU’s decision-making cycle, something important in that increasingly bureaucratic organization.

The pursuit of such cooperation with the EU and other international groupings will help GUAM in another way: it will allow that organization and its member states to take advantage of something that has become axiomatic in today’s world.  It is not sufficient to be against something or someone in order to attract cooperative support; it is critically important to define one’s goals and direct one’s efforts to being for something. 

While it is clearly the case that relations between Moscow and the West are deteriorating, it is also the case that GUAM needs to present itself not as contributing to that deterioration but rather as a grouping that can help promote cooperation, even where it appears to be failing.  That will not hurt GUAM in either place, and it may give the organization and its members the chance to attract positive attention and play a greater role in international affairs.  

In developing such an approach, GUAM and its members need to remember that the Former Soviet Space was once a road to somewhere else but now is a vital crossroads in its own right, a place where things happening elsewhere have an impact on tens of millions of people and where things that happen there affect many others.  That is a lesson some in the EU need to learn.  For many there, GUAM are part of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and thus a segment of the EU’s very own “near abroad.” 

            

But if GUAM is to become more vital, it needs to look beyond the EU alone, expanding its contacts with powers further afield, especially in Asia, and to increase its visibility through the adoption of a new road map for the organization.  That means more than just declarations, although the process of adopting them and their specific content can be significant.  It means actions directed at building relationships rather than simply declaring the value of doing so.

            

One thing that appears to be holding GUAM back is certain pessimism about the organization, a reluctance to talk about many sensitive issues, and a willingness to explore issues that may either seem beyond resolution or outside the competence of the organization.  One example of this concerns GUAM’s reluctance to talk about the interrelationships of development and security, things that many viewed as separate in the past but that are now thoroughly intertwined.  To make progress in all these directions, we who want GUAM to succeed need to identify internal resources so as to redefine and recharge the organization by expanding its agenda and its actions.  In short, we must take steps to reinvent GUAM, to make it a very different organization than it has been up to now, rather than simply try to implement its existing agenda more effectively.  

Too often in recent months and years, GUAM has been left to academic and bureaucratic experts rather than successful politicians and businessmen.  That needs to change, and I would like to propose that GUAM invite EU-based investment bankers to come for three to six months to each of the GUAM states to provide instruction to our bankers and send GUAM bankers and other business people West to learn more and bring back new ideas to invigorate their countries and GUAM itself. 

Each of the member countries – Ukraine which is the largest and most economically developed, Azerbaijan with its vast energy resources, Georgia with its difficult experiences, and Moldova which is closest to Europe – can make a contribution.  First and foremost, they will individually and collectively overcome certain old Soviet habits of inter-elite ties, bureaucratic cultures, and other characteristics which limit out sovereignties and ability to act independently.  And then they can look more confidently to the future.

 

GUAM is clearly in the midst of a crunch time, of a period in which its own members will decide whether it has a future or whether it will come to be viewed as a short-term and failed institution.  I am more than confident that the organization and its members have the capacity to come through with flying colors, but I am also very much aware that all of them will have to have the courage to move in new directions if they are to avoid failure and succeed.