|
Georgia Long-Term Security
In late 1993, the primary consideration of Georgian national
security continued to be the prevention of territorial gains by
separatist national movements--a cause for which Russian military
assistance was proving indispensable. Longer-term national
security, however, would depend on Shevardnadze's ability to
reestablish the structures of a viable, unified state: internal
and international commercial activity, undisputed sovereignty
over the national territory and its populace, and a shift back to
government rule by statute rather than by emergency executive
powers. In early 1994, all those preconditions remained in doubt,
and Shevardnadze's reluctant resort to Russian military
assistance had set a precedent with unknown national security
consequences.
* * *
For background on Georgian history, the best basic source is
Ronald G. Suny's The Making of the Georgian Nation.
Earlier histories on the Georgian people were written by David
Marshall Lang (A Modern History of Soviet Georgia and
The Georgians) and Kalistrat Salia (History of the
Georgian Nation). Several scholars have followed contemporary
Georgian developments on a regular basis; in addition to the
present author, they include Elizabeth Fuller, a writer for the
RFE/RL Research Report; Stephen Jones, whose journal
articles cover political and nationalist issues in the Caucasus;
and Robert Parsons of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Human
rights issues in Georgia are covered extensively in publications
of the United States Congress's Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe. Useful articles from Russian-language
sources are translated in the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service's Daily Report: Soviet Union (more recently titled
Daily Report: Central Eurasia). Studies of Georgian
culture and history appear occasionally in the Journal for the
Study of Caucasia. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of March 1994
|
