U.S. pressures Georgia on Russia’s WTO accession
Over at The Cable, Josh Rogin has a great report on Obama administration involvement in the Russia-Georgia dispute, particularly as regards Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Georgia, as a current WTO member, has the formal power to hold up Russia’s accession. There are also signs that senior administration officials have placed pressure on ...
Over at The Cable, Josh Rogin has a great report on Obama administration involvement in the Russia-Georgia dispute, particularly as regards Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization. Georgia, as a current WTO member, has the formal power to hold up Russia's accession.
Over at The Cable, Josh Rogin has a great report on Obama administration involvement in the Russia-Georgia dispute, particularly as regards Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Georgia, as a current WTO member, has the formal power to hold up Russia’s accession.
There are also signs that senior administration officials have placed pressure on Georgia to make a deal. A senior GOP Senate aide told The Cable that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, while briefing senators before a recent congressional trip that included a stop in Georgia, asked those senators to pressure Georgia to move toward acceptance of Russia’s membership in the WTO.
"It was odd to hear Ambassador Kirk behind closed doors urging a group of senators to pressure Georgia to ‘be reasonable’ while, we understood, the administration was saying publicly it would stay out of a Georgia-Russia issue," the aide said.
The U.S. claims that it was not going to get involved in this issue always seemed fishy. There’s simply no way that Washington will allow Georgia to delay for too long what it sees as a critical achievement, getting Russia into the rule-based trading system. The only real question is whether Georgia plays its hand well enough to get something of value while keeping good ties with Washington.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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