WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- Last week's military confrontation between Moscow and Tbilisi over the Georgian separatist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, while proving a godsend for somnambulant Cold Warriors everywhere, had a little-noticed maritime component whose consequences extend far beyond the Caucasus.
A dimly remembered 72-year-old treaty is stymieing Washington hawks' efforts to "fly the flag" by sending substantial U.S. naval forces into the Black Sea along Georgia's coast. U.S. naval forces, ostensibly to deliver humanitarian aid, nevertheless would provide a maritime reminder to the Kremlin that, while the United States currently operates 11 aircraft carriers with their attendant task forces (with another two under construction), Russia is able to field only one, the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov, currently stationed a long way from the "hot zone" with Russia's Northern Fleet. Those with a puckish sense of humor might recall that the Admiral Kuznetsov began life as the Riga, then the Leonid Brezhnev, followed by the Tbilisi before it acquired its fourth and final moniker.
The 29-article 1936 Montreux Convention was intended to replace the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which had demilitarized the Bosporus and Dardanelles, collectively known as the Turkish Straits, which connect the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Britain, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Japan, Turkey, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia ratified the Montreux Convention, which formally recognized Turkish sovereignty over the Turkish Straits. The United States was so disinterested in the diplomatic negotiations that preceded the convention that it did not even bother to send an observer to the negotiations.
Crucial to the current situation is that the Montreux Convention imposed severe restrictions on non-Black Sea nations' ability to send naval forces into the Black Sea. Under the convention's articles, no more than nine non-Turkish naval vessels with a total of 30,000 aggregate tons may pass into the Black Sea, where they may remain for no more than three weeks, and they must pass the Turkish Straits singly. Quite aside from the fact that a U.S. Nimitz-class carrier displaces 101,196 tons fully loaded, the Montreux Convention expressly forbids the passage of aircraft carriers.
Leaving the firepower aside, on Aug.15, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright said the Bush administration intended to send two U.S. Navy hospital ships to Georgia. The official U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that Rear Adm. Steven Romano, European Command director of logistics, told reporters during a conference call that U.S. naval forces are planning to deliver supplies to Georgian ports but did not mention which Georgian ports or U.S. warships might participate. Romano added that Pentagon logistics officers also could use pre-positioned Mediterranean assets but again did not offer specifics.
The plan apparently encountered obstacles, however, as on Aug. 18, Turkish newspaper Zaman reported that the U.S. Embassy press attache in Ankara, Kathryn Schalow, demurred when asked if Washington had made a formal request to allow the U.S.-based hospital ships USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy into the Black Sea, adding, "A number of actions for transporting aid assistance to Georgia are being considered, and a lot of them are already happening." Turkey's private NTV television channel reported that if permission were granted, then the two ships' total tonnage would exceed the Montreux Convention's limits, as the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, both converted oil tankers, each displace 69,360 tons.
The South Ossetia conflict did contain a maritime component. Poti, 194 miles west of Tbilisi, where the Rioni River debouches into the Black Sea, is Georgia's principal cargo port, where 100,000 barrels per day of Azeri crude is loaded onto tankers for shipment to Western markets.
On Aug. 11 Georgian sources claimed that Russian aircraft bombed Poti's port installations. Two days later President George W. Bush said he was alarmed by reports that Russia had blockaded the port, prompting an angry denial by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as being based on unverified reports, while Russian General Staff deputy head Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn denied that Russian forces, which occupied the port, had blown up facilities there. The Russian media, however, subsequently reported that in Poti, home to Georgia's main oil port, Russian forces blocked Poti towing the Dioskuria missile boat out of sight of observers, after which a loud explosion was heard.
The naval implications of the South Ossetia conflict may not yet be over. On Aug. 10 the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry cautioned the Russian government that Ukraine might prevent the 10 Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels, headed by the Moskva helicopter carrier, from returning to Sevastopol, which it shares under a lease arrangement until 2017 with the Ukrainian navy, if they participated in combat operations against Georgia; the Russian Foreign Ministry criticized the warning as a "hostile" action. Three days later Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko signed a presidential decree requiring Russia's Black Sea Fleet command to inform the Ukrainian government 72 hours in advance about the purpose of any fleet or aircraft movements beyond Ukrainian territorial waters, which Moscow characterized as a "new serious anti-Russian step." On Aug. 15 the Ukrainian Parliament Security and Defense Committee head, former Ukrainian Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, said there were ways to implement Yushchenko's decrees but did not elaborate.
On this issue Moscow seems ready to talk, as on Aug. 18 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated his government was willing to negotiate with Ukraine about the status of Russia's Black Sea Fleet "on the basis of international agreements." As for Ankara, previously alluded to by Washington elements as being less than accommodating to the Pentagon's request for Straits passage, on Aug. 21 U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said, "Turkey has approved three ships for transit into the Black Sea to transport humanitarian relief supplies to Georgia -- that will consist of two U.S. Navy ships and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter."
Western pique at Russia's actions already has produced one maritime rebuff: On Aug. 13 NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said Russia's invitation to participate next month in Operation Active Endeavor, an anti-terrorism and search-and-rescue operation exercise held over the past two years, was being rescinded, as a Russian presence was not "appropriate." While the Kremlin's admirals are doubtless crushed over their rejection, Russia's Black Sea patrol ship Ladny, already stationed off Turkey's Mediterranean coast to take part in the military exercise, perhaps can be assigned a new task, to escort U.S. Navy hospital ships up the Turkish Straits to beleaguered Georgia's coast -- provided, of course, that they are 30,000 tons or less. Sometimes, as environmentalists maintain, "small is beautiful."
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