Port of Batumi – Republic of Georgia
I’ve recently returned from the Republic of Georgia where I was invited to give an environmental “keynote” address to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting at the bi-annual Georgian International Maritime Forum (GIMF), and take a chair in a panel discussion about sustainable maritime development.
The conference was in the port city of Batumi, which is rapidly transforming into both an Eastern European resort city and modernizing to handle cargo containers. The port has historically operated as a “bulk goods” port, transferring Azerbaijan oil from rail cars to tankers, and transferring cereals and ore with cranes and clam-shell buckets – also between ships to rail cars.
The tankers have been obsoleted by a recently completed pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey, leaving most of their rail yard cluttered with rusting tank cars, and the cranes are slowly dilapidating with fraying cables and howling bearings. I met the National Railway Director Davit Peradze, who was anxiously awaiting the investments to initiate the much-needed retrofit to gantry cranes and flatcars.
China’s “Belt and Road – New Silk Road” initiative is potentially on the horizon, but China exacts a stiff price for a seat at the table. While the business traffic would go through the port city, the port itself may end up belonging to China. This would shift the dynamic of the area considerably.
In our GIMF panel discussion the issue of the US relationship with Russia came up, and now that it has become unpredictable, Georgia can no longer “hide behind our skirts” when it comes to their antagonistic relations with Russia. (Russia sits on the northern border of Georgia and already occupies about 20% of internationally-recognized Georgian territory.)
The depth of that antagonism was punctuated by a conversation I had with Capt. David Barata of the US Coast Guard. His job (out of London) is to harmonize Coast Guard standards and practices with our European Coast Guard counterparts. One of the ways our Coast Guard curries relationships with less developed nations is by transferring our decommissioned vessels to them. A fleet of 27 of these vessels transferred to Georgia were sunk by the Russians in the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.
So US National Isolationism is helping pave the “New Silk Road” for China, and inviting Russia to have a stronger hand in the area. I’m not sure who that “makes great again,” but I would not put America at the top of the list.
