Tbilisi, Georgia, June 9, 2014

A most interesting and also very busy day. Everything went rather well and was most informative. At 11am a meeting at GFSIS, the Georgia Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, with two very well informed experts on Georgian foreign policy. Both were former ambassadors and extremely well informed and very good analysts. They were quite anti-Russian though in view of the war of 2008 and Georgia's current precarious situation this is quite an understandable position. The crisis in Ukraine has certainly made people in Georgia very edgy as to whether or not they will be able to maintain a genuine independence from Russia. Pressure from Moscow has increased since the signing of an agreement with the EU has been scheduled for June 27.

Due to the two-hour meeting I was late for my seminar at Tbilisi Open Teaching University. But the students were patient and didn't mind. It was a good session with the students being very interested in US and European foreign policy concerns. Of course US policy toward Russia and China featured prominently. Then I had a meeting with a former senior government member which was also highly interesting and very informative (I'll leave it at that). After this I gave a lecture about the Obama administration's foreign policy approaches at the Training Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which, as far as I can tell, was very well received. It certainly was a good experience, I enjoyed it. And I even met someone among the audience who I knew from DC. Then at 7pm or so a meeting with another senior Foreign Ministry official took place which again was highly interesting and stimulating (and again I'll leave it at that).

Well, by 8 or 8.30pm, when George and I left the Foreign Ministry, we were rather exhausted. A nice meal in a Persian restaurant revived our spirits however. A lengthy stroll though the old town then helped to digest all that good food.

It was a most interesting day; I definitely learned a lot and I hope I could also bring some of my thoughts and analyses across. Peter's and my recent article on Putin's manipulation of WWII history was well-received I noted.  And Natalie of the Foreign Ministry helped us greatly and provided cars and drivers and made sure - by regularly checking in - that we didn't get lost entirely or were not running too late. Getting first-hand impressions in the country and talking to experts on the ground certainly helps a lot to get a much better perspective and much greater insights into the foreign policy concerns of a small but strategically and geopolitically important country in the middle of a potentially volatile region.