Day Four, More Classroom Adventures

Day 4: Wednesday Each day began with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The fare was incredible: eggs prepared any way you wanted, several kinds of meat, fruit, yogurt, waffles, and crepes. They played pleasant European music, and the atmosphere generally made for a very enjoyable start to the day. I think that if you stay longer than a couple of days and show some friendliness, the wait staff will begin engaging you in conversations about their country. That happened with us. At class that morning, we began with a discussion of Georgian-Russian relations. We talked about Russia’s intentions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and what those intentions meant for Georgia. We also discussed a recent Russian overflight of Georgian airspace. The Georgians believed the Russians were sending a message: “This is our part of the world, and we can do as we please.” Their view was that the flights were not aimed specifically at Georgia. Rather, Russia was demonstrating to the rest of the world that it could act as it wished in that part of the world. I think they were right. We then moved into a discussion of JSTARS. I showed an unclassified briefing, and it generated a great deal of interest. They wanted to rent one.