The Battle for Georgia
Defense Reform, NATO Doctrine, and Military Effectiveness. A Critical Assessment of the 2008 War
Published on 1. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
344 pages
978-3-8382-2061-1 (ISBN)
Description
Is NATO doctrine-as an outcome of a process of military reform and transformation-sufficient to defeat the conventional forces the size of the Russian Federation's, or is Russian doctrine more apt at being a better deterrent? This is the general question Frederic Labarre seeks to answer. More particularly, he investigates the causes of the poor performance of the Georgian Armed Forces during the Battle of Tskhinvali as a test case for NATO doctrine vs. Russian/proto-Soviet doctrine of the application of force. This book presents the only complete and detailed analysis of the Battle of Tskhinvali and traces the history of defense reform in Georgia since re-independence to account for the performance of the armed forces in securing Georgia's sovereignty.Based on eye-witness accounts and field research, the consultation of official documentation, and media reports from the period, it brings into question the validity of the process of defense reform under NATO guidance and serves as a case study to apply against future conflicts the Alliance may yet have to face-as well as Ukraine.
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Persons
Author
Dr Frederic Labarre studied War Studies in Kingston, Ontario. Since 2019 he is lecturer in political science and economics at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. In 2024-2025, he taught Russian politics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). Previously, Labarre was NATO Defence Education Enhancement Programme manager at the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Labarre is an Honorary Ancien of the NATO Defense College in Rome, Italy. His previous books include Understanding the Contemporary Information Landscape, LandesverteidigungsAkademie Vienna, 2022, and Theoretical and Technical Perspectives on Security Sector Governance from the Adriatic to the Caspian Sea, IOS Press, 2012. His papers have been published by, among other outlets, Diplomatie, Baltic Security and Defence Review, Ashgate Publishing, Routledge, and Frank-Cass.
Series Editor
Andreas Umland, M.Phil. (Oxford), Dr.Phil. (FU Berlin), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
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Foreword
Born 9 September 1952 in Lisbon, Armando de Barros Serra Marques Guedes is a political scientist, anthropologist and former diplomat. He received his education from Instituto de Ciências Sociais e Políticas (ISCSP), at the London School of Economics (LSE), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and a PhD summa cum laude in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Lisbon. He carried out extensive fieldwork in the Philippines and in four Lusophone countries (Cabo Verde, S.Tomé e Príncipe, Angola and Timor Leste). He joined the Portuguese Foreign Service as Cultural counsellor at the Portuguese embassy in Luanda, Angola, and later advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on African political and cultural affairs. Among many senior appointments, he was selected as President of the Portuguese Diplomatic Institute, where he was head of Policy planning at the Portuguese MFA. He was Professor of Geopolitics at the Portuguese Ministry of Defense's Military University Institute, from 1999 to 2022, and a Full Professor of Law at NOVA School of Law in that very same period. He has published 22 books and upwards of 130 scholarly articles on a variety of social science disciplines.