Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Senior Fellow Amb. David Smith has been keeping a close eye on France's proposal to sell Mistral  amphibious assault ships to Russia. Amb. Smith, the Director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center in Tbilisi, writes in a recent issue of the publication Tabula that should the Russian navy acquire the ships, they would be "an ideal weapon for Russia to intimidate its neighbors in the Black Sea, the Baltic and in the western Pacific." But progress on the ship deal hasn't been all smooth sailing. And Amb. Smith notes that if the deal runs aground now, Georgia and other nations would breathe a sigh of relief.  Click below to read the article in full.