Word: nato
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...Despite the different outlooks on how to respond to the Russian offensive in Georgia, what remains clear is that by acting forcefully to pummel a NATO ally on its own periphery, Moscow has changed the game and created a new reality to which the Atlantic Alliance will have to respond. Russia, in short, has now set NATO's agenda...
...arduous balancing act will be required of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she sits down with her NATO counterparts in Brussels on Tuesday to formulate a response to the Russia-Georgia conflict: On the one hand, she'll be looking to crack the whip against Moscow, and push back against Russia's humiliation of a Western ally in the Caucasus; on the other hand, she desperately needs to restore a fraying European consensus, and to rally the continent behind U.S. policy. Never easy at the best of times, accomplishing those tasks in the wake of Russia's game-changing...
...Rice conferred with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and then flew to Tbilisi to make clear to Saakashvili that he had no alternative but to sign a deal he clearly found unpalatable, because the U.S. was unable to bring any leverage to bear on the Russians. Newer E.U. and NATO members such as Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states, who have long lived under the shadow of Russian tanks, are likely to share Saakashvili's distaste for the deal brokered by the "Old Europeans". While France and Germany saw reasons to blame both sides for the Georgia debacle...
...West is mostly based on oil and gas, but they want to diversify," says Jan Techau, head of the Europe program for the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. But whether the situation demands escalating confrontation with Moscow will be the subject of intense debate at the NATO huddle on Tuesday...
...Russia's action has raised the level of insecurity felt along Europe's eastern edge, and is likely to reinforce support from the member states formerly dominated by the Soviet Union for Georgia and Ukraine to be granted NATO membership - a red-line issue for Russia. France and Germany have urged caution, fearing that both former Russian territories could drag the alliance into conflict with Moscow. While hawkish voices in the U.S. suggest that Russia would have been deterred from attacking Georgia had it and Ukraine been on track for NATO membership, France and Germany see things quite differently...