Word: nato
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...Pakistani security forces to begin playing what was essentially a double game. Despite its alliance with Washington, the Pakistani strategic establishment was not willing to accept the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which was closely allied with India, as an established power in Kabul. So, despite professing support for the NATO effort in Afghanistan, Pakistan continued to serve as the Taliban's key sanctuary, and it is alleged by Washington that the ISI continues to directly aid its longtime Taliban proxy. While Pakistan arrested some of the most important al-Qaeda captives currently in U.S. hands, it is generally assumed that...
Whether or not a renewed Cold War works in Moscow's favor in the long term remains to be seen. Moscow may not be able to halt expanding NATO, as former members of the Warsaw Pact do not seem less eager to join the Western Alliance. While Putin and his troops have succeeded in lashing out at Georgia, such action against former Warsaw Pact allies like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - all now NATO members - would be suicidal. But for the near term, the Putin Doctrine is now in play...
...Moscow has long opposed the deployment, charging that the U.S. missiles are directed against Russia rather than "rogue states" (notably Iran), as Washington has insisted. Yet Russia's opposition awakened sensitive concerns about preserving national sovereignty: Soviet satellites until 1989, the Czech Republic and Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union...
Russia could do little to stem NATO's advance during the economic and social collapse presided over by Boris Yeltsin. But Putin's Russia, flush with petrodollars, has re-emerged as a geopolitical player at the same time that U.S. influence has been waning. With the bloodletting in Georgia, the Russians are telling Europe that the current security architecture is dysfunctional - a message Moscow sent earlier in the year through a vague proposal to replace NATO with a pan-European security structure in which Russia would be an equal partner...
...Washington and in many former Soviet satellite states, the response to the Georgia debacle will be to continue NATO's eastward expansion and stiffen its resolve to contain a resurgent Russia. But in Western Europe, there will be growing doubts over the value of a security system built upon a structure designed to isolate and contain Russia. The problem, of course, is that NATO operates strictly by consensus, and in the absence of such consensus, paralysis may set in. Indeed, it may yet emerge that Putin's campaign in the Caucasus has succeeded not only in keeping Georgia...