Word: nato
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Washington hawks insist that the remedy to Russia's military humiliation of Georgia is to expedite the smaller country's incorporation into NATO. After all, Moscow might think twice about attacking any nation able to trigger the Atlantic Alliance's Article 5, which obliges all member states to respond militarily to an attack on any one of them. President Bush, in fact, toured Europe last spring to stump aggressively for Georgia and Ukraine to be granted Membership Action Plans, the first step toward joining the Alliance. But despite Bush's high-profile campaigning, the proposal was rebuffed at NATO...
...many of the Europeans draw the opposite conclusion. They see last week's events in Georgia as vindicating their caution over granting Georgia NATO membership. Indeed, many in Europe see the Bush Administration's military support for Georgia and its trumpeting of Tbilisi's cause in NATO as having emboldened President Mikheil Saakashvili to launch his reckless attack on South Ossetia...
...Russia's brutal response to Georgia's provocation had, in fact, obliged NATO to intervene, the Atlantic Alliance itself might have faced a terminal crisis. Most of its member states have no enthusiasm for confronting a resurgent Russia in the Caucasus, traditionally a Russian sphere of influence. The Alliance, for one thing, is having enough trouble maintaining 71,000 troops in Afghanistan, where they are managing only to tread water against mounting odds. Other arguments against confrontation: much of Western Europe is wholly dependent on Russian energy supplies, and European negotiators believe there is little chance of a diplomatic solution...
...occasion, Western countries have consciously avoided humiliating militant powers, fearing the consequences of emasculation. Having neutered Germany following World War I, the Allies showed West Germany respect after World War II, investing heavily in its economy and absorbing the country into NATO. And while President George W. Bush seemed unconcerned about Russia's simmering fury when he lobbied for Georgian and Ukrainian entry into NATO earlier this year, many European governments rejected the proposal, showing that they - perhaps because of their own history - were more attuned to the risks of compounding Russia's growing and alarming sense of victimhood...
...predictable: A frustrated Russian government feeling increasingly encircled as NATO's membership expanded steadily eastward, its coffers engorged by $110-a-barrel oil, facing a pesky neighbor - and former Russian imperial territory - cozying up to the United States and inviting U.S. troops in to train its soldiers. Whether or not Washington or Tbilisi could have avoided the Russian invasion, the very fact that the U.S. has no desire for war with Russia should have acted as a brake on Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's annual (since 2004) August skirmishes with pro-Moscow separatists in South Ossetia, which triggered last week...