Word: nato
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...troops in the first three weeks of July - more than in any month since the U.S. invaded in October 2001. The Afghan government is salted with corruption, while its prisons are hellholes that turn citizens against their government. Pakistan remains a safe haven for launching attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan, and despite the Obama Administration's strenuous efforts at persuasion, Islamabad shows little interest in extending its campaign against domestic extremism into a fight against the Afghan insurgency...
Biden's trip to Ukraine and Georgia was designed to balance Obama's Moscow visit. Washington wanted to reassure Russia's two neighbors that the U.S. has not forgotten them or their bids to join NATO without unduly annoying Moscow. (Read "Obama Treads Lightly on Democracy in Russia...
...balancing act was always going to be a tough one. Moscow has long opposed NATO expansion and what it views as U.S. interference in its traditional backyard. So when, on the eve of Biden's visit, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili reportedly said he was negotiating a new arms deal with the U.S., Moscow grumbled. "We will continue to prevent the rearming of Saakashvili's regime and will take concrete measures against this," said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin. "We have deep worries regarding the activity of the Georgian leadership over remilitarizing its country, which several states are responding...
Biden expressed continued support for Georgia's push for NATO membership but was careful not to be pinned to any timetable. The Obama Administration wants to be able to say that it supports Georgia's goal, safe in the knowledge that the Europeans, who blocked it even when Bush pushed hard, will not allow it to happen. The Western European NATO countries see Saakashvili as unstable and impetuous, and blame him for presenting Moscow with a pretext for its military humbling of Georgia...
...Ukraine, the Vice President spoke a little more freely, perhaps safe in the knowledge that President Viktor Yushchenko is increasingly embattled and that those who will likely eclipse him are less inclined to push ahead on the NATO front. "If you choose to be part of Euro-Atlantic integration - which I believe you have - then we strongly support that," Biden said in a speech after talks with Yushchenko. Biden also explicitly rejected Russia's "19th century" talk of spheres of influence. "We don't recognize, and I want to reiterate this, any spheres of influence. We do not recognize anyone...