In The Sights of Russia
May 10th, 2008
By JEB KOOGLER
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Last month, at their summit in Bucharest, NATO bowed to pressure from Moscow and failed to offer paths to membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Instead, they decided to endorse the deployment of an Eastern European-based missile defense system, a longstanding goal of the Bush administration. But, as political analyst Seth Weinberger argued shortly after the summit’s conclusion, NATO got its priorities backwards.
Both programs are likely to antagonize Russia, but if NATO was only to get one of the two (missile defense or NATO expansion) it should have gone with NATO expansion. I’ve written several times about the folly of deploying missile defense systems (quick summary of my view: it’s technically possible, but the threat of ballistic missile attack by a rogue state does not justify the massive amounts of money).
But NATO expansion is one of the most powerful pacific forces of the post-Cold War era. The transformation of NATO from a security organization to a democratization organization has resulted in democracy becoming entrenched in most of Central and Eastern Europe. Spreading NATO up to Russia’s borders will all but ensure that war in Europe is a thing of the past. Both Ukraine and Georgia have shown themselves to be willing and able allies of the US and the West, and Russia has demonstrated a disturbing willingness to involve itself in the affairs of its former partners.
It certainly has. Not surprisingly, the failure to extend Membership Action Plans to Ukraine and Georgia is a decision that is only encouraging such meddling. Towards Georgia, Russia has adopted a highly provocative approach in the past few weeks. Much to the ire of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Moscow last month extended diplomatic relations to the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Additionally, it has upped its troop levels in Abkhazia, a region where Russian “peacekeepers” have been stationed since 1992; a Russian plane also recently shot down a Georgian surveillance aircraft over Abkhazian territory. To the authorities in Tbilisi, such actions are a clear provocation.
Yet, without NATO’s clear backing, Georgia doesn’t have many cards to play. It can’t adequately threaten military action to remove Russian troops without NATO support, since there is no way its forces could compete against those of its neighbor. Russia, moreover, isn’t likely to back down unless international heavy-hitters line up in defense of Georgian sovereignty. This is not likely to happen, of course, as NATO so explicitly announced at its Bucharest summit. Moscow, not surprisingly, has taken advantage of the blood in the water. As the Wall Street Journal notes:
The spark for the latest Russian aggression… [was] Bucharest. Last month, at the NATO summit in the Romanian capital, Germany blocked plans to offer Ukraine and Georgia “membership action plans.” Rather than put these democratic countries on the long road to NATO, Berlin preferred to bend to Moscow. Georgia and Ukraine got a vague promise to join NATO one day and to review their “action plan” applications in December. In other words, their fate is up for grabs. The Kremlin can smell Western wobbliness better than most. Within days of Bucharest it pounced on Georgia.
No doubt Ukraine is already in Moscow’s sights.
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Russia. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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