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Georgia Conflict: Should NATO Marry the Small Kid on the Playground?Posted by Kyle Atwell in European Issues, Transatlantic Relations, US Foreign Policy on Saturday, May 10. 2008
Tiny Georgia has become the front line in West-Russia tensions for the past month. It began at the NATO Bucharest Summit in early April, when NATO members rebuked immediate progress toward full NATO membership for Georgia, due largely to protests from Russia – while nonetheless promising future membership.
In the month since Bucharest, Russia-Georgia relations have spiraled quickly. Multiple Georgian unmanned aircraft are claimed to have been shot down over the breakaway region of Abkhazia, though disinformation (i.e. – blatant lies) coming from Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia, or all three, have blurred the facts. Russia has also deepened ties with Georgia’s separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and increased its number of “peace-keepers” there despite protests from the EU and NATO. At the same time, Russia is accusing Georgia of preparing an invasion into Abkhazia, and Georgia has pulled out of an air-defense treaty with Russia. While both Russia and Georgia are contributing to escalating tensions, Russia undoubtedly initiated the latest downturn as a response to Georgia's bid for NATO membership. As argued by Jens F. Laurson and George A. Pieler in Forbes :
Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin may have read NATO's deferral as a signal to make his move on Georgia unchecked… reinventing the Soviet empire bit by bit clearly remains an active Putin project.In this increasingly hostile environment, Georgia is playing a risky game: much smaller than its imposing former-imperial master Russia, Georgia is acting much like the small kid in the playground who decides to stand up to the school bully, because he expects (or at least hopes) his big brother will back him up. Georgia has made no secret of its dependency on Western protection. Georgian Vice-Prime-Minister Giorgi Baramidze is quoted by the EU Observer: "If, God forbid, things go wrong, it would not only destabilise Georgia, but the whole of Europe." However, he warned that Europe and the West were facing a "moment of truth" in their ability "to protect democracies, no matter how small and fragile they are. "The formal position of the EU and NATO has been taken and now it is time to act accordingly, using all diplomatic, political and legal levers."Given Georgia has little leverage over Russia, its desperate pleas for Western support are well placed, as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal: Renewed fighting in Abkhazia is a win-win for Russia. Georgia would be outgunned in any direct confrontation with Russian forces. It can't count on support from Europe. And any hot conflict would impair Georgia's chances of joining NATO.The big question is, will Europe and the US come to Georgia’s aid? Perhaps Georgia’s strategic location, on a key westward route for Caspian Sea oil and gas riches, will keep the West backing it. More details on Georgia’s strategic significance are provided in an audio interview by the Economist, with Alexandros Petersen of the Brussels-based Caspian Europe Center. While the EU and NATO have chosen to support Georgia in rhetoric, it is hard to say how the West will respond if the dispute turns violent – and this has important implications for whether or not NATO should be so eager to take in Georgia as a full Ally. As Laurson and and Pieler note in the same Forbes article from above: NATO has value not unlike a marriage vow. In bad times, the partners can't run off quite so easily. Granting this need (or plausible rationale) for NATO, the expansion to Georgia and Ukraine--put off for now, but a forgone conclusion--should be settled by the question of original importance: Would we, were these states attacked in some way, be willing to put everything on the line in defending it?
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Joe Noory
- #1 - 2008-05-11 15:12 - (Reply)
Kyle -
franchie
- #2 - 2008-05-11 17:33 - (Reply)
"Georgia Conflict: Should NATO Marry the Small Kid on the Playground?"
Joe Noory
- #2.1 - 2008-05-11 19:56 - (Reply)
Even if the Georgians have asked us? Or would you have the west deny them that and force them to give in to an aggressive neighbor just as the Czech and hungarian uprisings were lent no aid?
Nanne
- #2.1.1 - 2008-05-11 21:15 - (Reply)
It's a tough choice but in the end neither the Czech nor the Hungarian uprising was worth risking nuclear war over. Maybe the west could have done more in a lot of ways, but definitely not militarily.
Elisabetta
- #2.1.1.1 - 2008-05-11 22:57 - (Reply)
I fail to see the logic in subordinating the Georgia problem to far-eastern irrelevancies. The Europeans should look at this unpleasantness as a dry run for potential Russian interference in the Baltic States or perhaps the Russian oblast of Koenigsberg.
Kevin Sampson
- #2.1.1.1.1 - 2008-05-13 06:03 - (Reply)
'The EU should force the Americans to go ahead.'
Kyle Atwell
- #2.2 - 2008-05-11 19:58 - (Reply)
"it's none of our business to interven in a russian and turkish influence aera"
franchie
- #2.2.1 - 2008-05-11 20:33 - (Reply)
yeah, so who's going there ? with how many troops ?
Nanne
- #2.2.2 - 2008-05-11 21:00 - (Reply)
The question, as you note, is do we want Georgia? Should NATO have an open door for every 'pro-western' country? Georgia has some level of strategic importance, no doubt, and we should maintain friendly relations with it.
franchie
- #2.2.2.1 - 2008-05-11 22:15 - (Reply)
then Georgia should ask for a commercial agreement, but if they enter into Nato, that meens they'll also want to become part of our union
Joe Noory
- #2.3 - 2008-05-12 14:33 - (Reply)
Abkhazia and South Ossetia are automonous regions of GEORGIA, not Russia, but have Russian military in place. It's been that way for years and it's a play at suppressing Georgia exerting economic use of the black sea, it's potentially large oil and gas reserves, and on another level, a need to prop up their influence in inching it's way closer to the south (to divide potiential alliances that might develop from west to east into the stans.)
quo vadis
- #3 - 2008-05-11 23:56 - (Reply)
I'm struck by the timidity and lack of confidence expressed by Europeans here and how much of a contrast that makes with the American mindset. You claim to be world leaders, but you are afraid to take on even a modest role in a potentially challenging situation in your own back yard. You have a lot of growing up to do before you can legitimately claim a place at the grow-ups table.
Zyme
- #3.1 - 2008-05-12 14:17 - (Reply)
It might be that we like to invest our political credit into something more worthful, Quo Vadis. It is as simple as that.
Joe Noory
- #3.1.1 - 2008-05-12 14:41 - (Reply)
All that does is appease and rewards the old school reactionary element in Russia. That carrot also needs a stick.
quo vadis
- #3.1.2 - 2008-05-12 19:54 - (Reply)
Political credit? You don't earn political credit by running home and looking on from from behind the window curtains as the neighborhood bully punches out another of the little kids on the block.
Zyme
- #3.1.2.1 - 2008-05-12 23:19 - (Reply)
You don´t seem to understand. Georgia is nothing. It is in the middle of nowhere. And thus it is predestined to be Russia´s playground. You have to show some respect to an opponent on the stage of power struggle or else you will lose all possibilities in cooperation.
Elisabetta
- #3.1.2.1.1 - 2008-05-12 23:53 - (Reply)
Now think about who might have the better tactics - European peoples having dealt with the Russians for hundreds of years, or you?
Zyme
- #3.1.2.1.1.1 - 2008-05-13 00:17 - (Reply)
Ahem, the "last time" we had a slightly different approach, madame.
Elisabetta
- #3.1.2.1.1.1.1 - 2008-05-13 01:37 - (Reply)
"We cannot challenge the Russians on every issue and still expect to cooperate with them. Thus we chose our conflicts carefully and show an equal amount of respect."
Zyme
- #3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1 - 2008-05-13 02:14 - (Reply)
Every enlargement eastwards of the EU is a challenge against Moscow´s ambitions. They want to regain their former status? Can you see how far they are from it? How much they have already lost towards Brussels? Year after year since 1990?
Elisabetta
- #3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1 - 2008-05-13 02:27 - (Reply)
I have never been under any delusions about Russia's current state, see supra. Nor am I an alarmist or one of those clicheed Cold War types that seem to exist only in the Frankfurter Rundschau or SPD fantasies.
Zyme
- #3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 - 2008-05-13 03:12 - (Reply)
Ah ok now I understand your point. Yes I agree, the eastern European concerns are not taken very seriously here.
Elisabetta
- #3.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 - 2008-05-13 20:51 - (Reply)
I get this type of economic determinist variant quite a lot in response to questions of national objects within EU politics. It may be correct, but I doubt it. No one can ever underestimate the Slav propensity to willingly climb up on that cross with nails and a hammer.
Joe Noory
- #3.1.2.1.2 - 2008-05-13 23:55 - (Reply)
One could also say the same thing about any number of small European states. It's a foolish and uncaring argument. If eastern Europe was worthy of receiving help up and out of the albatross of risk and difficulty after the fall of Communism, then why not Georgia? Or do they not matter because they aren't in Europe proper?
Zyme
- #3.1.2.1.2.1 - 2008-05-14 00:51 - (Reply)
I cannot remember myself having claimed that I would have an incredibly humane world view :)
franchie
- #4 - 2008-05-12 02:21 - (Reply)
"but you are afraid to take on even a modest role in a potentially challenging situation in your own back yard."
franchie
- #5 - 2008-05-13 11:51 - (Reply)
Dunkirk, wasn't there that the Brits ran (oops, swam away) away like rabbits in their hole ?
Pat Patterson
- #5.1 - 2008-05-13 12:47 - (Reply)
Of the 330,000 troops that made it safely off the beach at Dunkirk were over 139,000 French, a few thousand Belgians and a handful of Dutch.
Anonymous
- #6.1 - 2008-05-13 15:43 - (Reply)
Brits retreat, pic
Pat Patterson
- #7 - 2008-05-13 16:56 - (Reply)
And how does that contradict anything I said? And if you're going to borrow from Wikipedia then perhaps picking and choosing information ignores the whole picture. Or else you might also have included this photo of British and French prisoners leaving the beach;
franchie
- #8 - 2008-05-14 02:46 - (Reply)
Plus the French troops that surrendered were either soon in the reconstituted divisions of Vichy France and served in France and the French possessions. While the British troops who surrendered, except those murdered at Le Paradis, were kept in camps the entire war.
Zyme
- #8.1 - 2008-05-14 10:28 - (Reply)
There surely must have been quite a number of frenchmen in Germany, as even my grand-grandparents in eastern Bavaria employed a few ;)
Pat Patterson
- #10 - 2008-05-14 12:01 - (Reply)
I'm not too sure how my comments implied that there were not French men in camps, or even as "volunteer" workers in Germany as I was referring only to the Battle of Dunkird and the evacuation. The French and the Britsh were in desperate fight and behaved as well as can be expected. The French by and large remained to defend France and provided the bulk of the soliders that defended the beachhead which was their duty. And then most were repatriated as is normal when an army surrenders and a peace treay is signed.
franchie
- #10.1 - 2008-05-14 13:40 - (Reply)
No, Mr Pat, your purpose was the "evil" french surrenders monkeys that collaborated
Franchie
- #11 - 2008-05-14 21:16 - (Reply)
Mr professor, a link that isn't out of wikipedia :
Pat Patterson
- #11.1 - 2008-05-14 23:45 - (Reply)
I despair, where did I say anything about the French being cowards. I stated that of the French units engaged in the Battle and then Evacuation from Dunkirk that they were repatriated and then reconstituted as part of the Vichy forces after the surrender on the 22nd of June, 1940. I said absolutely nothing about the fate of the rest of the French Army. I mentioned nothing about the Charlegmagne SS Division, or collaborators or traitors. I am beginning to suspect that some see such criticism everywhere much as Woody Allen accused a character in one of his films of anti-Semitism for slurring, "...did you?" Add Comment
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