[Peace-discuss] NYT: forget about NATO membership for Georgia...

[C. G. Estabrook]

It also may help the US to (slightly) live up to its promises. The expansion of 
NATO to Eastern Europe was contrary to US undertakings at the time of the 
unification of Germany.

In 1990 the former East Germany became part of the Federal Republic of Germany 
and NATO, as agreed in the Two Plus Four Treaty earlier in the year. To secure 
Soviet approval of a united Germany's remaining in NATO, it was agreed that 
foreign troops and nuclear weapons would not be stationed in the east.

"Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations undertook a triumphalist 
winner-take-all policy of extracting unilateral concessions first from Yeltsin 
and then from Putin. They have included the eastward expansion of NATO (thereby 
breaking a promise the first President Bush made to Gorbachev); the withdrawal 
from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had discouraged a new nuclear arms 
race; the bogus nuclear weapons reduction treaty of 2002; and the ongoing 
military encirclement of Russia with US and NATO bases in former Soviet 
territories" <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050314/cohen>.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's last leader, said in an interview this 
spring, "Putin is not going to start a war against the United States or any 
other country for that matter. Yet we see the United States approving a military 
budget and the defence secretary pledging to strengthen conventional forces 
because of the possibility of a war with China or Russia.  I sometimes have a 
feeling that the United States is going to wage war against the entire world...

"The Americans promised that Nato wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany 
after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so 
what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted...

"There is a phenomenon in the West to criticise Putin's domestic record. But in 
Russia he has mass support. His popularity ratings are 70 to 80 percent. Is this 
not democracy?"  --CGE


slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 08:32:50PM -0500, Robert Naiman wrote:
>> U.S. Won't Push NATO To Admit Georgia
>> Helene Cooper, New York Times, August 19, 2008
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/world/europe/19rice.html
>>
>> Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the United States
>> would not push for Georgia to be allowed into NATO at an emergency
>> meeting on Tuesday, a tacit admission that America and its European
>> allies lack the stomach for a military fight with Russia.
>  [...]
>> The NATO charter says that an attack on one alliance member is an
>> attack on all, which could well have led to a military confrontation
>> with Russia if Georgia were already in NATO, a prospect that has left
>> many European governments queasy.
>> ...
>> If European countries were afraid to let Georgia and Ukraine into NATO
>> at Bucharest in April for fear of angering Russia, why would they
>> admit them now, after Russia has demonstrated that it is willing to
>> fight over Georgian territory?
>  [...]
> 
> 
> It's an ill wind as blows nobody good.
>