The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a remarkable case of institutional survival in the face of changing circumstances. It was created in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Soviet threat, and in 1989 the Soviet threat vanished. Yet NATO not only survived the collapse of the Soviet Union but expanded, taking in all the former satellite states of Eastern Europe and even the Baltic republics that had been part of the Russian empire. But the Georgian debacle could break NATO. In those Eastern European countries that were so recently ruled from Moscow, the presence of Russian troops in Georgia has reawakened all the old fears. On August 14, Poland hastily agreed to let the United States place anti-ballistic missile sites on its soil, on condition that there must also be a full-fledged US military base in the country. Why? Because then, if Russia attacked Poland, the United States would automatically become involved. The rhetoric in the new NATO members has been almost as hysterical as that in Georgia itself, where President Mikhail Saakashvili has been calling the Russians Ò21st century barbarians.Ó Similar rhetoric pervades the US media, where the fact that Georgia started this war by unleashing an artillery barrage on South Ossetia and then invading it has been virtually erased. ItÕs a rousing morality tale that hits all the right notes for an American sensibility. ItÕs a storyline being pushed by the US State Department, which had been building Georgia up as a key US ally on RussiaÕs southern flank. Yet US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice looked deeply uncomfortable recently as she stood beside the ranting Saakashvili. Pondering Perhaps she was pondering the fact that while the Ònew EuropeÓ of former Soviet-bloc countries uncritically backs Georgia and the US commitment there, the Òold EuropeÓ of Germany, France, Italy and their neighbours mostly does not. This is a problem if she wishes to pursue her goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, since Òold EuropeÓ is the core of NATO. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, put it quite carefully after she met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently: ÒSome of RussiaÕs actions were disproportionate (but) it is rare that all the blame is on one side. In fact, both sides are probably to blame. That is very important to understand.Ó The Italian government warned against trying to build an Òanti-Moscow coalition.Ó French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner works for the most pro-American French leader in recent history, President Nicolas Sarkozy, but he still said: ÒWe shouldnÕt make any moral judgments on this war.Ó This will all be seen as ÒappeasementÓ by Washington, but many in Western Europe would call it common sense. The Russians will stay in Georgia until they have dismantled the Georgian army and navy bases that could threaten the ethnic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhasia again, removing all the new American weaponry that gave Georgia an offensive military capability, and then they will withdraw to the enclaves as the ceasefire agreement requires. Sarkozy brokered that ceasefire, and he agreed to write those clauses into it. He knew that they allowed Russian forces to stay on Georgian territory until the military threat had been nullified, and he accepted them. He did so because he did not really see Russia as an aggressor in this crisis. But if the US pursues its goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, there are only three options. If Òold EuropeÓ refuses, on the grounds that it does not need Russia as an enemy, then either the United States drops its demand, or NATO breaks up. The third alternative (and perhaps the likeliest) is that Òold EuropeÓ agrees to let the two former Soviet republics join Ð but with the unspoken reservation that they will never actually go to war with Russia to protect them. That would be a less dramatic end for NATO, but it would be an end. A two-tier alliance is no alliance at all.
