Sunday, August 10, 2008
Putin's logic
I'm a bit behind in my reading about the Russo-Georgian war, but my great public spirit compels me to link to Passport, the group blog at the journal Foreign Policy. There is lots of good stuff over there, but this post lines up well with my own thinking:
Let's dial back the clock to April, when NATO failed to admit Ukraine and Georgia as members. Georgia was told that it must first resolve its "frozen conflicts" with renegade regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia to join. Nobody in NATO relished the prospect of being on the hook for some inscrutable ethnic conflict in the Caucasus.
But, coming on the heels of Kosovo's February declaration of independence, this was practically an invitation to Putin to do his utmost to ensure that Georgia wouldn't ever be stable enough to be a NATO member.
Here's the basic logic:Georgia can't join NATO until it is stable Russia doesn't want Georgia to join NATO Ergo, Russia will destabilize Georgia
It is certainly the case that conditions for admission to NATO should not be easily subvertible by powers against whom NATO is aligned. That said, I am not persuaded that NATO should rush to admit countries (such as Georgia) that are most in need of its protection. Since any defense of such needy countries will in effect be the obligation of the United States and any default of the treaty's obligations will hurt the prestige and credibility of the United States, we ought to be very careful about the countries we admit and why. Otherwise, the admissions "process" itself is likely to be destabilizing.
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