``We still don't know who's next,'' said former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who was foreign minister under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped end the Cold War. ``Ukraine most likely,'' because of its Russian- speaking population and naval base in the Crimea, Shevardnadze said in an interview today.
The U.S. has long seen Georgia and Ukraine as counterweights to Russia's influence in the region. Opposition leaders in the two countries came to power after U.S.-backed popular protests in 2003 and 2004. Their ascension advanced an American strategy that seeks to expand NATO to include both countries and secure energy routes from the Caspian Sea that bypass Russia. The BP Plc-led Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline to Turkey runs through Georgia.
See, Russia fears losing influence on these sovereign states, especially with the resources they provide. If they attack now, they can get them in line and make them give up on dreams of democracy and NATO and help return them to serf status. That sad part is, maybe this could have been avoided if the old Europe members would have fast tracked membership. They had the opportunity, but did not. From the UK Guardian, of all places:
In April this year, an embattled American president went to the Nato summit in Bucharest and asked Nato allies to offer Ukraine and Georgia a membership action plan (Map). Bush had been warned that European allies would not agree to the proposal, but he tried anyway. Back in Washington, European rejection of the Map was greeted with disgust. As one leftwing foreign policy expert told me the fact that France was talking about a "balance of power with eastern Europe" illustrated that the organisation was becoming a joke. The Europeans, he said, "have not woken up to the realities of the world". He was livid, to say the least, about the refusal to offer a Map to either country. And he, like myself, was a Democrat.
Now the chickens of European equivocation are coming home to roost. During the Bucharest summit, where the then Russian president, Vladimir Putin, met with Nato leaders, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:
We [Russians] don't believe that this policy of expanding Nato eastwards is playing a positive role in creating stability and strengthening democracy in the heart of Europe.
Apparently the armed invasion of Georgia does promote stability and democracy. I am not going to defend the tactics or rhetoric of the Georgians leading up to this crisis; they have been less than stellar in their handling of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But the fact that so many European commentators feel that the Russian invasion was somehow deserved or legitimate is appalling. Especially since Europeans have so loudly...decried the overly-militarised policies of George Bush. Talk about hypocrisy.
Nato extended a hand to Georgia, it would have deterred the Russians from getting aggressive and it would have given the west more leverage to pressure President Saakashvili to address the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia responsibly. By refusing the give Georgia a Map, Germany, France and the rest of the alliance gave the Kremlin a veto on Georgia's Nato membership, which is totally unacceptable. Now look where we are – once again, armed conflict in the backyard of Europe that European diplomacy has been unable to resolve in any reasonable way.
Europe needs to wake up and smell the jet fumes from the Russian planes bombing Georgia. Russia is a great power and the Kremlin pays great power politics. America understands this, Europe does not. For too long Moscow has successfully divided Europe. Putin split the old members of the EU from the new members as he bullied Poland and Estonia without any opposition from countries such as Germany and France. The Kremlin fractured Europe over the issue of energy, with Berlin politicians selling their souls for a fix of natural gas despite the worries of allied countries to the east and north. Moscow also tried to pit the US and parts of Europe against each other on the issue of missile defence. Europe has stood silently by, allowing European principles to be trampled again and again.
All too often, Nato is painted in shades of war by the far left. But the legacy of the alliance is not one of conflict. During the cold war, non-democratic countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey became members and over time they made the transition to fully-fledged democracies. Nato is as much about making peace among its members, as it is deterring external attack. It was Nato that created the space for Franco-German rapprochement in the 1950s that saw the birth of the EU. Had the alliance extended a hand to Georgia and Ukraine, it would have ensured the extension of peace and security in eastern Europe and these countries' future inclusion in a democratic and peaceful continent.
Gosh, and who does Barack Obama want to ask about before making policy decisions, you know, since he is a citizen of the world now, as he said in his Berlin speech? Yep, old Europe. Doesn't sound like a winning policy for peace and democracy to me, and glad to see the folks at the Guardian realize this, or at least this particular writer does.
