Transatlantic Politics

Condoleezza Rice spoke yesterday at a press briefing before travelling to Paris and Tbilisi about the importance to grant Georgia the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), an intermediate stage before granting full membership of the Alliance.

One of the reasons for NATO Membership Action Plan and, ultimately, for NATO membership, is that it allows states to overcome longstanding difficulties, differences and conflicts under the umbrella of a collective security organization, defense organization of democracies. I have noted before that had anyone said that you would be able to resolve, for instance, differences between Hungary and Romania, between Bulgaria and Turkey in peaceful ways — no one would have believed it when the Soviet empire broke up. But in fact, under the umbrella of NATO, that has been taking place.
 
And so if you now look across Central and Eastern Europe, one thing that is also very different from just a few decades ago is that the countries that were liberated after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Baltic states and the aspirants – Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and others are now – have made the transition and are making the transition into transatlantic institutions. That allows them both to resolve their differences and to have a reason, a spur, for internal reform and further democratization, the appropriate relationship between civilian and military leaders and so forth and so on. 

That is why Membership Action Plan has been so valuable, and it’s why the United States continues to stand for Membership Action Plan for Georgia and Ukraine.

She also fiercly condemned Russia’s military invasion beyond the South Ossetian borders and alluded to banning Russia from international organizations such as the WTO, the G8 and the OECD.

When you start bombing ports and threatening to bomb airfields and bombing a city like Gori and bringing troops in a flanking maneuver on the western flank of Georgia and tying up the main roads between Georgia – between Tbilisi and Gori, that’s well beyond anything that is needed to protect Russian peacekeepers. And that is why Russia is starting to face international condemnation for what it is doing.

 
This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it. Things have changed.

Meanwhile, a common naval exercise between Russia, US, France and UK in the Pacific was cancelled, and NATO refused the participation of a Russian vessel in common maneuvres in the Mediterranean. But are these gestures enough to protect Georgia from a brutal takeover by Russia?

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