NATO chief says body will continue to expand

[inanna]

Source: AP

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- NATO's chief said Tuesday the Western alliance will continue its expansion despite Russian opposition and warned Moscow that it has no veto on Georgia's bid to become a member.

In a strong message of support for Georgia after its debilitating war with Russia, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said "the road to NATO is still wide open" and Russia could not break the alliance's ties with the former Soviet republic through military action.

"The process of NATO enlargement will continue, with due caution but also with a clear purpose - to help create a stable, undivided Europe," he said in a speech at Tbilisi State University during a two-day visit.

"No other country will have a veto over that process, nor will we allow our strong ties to Georgia to be broken by outside military intervention and pressure," he said. "Georgia has a rightful place in this Europe."


Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GEORGIA_NATO?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-09-16-07-06-05

[thunder rising]

1. More Bush style diplomacy!! NATO as in "North Atlantic" just noting Georgia is WAY OUTSIDE

that area.

[win_in_06]

3. NATO policy has become, under the leadership of Bush, US policy

[Xipe Totec]

2. In Europe, as in Asia, Nato leaves a trail of catastrophe

Nato is useless. It has failed to bring stability to Afghanistan, as it failed to bring it to Serbia. It just breaks crockery. Nato has proved a rotten fighting force, which in Kabul is on the brink of being sidelined by exasperated Americans. Nor is it any better at diplomacy: witness its hamfisted handling of east Europe. As the custodian of the west's postwar resistance to the Soviet Union's nuclear threat it served a purpose. Now it has become a diplomats' Olympics, irrelevant but with bursts of extravagant self-importance.

Yesterday's Nato ministerial meeting in Brussels was a fig leaf over the latest fiasco, the failure to counter the predictable Russian intervention in Georgia. Ostensibly to save Russian nationals in South Ossetia, the intervention was, in truth, to tell Georgia and Ukraine that they must not play games with the west along Russia's frontier. Nato, which Russia would (and should) have joined after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is now a running provocation along the eastern rim of Europe.

There was no strategic need for Nato to proselytise for members, and consequent security guarantees, among the Baltic republics and border states to the south. Nor is there any strategic need for the US to place missile sites in Poland or the Czech Republic. This was mere Nato self-aggrandisement reinforcing the lobbying of the Pentagon hawks.

These moves were bound to infuriate the hypersensitive Russians, and did. There is no point in western pundits saying that the thrust of Nato close to the Russian border is quite different from the cold war location of Soviet missiles in Cuba. It seems the same to Russian nationalists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/20/nato.usforeignpolicy?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

[Odin2005]

4. That's OK with me.

One more NATO member is one more country Russia can't screw with.

[Mudoria]

5. Good point

[Odin2005]

6. Too bad the Russia apologists can't see the big picture.

Except through "OMG, the neocons are the cause of all evil in the world" glasses. I've been called a suck-up for "American Imperialism" simply because I think Georgia and Ukraine have a right not to be vassals of Russia. :eyes: