Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO

[Koora-Tuunshe]

I believe If Ukraine formalises its acceptance to join NATO, it would keep western donors happy but place Russia in a strategically vulnerable position. Besides NATO may request Ukraine to force Russia to remove her portion of the Black Sea Fleet from Ukraine.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 NATO has been expanding into former Soviet territories in order to get rid of the last trace of Communism and spread Capitalism throughout Europe. Russia shares a nearly 1000 mile border with Ukraine.

Ukraine also maintains an army of 300,000 troops and a very modern military including nearly 3000 plane air force. Their relations have been tense except short periods of cooperation. The stumbling block here is that Russia is walking on thin ice as its hegemonic influence in the region is on the wane. Their past agreement that divided the Soviet Navy's Black See Fleet is shaken as Ukraine claims that Russia has not abided by the agreement,(the reason is clear) and if this stalemate persists, it could lead to more threats of fuel shutdowns and thus hamper the flow of cash money into her economy. By contrast, Russia relies on Ukranian ports to export oil and on Ukraninans pipelines to ship gas to western Europe.

 

With one democratic system, the west is convinced that future conflicts in Europe would be highly improbable and might henceforth come to an end thus to maintain their mode of control and dominance in their access to strategic global resources.

 

Their aim, nevertheless, is to make Russia a pariah state with no friends. Though I have no reason to expect military conflict but this signals the begining of a bitter hostility and arms race

[Koora-Tuunshe]

Bush wants 2 ex-Soviet states in NATO

By James Gerstenzang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 2, 2008

 

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA -- President Bush said Tuesday that he has told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Moscow has "nothing to fear" if former parts of the Soviet Union join NATO and that Russia should welcome cooperation on a U.S. missile defense network in Central Europe.

 

After meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in Kiev, Bush declared that he would not soften his support for bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO in exchange for Russia dropping its opposition to the missile defense network.

 

"There's no trade-offs. Period," Bush said in response to a reporter's question about a possible compromise. He stated that it was a "misperception" that he was willing to make such a bargain.

 

The president said he told Putin in a recent telephone call that it would be "in his interests" to receive information from the missile defense network.

 

The question of whether to take the initial steps that could lead to Ukraine and Georgia joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization became a dominant issue in the days leading up to an alliance summit, which begins today in Romania.

 

Bush arrived late Tuesday in Bucharest to attend the meeting.

 

The future of the missile defense system, which the United States wants to build in Poland and the Czech Republic as a shield against warheads launched from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East, also is likely to be a central topic during Bush's weekend visit with Putin in Sochi, a Russian Black Sea resort, in what probably will be their final face-to-face meeting before Putin leaves the presidency May 7.

 

Putin and other Russian officials have objected strenuously that the system, set close to Russia's borders in former communist bloc nations, would threaten Russian rockets.

 

For Bush, the Bucharest summit provides an opportunity to draw attention to changes in the alliance since his presidency began in 2001, its reach now covering a swath of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea that during the Cold War was part of the Warsaw Pact.

 

In a speech today, Bush said that extending the initial invitation to Ukraine and Georgia would signal to their citizens "that if they continue on the path of democracy and reform they will be welcomed into the institutions of Europe." It would signal to the wider region, including Russia, that the two "are, and will remain, sovereign and independent states."

 

He said that "the need for missile defense in Europe is real and it is urgent."

 

Bush spoke Tuesday in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, at a news conference with Yushchenko, who has been outspoken in his own country in favor of joining NATO. Yushchenko acknowledged that he did not yet have the support of a majority of his citizens.

 

Referring to that opposition, Bush took note of a demonstration by Ukrainian Communists displaying red flags bearing the hammer and sickle and banners linking Bush and NATO to a profanity.

 

The demonstrators were encamped Monday and Tuesday at Independence Square, the central site of the Orange Revolution of 2004 that brought Yushchenko to the presidency.

 

"Just because there was a bunch of, you know, Soviet-era flags in the street yesterday doesn't -- you shouldn't read anything into that," Bush said.

 

Ukraine and Georgia sit on Russia's southern flank. Putin has objected to the prospect that NATO, which was founded 59 years ago as a military and political balance to the Soviet Union, might take the initial steps in Bucharest that could lead to their membership.

 

While Bush seeks to ease Russia's opposition to Ukraine and Georgia being given what is called a "membership action plan" as a first step, he also must persuade Germany and France to drop their objections, reportedly fueled by Russia's opposition.

 

"As every nation has told me," Bush said, "Russia will not have a veto over what happens in Bucharest, and I take their word for it."

 

Yushchenko said that if Germany and France yielded to Russia, NATO's open door to membership would be "replaced by the veto right" of a country that "is not even a member of the alliance."

 

During the news conference and while delivering a toast later at a luncheon, Bush drew attention to Ukraine's contribution to NATO, even though it is not a member; Ukraine has provided about 330 police officers and soldiers to the NATO peacekeeping force of 16,000 in Kosovo, sent soldiers to Iraq in 2003 and provided aircraft to transport troops to Afghanistan.

 

james.gerstenzang

 

@latimes.com

[Koora-Tuunshe]

Putin has a point

Editorial

The Russian president opposes Bush's push to expand NATO eastward, and he's right.

April 2, 2008

 

It isn't often that we take Vladimir V. Putin's side on issues of international governance, but the bellicose Russian president is right about the matter expected to dominate this week's NATO summit: Ukraine and Georgia don't belong in the alliance. At least not yet.

 

President Bush spent Tuesday in Ukraine talking up that country's membership bid, part of an ongoing administration strategy backing NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe. For Bush, a larger NATO means more potential allies willing to contribute troops to the struggle in Afghanistan, still largely an American project despite the alliance's approval of the invasion. With much of Western Europe deeply reluctant to put its soldiers in harm's way, the East represents the best hope for relieving the pressure on U.S. forces. But that short-term benefit has to be balanced against the many long-term problems associated with an expanded NATO.

 

In the first place, there's the fact that the larger the organization grows, the more unwieldy it becomes. NATO's decisions are made by consensus, which is far harder to achieve as it adds members with broadly divergent security interests. For an example of the institutional paralysis likely to result, see the United Nations.

 

Second, adding Ukraine and Georgia to the 26-member alliance would needlessly antagonize Russia. Moscow and the West made an implicit deal amid the collapse of the Soviet Union: Russia would allow German reunification and pull its troops out of Eastern Europe as long as NATO didn't expand eastward. The betrayal of that trust infuriates and frightens the Russian people, fueling nationalism and insecurity that have strengthened the current autocratic regime. With the Cold War imperative of containing Russia now long outdated, there is no compelling security reason to add former Soviet republics to the alliance, while doing so harms our relations with a country whose support is critical in resolving dangerous conflicts with Iran and other nations.

 

Lastly, the two potential members come with serious risks attached. Both are young, and not entirely stable, democracies riddled with corruption and internal dissent. The majority of the Ukrainian people oppose membership, and Georgia is rent by a secession movement in two pro-Russia regions. Not many Americans would favor sending their sons to die defending Tbilisi, but that's precisely what they would be committed to do with Georgia in the alliance.

 

The door should not be slammed in their faces, but neither the two countries themselves, nor Russia, nor NATO is ready for them to start on the path to membership. Let's talk in 2010.

 

 

Latimes

[Koora-Tuunshe]

Ukraine's NATO bid: What does Russia have to do with it?

Apri 3, 2008

 

By John Marone

 

Ukraine and Georgia were not offered a Membership Action Plan [MAP] at the NATO summit in Bucharest this week. Moscow and her supporters were jubilant and defiant at the news. Their reaction is based on the following thinking: Russia is sick and tired of being pushed around by the West, and particularly by the United States, which has continuously imposed itself on Russia's area of interest. In addition, the argument goes, many if not most people in Ukraine want to be aligned with Russia or at least neutral, while Georgia still has to work out its territorial disputes before it can join a 'foreign' military alliance.

To anyone who still sees the world as 'us and them', this line of thinking and arguments is logical. The unspoken sentiment is something like: Poor Russia has been humiliated enough, while the United States needs to get its comeuppance.

Lot's of emotion here indeed, but let's look at the facts.

First of all, Russia is not poor. It has enjoyed a windfall of revenues from the sale of gas, oil and arms in the last several years. Instead of using this money to invest in its people, infrastructure and technology, it has allowed well-heeled individuals to get rich at the expense of everyone else. Worse yet, these individuals then flee the country or export their capital abroad for fear of their country's capricious attitude toward private property.

To anyone attending a fashion show, a tennis match or a cocktail party in Moscow, the Russians have joined the rest of the world. But just go to a peaceful demonstration against President Putin & Co. or try to open a small business in the Russian hinterland, and the backwardness and barbarism hit you right in the face.

Russia is now capitalist, and foreign companies with enough clout and connections can do business there. But it is hardly democratic, and losing ground every day.

But don't try to tell all this to German and other European officials keen on securing gas supplies for their countries.

It was Germany, and to a lesser extent France, Italy, etc., who most vigorously opposed allowing Ukraine and Georgia to get a NATO MAP for the reasons cited above. Besides the fact that MAP isn't a guarantee of membership, Europe knows full well that many Ukrainians are against NATO membership because they have been subjected to Soviet and then neo-Soviet propaganda for decades, while Moscow is the one keeping Georgia's territorial disputes frozen.

One doesn't even have to believe in conspiracy theories. Just listen to the cold war rhetoric that regularly comes out of the Kremlin.

But the Europeans have been as united in their stand against those 'pushy' Americans as they are divided in their feeble attempts to come up with a common energy policy. The continent is already dangerously dependent on eastern exports of blue fuel, with the price set by Moscow set to rise even further.

The German relationship with the Kremlin is particularly suspect, considering former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's employment at Russian Gazprom. Russia is not only Germany's energy supplier, but a major consumer for the third largest economy in the world's exports, such as heavy machinery.

On the other hand, history shows the two countries have a short-lived capacity for cooperation due to conflicts for influence over the territories lying between them, which they initially agree to divvy up. Remember the eighteenth century partition of Poland, which was only restored after World War One? How about the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, which led to World War Two? The point here is not to dig up skeletons from the past. Germany is a modern democratic state, and Russia is apparently no longer bent on world revolution. But this doesn't mean either country no longer has any geopolitical interests. And these interests might again be running their historical paths if not for the United States, which is also pinning its hopes on Central and Eastern Europe. For Russia, these countries represent security, a connection to its Slavic cousins. For Germany, they are the natural direction of its economic and geopolitical growth, while for the United States they are new markets and a strategic foothold in Europe.

If the US were again to retreat into isolationism, would Russian-German history repeat itself? Did the two agree on the independence of Kosovo? Will Russia ever be satisfied with controlling only its present borders? Will Germany allow itself to be blackmailed over gas and oil?

Instead of ceding to the whims of an increasing authoritarian Kremlin, Berlin (which knows full well the danger of tyrants), should lead the continent in challenging Moscow to reform. Russia will never be secure from hydrocarbon sales alone anyway. Sooner or later it's going to have to invest in other forms of revenue, which ultimately will entail a return to the path of free-market democracy.

The path of reform is what NATO expansion is all about, regardless of the rhetoric coming out of Moscow.

And to deny Ukraine and Georgia a chance to tread along this path is to drive them back into the arms of repression. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, Vladimir Putin's Russia has turned its back on Western values to seek companionship with countries like Belarus, Uzbekistan and other democratic failures. Like a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, Russia would rather play the bad boy than second fiddle to Europe or America.

Although Putin has arguably won the support of most Russians in this policy of defiance, he has not achieved the same in Ukraine and especially Georgia, despite a serious effort in the case of the former.

Whatever disappointments may have followed it, Ukraine's Orange Revolution was a definite signal in favor of Western integration over Russian hegemony. This signal was sent by the people as well as a new generation of politicians. Moscow's candidate failed to steal the elections, and the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko became president. The revolution is still being played out in a seemingly endless string of elections, gas negotiations and campaigns in support of the Russian or Ukrainian language. But the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians genuinely support their president's drive to integrate them with the West. The misinformation, mismanagement and corruption that they are subjected to on an everyday basis should serve as evidence of the opposition Ukrainians face rather than a reason to reject their application.

The fact that European leaders have the gall to invoke Russian interests in rejecting Ukraine's NATO bid shows that old-lady Europe may harbor some of the old-world chauvinistic feelings that Russia is roundly condemned for.

What is the message for Ukraine and Georgia: that the Orange and Rose revolutions were just an academic experiment, that Ukraine and Georgia should go back to being controlled by Russia, or whoever? Unlike many of the Central Asian regimes happy to maintain their relationship with Moscow, Kyiv and Tbilisi see themselves as part of Europe. It's a dirty trick to start pointing out their democratic flaws this late in the game. Both nations have made a noble, if not altogether successful, effort to join the rest of the continent - certainly no less than countries like Romania and Bulgaria.

Contrary to the demagoguery coming out of the Russian legislature, neither country is anti-Russian, but both fully realize the prospect of being in Moscow's area of influence, where stagnation and authoritarianism stare out across the fence that separates them from a prosperous and democratic Europe. In Czarist and Soviet times, Moscow always went to great lengths to keep its subjects from fleeing. The tide of immigration to Europe speaks for itself.

Thus, there can be no talk of Russian interests. Until Russia is fully brought into the family of Europe, through democratic and market reforms that it must itself embrace, the country will (or should) always be at odds with Europe. And if countries like Ukraine and Georgia choose Europe over Russia, they should be helped, like a woman fleeing from a violently jealous husband.

And if some - the Kremlin, Ukrainian communists, anti-globalists - think that this woman is being seduced away from her lawful spouse by a wealthy but uncaring West that will be equally indifferent to her interests, they should consider that: first, Ukraine (especially Western Ukraine) wasn't always under Russia; and second, it's better to be in a European bird cage than on a Russian leash.

This not only applies to Ukraine and Georgia but to Poland, Hungary, Romania and their neighbors, all of whom chose Europe over Moscow.

The Kremlin not only needs to know that it has no right to bully its neighbors, but that it might be better off without them. Instead of trying to incorporate more satellites into its orbit, it should look after the vast territory that it currently controls.

On the other hand, the expansion of NATO and Europe will ultimately mean as much input from the newcomers as 'indoctrination' from the West. Poland has certainly been unwilling to take a back seat in European affairs.

Georgia and Ukraine aside, an organization that encompasses cultures and governments stretching from California to eastern Turkey will be more occupied with maintaining order within its territory than threatening others.

US leadership is already being challenged by member countries like Germany and France, forcing NATO to live up to its democratic ideals.

If Ukraine and Georgia want a place under this umbrella of democracy, which by necessity must be able to project force, no one - neither the Germans nor certainly not the Russians - has the right to reject them.

Germany was more divided than Georgia when it joined NATO, and citizens in all the former Warsaw pact countries initially expressed doubts about the need for membership.

To make Ukraine and Georgia out to be special cases in order to reject them is a rejection of the values that NATO purports to defend.

Source: Ukraine Observer

[Koora-Tuunshe]

Stay away, Vladimir Putin tells Nato

5 Apr 5, 2008 - 10:20:19 AM

 

 

 

Vladimir Putin yesterday told Nato that it would become a "direct threat" to Moscow if it expanded further east.

 

Emboldened after routing the alliance's plans to offer membership to Ukraine and Georgia, the Russian president yesterday gave warning that the countries must be locked out permanently.

 

"The emergence of a powerful military bloc at our borders will be seen as a direct threat to Russian security," Mr Putin told Nato heads of state at a summit in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

 

"The efficiency of our co-operation will depend on whether Nato members take Russia's interests into account."

 

While the tone of his speech was typically strident, Mr Putin refrained from the insults with which he often pepper his foreign policy speeches.

 

Nor, however, was he as conciliatory as some Western European countries had hoped after their retreat on membership. Many analysts described Nato's capitulation as the biggest foreign policy victory of Mr Putin's presidency. Mr Putin, who switches jobs to become prime minister next month, offered no substantial compromises in return and ties with the West will consequently remain strained over a number of potentially explosive issues.

 

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato secretary-general, sought to put a brave face on the failure to make concrete progress in improving the worst crisis in Russia's relationship with the West since the Cold War.

 

"I cannot report that we saw stunning breakthroughs," he told reporters after Mr Putin addressed the summit.

 

Gordon Brown met Mr Putin on the sidelines of the summit.

 

British diplomats had feared the meeting would go badly, with London and Moscow at odds over the killing in London of Alexander Litvinenko, and Russia's closure of two British Council offices. However, they were relieved that Mr Putin had taken a "low key" approach and hoped that relations with London would improve

 

Diplomats say efforts to find common ground will now be stepped up in the run-up to the first meeting between Mr Brown and the new Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev.

 

That meeting is likely to come at the G8 leaders' meeting in Japan this summer.

 

Mr Putin also suggested he was baffled that officials thought he might have been aggressive in his address.

 

"I don't know where their horror in expectation of my speeches comes from," he said. "Let's be friends guys and engage in an honest dialogue."

 

The speech set the scene for a meeting between George W Bush and Mr Putin at the Black Sea resort of Sochi to discuss Washington's plans to build a missile defence shield in central Europe.

 

Although the US president won unanimous Nato backing for the project, Mr Putin remains virulently opposed to the shield and has threatened to target Europe with nuclear missiles if it is built. Russia has rejected Washington's explanation that the shield is meant to protect Europe from a nuclear strike by Iran as well as several offers to co-operate in the project. The Kremlin maintains that the true purpose of the shield is to remove Russia's ability to strike first in the even of a nuclear war. The American defence secretary, Robert Gates, yesterday said that Mr Bush had told Nato that the US would send "significant additional" troops to Afghanistan next year. The alliance summit has so far failed to secure the number of combat troops from other countries requested by commanders in Afghanistan.

 

Source: Telegraph (UK)