NATO would soon develop contingency plans to defend Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania against Russian attacks, said Stephen Herzog, an independent security policy analyst and an arms control consultant to the Federation of American Scientists, in his article published in the information and political portal of World Politics Review.
Herzog noted that this is the first time since the end of the "Cold War" that the Atlantic Alliance had specifically pinpointed Russia as a threat.
According to the analyst, similar offers were already put forward in 2008, but at the time, France and Germany disapproved them, out of fear that it would compromise relations with the Kremlin.
Herzog himself does not believe in the military threat from Russia: The Kremlin, in his opinion, does not want to get involved in a nuclear conflict with NATO (it would be inevitable in case of an attack on one of the block member countries).
The Kremlin, as political scientist said, uses the levers of oil and gas blackmail and cyber-terrorism, and NATO should think about how to confront these, quite real and tangible threats.
At the same time, Stephen Herzog said, NATO and Russia should try to solve problems together, they should "finally exorcise the ghosts of the Cold War rivalry", which absolutely does not contribute to the expected "plan for the Baltic States".
Meanwhile, the New York Times is reminding about an appeal not to supply Georgia with weapons, delivered by Moscow through South Ossetia to US Senator Richard Lugar.
Senator Lugar has recently published a report which calls into question the validity of the actual termination of the American arms supplies to Georgia after the ) Russia's aggression in August 2008. The senator believes it is "a de facto arms embargo that contributes to regional instability".
It is interestingly to note that the appeal to the senator was formally signed by 340 residents of South Ossetia. At the same time, Moscow sought the assistance of a US PR company.
The appeal describes a "threat" from "Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to regional stability". Moscow via Ossetians has also encouraged the US Congress to consider the question of "how the Georgians used weapons provided by the US in summer o2008".
The Russian aggression against Georgia in August 2008 confirms NATO's weakness and feuding, a columnist of the International Herald Tribune writes in a review of a book by Ronald D. Asmus "A Little War That Shook the World".
This is a "good new book about Russia's invasion of Georgia", says reviewer Jon Vinocur, but it might well have been more naggingly and intriguingly titled "A Little War That Should Have Shaken the World but Didn't". "This wording comes closer to reality", he stated in his article.
The materials in the book demonstrate NATO's weakness, the author says. He believes, the Russian aggression against Georgia in August 2008 was possible in a large extent because the United States, NATO and the European Union simply closed their eyes on it.
"Russia maximized its capacity to exercise a veto over the West's security interests, while the West, divided and without clear leadership, sought to minimize the obvious importance of the event", the article says. "A country that a close partner of the United States and a candidate country for NATO was invaded, and neither Washington nor the Atlantic Alliance did much to come to its assistance", Vinocur cited Asmus.
Russia tramped the basic post-Cold War rule that borders in Europe should never be changed again by force; and, it assumed it prepared to use force again against its neighbors, the author affirms.
"The book's testimony documenting the Atlantic Alliance's feebleness and feuding with regard to Russia's threats against Georgia seem to serve as a massive encouragement to any group or country - "Al Qaeda", Iran, North Korea - thinking that West's rivalries could make it compliant", Vinocur writes.
According to the author, Putin has taken note in red ink that the administration of President George W. Bush failed to win the Membership Action Plan (MAP), or official status, as a NATO candidate, for Georgia or Ukraine because Germany opposed.
"In terms of Putin's view of Russia's self-interest, NATO's wobble was an invitation to a short effective war, and the West has done its best to suppress it", Vinocur writes.
The current events continue to demonstrate that Asmus was right, the book reviewer says. Thus, the French started negotiations with the Russian Navy about selling modern helicopter-carrying assault vessels to Russia , and Germany tripled its funding for the Nord Stream.
Department of Monitoring,
Kavkaz Center
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