NATO Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia and Ukraine

7 comments

1. This won’t play well here but love the throw back. Its crazy how just a decade or two can change the discourse.

2. We got the worst of both worlds.

   We were unable to join, not given any plan how to join, not given any timeline to join…

   Yet, we were said to join eventually, turning us into perfect targets, without any protection… Just sitting ducks…

   Europe (France and Germany) was more than happy to throw us under the bus. Bush was the one who saved Tbilisi (shoutout to Ukraine, Poland and Baltic States for supporting us during our hardest days).

   Furthermore, Georgia was blamed for the war in 2008 by the Europe (for not being able to avoid war and playing into Russia’s provocations (that being Russians shelling our villages for weeks)) and we were defacto sanctioned on arms procurement from the Western nations.

   So, in a way, Georgia has already experienced a trial version of “Peace for our time”, designed by France and Germany. Now Trump is trying to give us all the full version…

3. Thank you for the reminder.
   It’s amazing how many people forget the past

4. Oh boy, get ready for a lot of angry replies to this one.

5. Paywalled

6. The article:

   BUCHAREST, Romania — President Bush threw the NATO summit meeting here off-script on Wednesday by lobbying hard to extend membership to Ukraine and Georgia, but he failed to rally support for the move among key allies.

   Mr. Bush’s position — that Ukraine and Georgia should be welcomed into a Membership Action Plan, or MAP, that prepares nations for NATO membership — directly contradicted German and French government positions stated earlier this week. It also risked upsetting efforts to get Russia to soften its opposition to positioning a missile defense array in Eastern Europe.

   Mr. Bush failed to win over a consensus of NATO members in a debate at a dinner of NATO leaders, a senior German official said Wednesday night, with at least seven countries lined up against him.
   A senior American official, briefing reporters, said that no final decisions had been made at the dinner, and that all parties agreed on the importance of keeping the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s door open to Ukraine and Georgia.

   Mr. Bush, entering his last NATO summit meeting as president, was described by the official as wanting to “lay down a marker” for his legacy and not wanting to “lose faith” with the Ukrainian and Georgian peoples and the other former Soviet republics. As Mr. Bush did more often early in his presidency, he expressed his views candidly despite warnings from allies that he was complicating efforts to find diplomatic solutions.

   Normally, summit meetings like this are prescripted, but Mr. Bush’s comments added some extra interest while annoying Germany and France, which had said they would block the invitation to Ukraine and Georgia.

   At the dinner on Wednesday, the German and French position was supported by Italy, Hungary and the Benelux countries, a senior German official said. Mr. Bush was said to have accepted that his position was not going to prevail, and officials were asked to find some construction overnight that would encourage Ukraine and Georgia without asking them to enter a membership plan now.

   The dinner meeting ran two hours over schedule. An hour and a half after it was supposed to end, Laura Bush, the first lady, left on her own, as did other spouses.

   “The debate was mostly among Europeans,” the senior administration official said, acknowledging that several allies had balked at President Bush’s stance. “It was quite split, but it was split in a good way.”

   NATO members did appear to make progress on other issues on their agenda. They are set on inviting Croatia and Albania to join the alliance, while working to overcome Greek objections to extending membership to Macedonia, European and American officials said.

   France also offered to send a battalion of troops to eastern Afghanistan, a move that could free American forces to move south, where NATO troops are struggling to suppress the Taliban-led insurgency.

   On Wednesday morning, Mr. Bush gave a rousing speech in which he stated his positions and declared that “the terrorist threat is real, it is deadly and defeating this enemy is the top priority of NATO,” which is not the defined goal of every member of this collective security alliance.

   Referring to democratic revolutions in both Ukraine and Georgia, he said: “Welcoming them into the Membership Action Plan would send a signal to their citizens that if they continue on the path to democracy and reform they will be welcomed into the institutions of Europe. It would send a signal throughout the region” — read Russia — “that these two nations are, and will remain, sovereign and independent states.”

   Some German officials described the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, as upset and even angry on Wednesday. She and Mr. Bush have talked repeatedly about the issue in the past two months. Mrs. Merkel had thought that a compromise was in the works, the officials said, with Washington supporting a warm statement welcoming the interest of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO and encouraging them to work toward entering the membership plan program.

   Germany and France have said they believe that since neither Ukraine nor Georgia is stable enough to enter the program now, a membership plan would be an unnecessary offense to Russia, which firmly opposes the move. In fact, senior diplomats here said, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has threatened to cancel his planned first-ever visit to the NATO meeting on Friday if the two former Soviet states enter the program for eventual membership.

   Mrs. Merkel visited Moscow on March 8 and met Mr. Putin and his successor, Dmitri A. Medvedev. She told them that Russia would not be allowed a veto over NATO membership. But a senior German diplomat, Wolfgang Ischinger, said that offering membership to a divided Ukraine could destabilize the new government there, and that not enough diplomacy had taken place beforehand with Russia.
   Mr. Ischinger, Germany’s ambassador to London, noted that after the NATO summit meeting Mr. Bush and the two Russians would meet in Sochi, a Russian resort on the Black Sea. He said, “It’s the absence of this discussion that makes me wonder if NATO has done enough of its homework at this point on this front.”

7. As I remember, ex-chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel (2005-2021) has been against Ukraine joining NATO in her whole political lifetime.

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