Contain Russia, not alienate says NATO
NATO strategy will be to deny Russian strategic objectives which NATO says is clearly to undermine Georgia’s democracy, to use its military capability to damage, and in some cases, destroy Georgian infrastructure, and to try and weaken the Georgian state. “But we are also going to send a message that we’re not going to allow Russia to draw a new line at those states that are not yet integrated into the transatlantic structures like Georgia and Ukraine. And so the alliance will need to consider what it wishes to do to clearly indicate that we’re not accepting a new line. The Bucharest Declaration, in effect, said that. And I think you will see a reaffirmation of Bucharest as you saw with Chancellor Merkel when she was in Tbilisi” said US Secretary Condoleezza Rice.
While David Miliband, UK’s Secretary of State for Foreign “I think it’s important that we don’t pursue a policy of trying to isolate Russia. What we need is hard headed engagement. We will certainly ensure there’s no such thing as business as usual.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy letter to President Saakashvili cleared terms for the ceasefire agreement that what should remain of Russian forces are the Russian forces that were in the zone of conflict before the August 6/7 events began. So that remains a concern and we continue to monitor that situation.
A worried NATO is doing all it can do to sooth the fears of its member states. Secretary Rice said “we have an objective in the alliance to reaffirm the support of the alliance for those states that are now well outside of Russia’s reach; that is, those that have been fully integrated into the transatlantic structures, states like - the Baltic states like Poland, which are fully integrated members of the transatlantic community. And that just shows how far we’ve come since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and certainly how far we’ve come since 1968 when one of the countries that will be sitting around that table was brutally attacked and its government overthrown by Soviet forces.”
On the future of NATO-Russia Council, Secretary Rice said “we, of course, have to look at what this means for – in terms of the strategic choice that Russia seems to be making. This alliance has kept open a road for a strategic choice of Russia as friend, not adversary. That’s why we have a NATO-Russia Council. That’s why there have been so many efforts to pull Russia toward the international institutions like the WTO and the OECD and the G-8, and, as I mentioned, the NATO-Russia Council.” David Miliband after the NATO meeting said “There’s no question of just continuing with the NATO Russia meetings as if nothing’s happened. Something important has happened, something very important has happened. But it’s important that we engage with Russia in a hard headed way to ensure that they understand the consequences of their actions.”