NATO Now

Russia’s adventurism in Georgia was meant to send the bluntest of signals to its neighbors: “Don’t get too cozy with the West, because we rule this region.” The fossilized communists and other Kremlin toadies all too willingly obey. But such a subservient response will only take Ukraine backwards.

To the contrary, the solution is for Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance. Ukraine will have a better fate with NATO, a grouping of 26 democratic European and North American countries, rather than with Kremlin autocrats.

“NATO now!” should be the new rallying cry for all politicians in Ukraine. But as we have seen, the desire of France and Germany not to irritate Russia, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s natural gas, is blamed for the April decision at the NATO summit in Bucharest to delay the membership applications of Ukraine and Georgia... [snip]

Western leaders, meanwhile, should recognize that their ambivalence to Ukraine and Georgia is encouraging Russia to menace and threaten beyond the Caucasus and Black Sea...

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