This may have escaped people’s attention (it did mine), but Ukraine and Georgia were told they couldn’t join the NATO club this week, and Georgia was given a bit of a ticking off for its abrupt and dumb escalation of the North Ossetia conflict in August.
The NATO communique said: “we remind all parties that peaceful conflict resolution is a key principle of the Partnership for Peace Framework Document.”
As Liz Fuller writes for Radio Free Europe:
“Translated from diplomat-speak into plain English, that reads “The use of heavy artillery against civilians asleep in their homes in Tskhinvali just hours after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili announced a unilateral cease-fire was a crude violation of our basic ground rules, and one we cannot overlook.”
Fuller adds:
“Equally, if not more damaging to Georgia’s NATO aspirations was the spectacular ineptitude of its armed forces, which proved anything but battle-ready. The country’s two crack U.S.-trained brigades were serving as part of the international peacekeeping force in Iraq during the August war. According to a new International Crisis Group report, “the [Georgian] armed forces and military infrastructure sustained heavy damage during the Russian invasion, revealing flaws in planning, supply, coordination, air defense, and combat communications systems which contributed to quick demoralization of the troops,” who abandoned the strategic military base in Senaki without firing a single shot.
