Posted on 09/01/2008 5:31:58 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
European Union countries agreed yesterday to send Georgia one of the kinds of help it most wants: hundreds of observers to monitor Russia’s compliance with the supposed ceasefire around the two disputed provinces.
Otherwise, the summit was limp, as expected, reflecting the failure of the EU to bridge the rift between Germany, an advocate of not provoking Russia, and Britain, (finally) arguing that it should give more help.
If there is a useful side to that flight to ambiguity, it is that this is exactly the debate that the EU ought to be having (more important and invigorating than its wrangles about its constitution). The peaceful folding-in to the EU of ten former Soviet bloc countries in the brief 17 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union is an astonishing phenomenon. It is no surprise that the end of the Soviet Union left ragged edges – countries divided about whether to join the West – and that is what we are seeing now, as well as Russia’s bitterness about the loss of empire.
That is why the EU needs to have a view of its approach to Russia. The cost of pretending to have it both ways has been clear since the Nato summit in Bucharest in April. Nato’s pledge to Georgia and Ukraine – that they would definitely become members someday but that they could not start the actual process of trying to clear the membership hurdles – told Russia that Nato was not prepared to make real commitments.
British ministers maintain that the Bucharest pledge was really better than allowing membership talks to start, but this is ludicrous. Georgian officials argue that the grand but vacuous promise gave Russia the green light to act as it did, and they have a point.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Don’t hold your breath for anything out of Europe. Now you know why we had WW1 and WW2, and all the wars before that. Europe has been in numerous states of war for hundreds of years since the 1AD. The reason has been because they have refused to take a stand against a bullying nation every time, until it was too late.
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