Thursday, August 14, 2008

Georgia   [Rich Lowry]

A friend e-mails:

Rich, I have advocated not pushing NATO membership for Ukraine or Georgia against Russian objections, but if Russia detaches the two breakaway provinces from Georgia, I think fast induction into NATO should be the centerpiece of our response.  In the short term, Rice should include a visit to Berlin in her travel; that is where the obstacle to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia resides; she should convince them that Russian alteration of international borders through violence must have strategic consequences for Russia.  And I don't mean expulsion from the G8 or boycotting the Olympics. I mean something more like ... losing Sevastopol. 

The Russian Black Sea fleet is based at Sevastopol (as it has been for eons) under a 20-year lease that expires on 2017.  The Ukrainian government has made it clear that Russia can forget about renewing the lease.  Sevastopol is on the Crimea peninsula, which is majority ethnically Russian (unlike Abkhazia or South Ossetia, which are not actually Russian) and many leading Russians have said they will never give it back.  Fast-tracking NATO membership for Ukraine and stationing significant NATO forces there, and making clear that the defense of Ukraine's territorial integrity is their role, will guarantee that the Crimea stays Ukrainian and that Sevastopol passes from Russian hands within 10 years.  There may not be a suitable alternative deep-water port on the Black Sea large enough to base Russia's Black Sea fleet.  Russia's ability to dominate the Black Sea and project force into the Eastern Mediterranean could be turned back to the 18th century.

We are not going to go to war over the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  In our rash recognition of Kosovo, we embraced the principle that justice and self-determination can trump the territorial integrity of sovereign states; in so doing we killed the Helsinki Accords (under which the Soviet empire in Europe was liquidated without any revision of borders) and can no longer stand on them.  When the Russians now say "justice" and "self-determination" they are slapping us with our own text. 

But there is another dimension to this — the balance of power.  Russia knows that its invasion of a democratic U.S. ally and forcible alteration of its borders is a heavy strategic blow to the United States: it makes a mockery of the value of an alliance with us.  Russia must be made to see that its action will be answered by an even more grievous strategic blow.  The loss of Sevastopol — Russia's equivalent of Norfolk — is the perfect punishment.  And what a great new base it would make for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. 

Ukraine, Georgia — welcome to NATO. 

08/14 04:45 PMShare