How To Enlarge NATO

How To Enlarge NATO

Invade Georgia. What a surprise: Poland has agreed to base our missile interceptor system...right after Russia invades Georgia. And Russia responds in a way that demonstrates why this is a good idea. From the August 15, 2008 Associated Press:

MOSCOW - A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a U.S. missile interceptor base exposes the ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported.

The statement by Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn is the strongest threat that Russia has issued against the plans to put missile defense elements in former Soviet satellite nations.
Poland and the United States on Thursday signed a deal for Poland to accept a missile interceptor base as part of a system the United States says is aimed at blocking attacks by rogue nations. Moscow, however, feels it is aimed at Russia's missile force.
"Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent," Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying.
He added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." Nogovitsyn that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, he said, according to Interfax.
At a news conference earlier Friday, Nogovitsyn had reiterated Russia's frequently stated warning that placing missile-defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic would bring an unspecified military response. But his subsequent reported statement substantially stepped up a war of words.

I'll be curious to see how Noam Chomsky and the rest of the leftist lunatic fringe turn this into the U.S. is the source of all evil.

I haven't said much about the Georgia matter, partly because I have been too busy to blog, and partly because I sensed that Georgian actions in South Ossetia might have given the Russians an excuse. But the scope of the invasion clearly takes this out of "we're just protecting the rights of South Ossetians" category, and when you see Russian soldiers burglarizing banks in Georgia, it does suggest that the old Russia is still there.

I had some hopes in the 1990s that Russia might be able to move forward. Unfortunately, it wasn't that Communism destroyed Russia. It was that Russian traditions reinforced Communist barbarism. I remember reading somewhere, perhaps when I was taking Russian history in grad school, that the history of Russia is "Autocracy relieved by assassination."

I think that we are going back into a Cold War--but at least many of the most technically advanced parts of the Soviet bloc are now on our side: Romania; the Czech Republic; Bulgaria; Poland.