That was precisely the reason to bring Georgia into NATO, and precisely the reason Georgia has been so desperate for membership -- membership in NATO functions as a proven effective deterrent to conflict. Seen from that perspective, inviting Georgia into NATO made perfect sense.

The Georgians weren't exactly playing nice in South Ossetia either. Their harsh attacks on their own citizens, I think, raises an equally compelling argument against letting them into NATO.

To bring this thought a step further, throughout NATO's history we've never actually had to defend a NATO country against Russian aggression, because the Soviet Union then and Russia now is smart enough not to risk attacking a NATO country. In other words, if Georgia were already in NATO, Russia would not be doing this to them. That was precisely the reason to bring Georgia into NATO, and precisely the reason Georgia has been so desperate for membership -- membership in NATO functions as a proven effective deterrent to conflict. Seen from that perspective, inviting Georgia into NATO made perfect sense.

On the other hand, NATO never invaded (or helped) a Warsaw Pact country either - the invasion of Hungary and Czecheslovakia for instance raised words but nothing else from NATO, because they were seen as being in the Soviet sphere of influence.

In the case of Georgia, the Russians are going to see it as their sphere, and just being part of NATO might not be enough to convince them to leave it alone - ie because its so close to them they're going to feel about it much as the US did about Cuba in the lead-up to the Cuban missile crises ... much too close to home to ignore.

I would think our military attache and other diplomats have made it clear to the Georgian government that it would be a bad idea to launch an attack like they did recently.

Yeah but you would have thought the US would have told Saddam "no" when he wanted to attack Kuwait. Turns out we sort of didn't.

More; They're syaing "We helped in Iraq, help us now". It's a call we should be paying attention to. If we fail to respond to their call, how will we ask for help from prospective allies in the future?

Pawns always take the worst casualties in chess. The Georgians are getting an expensive lesson on US foreign policy. They'll hopefully know better next time.

It's therefore no accident that Russia chose Georgia, rather than (for example) new NATO members Latvia and Lithuania (respectively a former Soviet client state and actual Soviet Republic), to provoke this confrontation....

To bring this thought a step further, throughout NATO's history we've never actually had to defend a NATO country against Russian aggression, because the Soviet Union then and Russia now is smart enough not to risk attacking a NATO country. In other words, if Georgia were already in NATO, Russia would not be doing this to them. That was precisely the reason to bring Georgia into NATO, and precisely the reason Georgia has been so desperate for membership -- membership in NATO functions as a proven effective deterrent to conflict. Seen from that perspective, inviting Georgia into NATO made perfect sense.

Hello, suckers.

But, surely, our interests in Georgia are essentially the same regardless of whether we've signed a piece of paper saying we'll defend them. Either it's worth American blood and treasure to keep Russia out or it's not.

No, they're not. Right now, Georgia is friendly to the U.S., but it is not committed to, for example, the defense of Lithuania, as it would be if it were a NATO member. When and if Georgia had become a member of an interlocking network of states committed to each other's mutual defense, then our (and every other member's) interests in Georgia would have instantly become different.

Pieces of paper matter, at least when they're treaties. (See above, re commencement of WW1 and WW2.)

If the pipeline falls into Russia's hands it brings into question the Independence of any country using the pipeline to ship its oil.

I would have thought the Europeans would have a strategic interest in keeping the pipeline out of Russia's hands.

Move DEFCON up a notch, launch B2 strikes on Russian forces outside of South Ossetia and warn Putin we are fully ready to defend the sovereignty of Georgia. Not with ground forces but air power.

And hope the Star Wars anti-ballistic missile shield works as well as hoped?

But, surely, our interests in Georgia are essentially the same regardless of whether we've signed a piece of paper saying we'll defend them.

It's rather obvious that our interests were not in the territorial integrity of Georgia, we were pushing their NATO membership for other reasons.

But, surely, our interests in Georgia are essentially the same regardless of whether we've signed a piece of paper saying we'll defend them. Either it's worth American blood and treasure to keep Russia out or it's not.

It's rather clear, given to the reaction of both the U.S. and our NATO allies since Friday, that we lack the stomach to go to war over Georgian territorial integrity.

Pushing for an invitation for Georgia to NATO means the U.S. would become willing to honor a commitment to defend Georgia with military force when and if our existing NATO allies simultaneously joined us in that commitment. We've only committed to commit, and there's nothing dishonorable in that; nor is it illogical or insincere to stop there, even though it's short of a solo full commitment.

We're inviting not only Georgia, but our existing NATO allies, and in particular the long-standing Western European NATO allies (most prominently France and Germany), to join with us in a mutual defense pact. Unless and until the pact is formalized, Georgia has nothing but hopes to depend upon in the event it is the victim of Russian aggression. Unless and until the pact is formalized (and notwithstanding any vague assurances about "paths to membership"), neither we nor any other NATO country is pre-committed to help defend Georgia. Although we're none of us forbidden to rise to that effort even without the commitment that NATO allies have made to one another, as a practical matter there is indeed a lesser probability that any one NATO member, including the United States, is going to find its own individual national interests sufficiently threatened by the Russian action to justify bestirring itself to a military conflict (with its attendant certain costs in blood and treasure, and, here, potential risks of nuclear holocaust).

The recognition of that fact — that membership in NATO is both a benefit and an entanglement — was certainly part of the Bush Administration's rationale for pushing for Georgian membership. Without the mutual, formal commitment, someone's going to flinch, and once one major player flinches, others are likely to flinch too. Strong diplomatic statements notwithstanding, so far everyone in NATO is flinching, and John McCain (who'd boot the Russians from the G8 as a starter) is the only one actually proposing something beyond stern diplomatic cables and foredoomed Security Council resolutions.

Certainly there's a great irony, and some considerable measure of self-contradiction, in the fact that strong formal allegiances with binding and mutual self-defense obligations are the best hope for keeping the peace. After all, it was mutual defense treaties that turned a fight between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Serbs into World War 1, and a fight between Germany and Poland into World War 2.

Nevertheless, the NATO alliance did successfully face down the Bear for the second half of the 20th Century; NATO won the Cold War; the constant strain of competing with NATO bankrupted the Soviet empire and led directly to its collapse (at least temporarily; whether permanently, we shall see). Russia still sees NATO as its antagonist in an existential struggle, at least if Russia's "existence" is to be as a world power even remotely comparable to what it enjoyed during the glory days of the Soviet empire.

It's therefore no accident that Russia chose Georgia, rather than (for example) new NATO members Latvia and Lithuania (respectively a former Soviet client state and actual Soviet Republic), to provoke this confrontation: Russia chose Georgia precisely because the Western Europeans have already flinched at pre-committing to defend Georgia against Russia, and Russia wants at a minimum to memorialize Georgia's non-admission into NATO, guarantee that decision's non-reversal, and probably sufficiently terrorize the Georgians themselves so that they'll stop even seeking NATO admission. (Russia might also annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia outright.)

So to answer your question: What business do we have promoting Georgia's membership? We're standing on the edge of the pool with our brothers, many of whose arms have been thus linked together since the early 1950s, and new brothers (like the Poles) having been added to the crowd quite recently. We're concededly unwilling to dive in alone, and that's true of all of our other brothers whose arms are presently linked with ours. But we're trying to persuade those brothers to invite into the family and link arms with the Georgians.

There's nothing wrong, or insincere, or unprincipled, in our urging that the Georgians be added to the NATO linkage, even though none of us, including the U.S., is willing to pre-commit to Georgia's defense by ourselves. But as always, we're motivated by the belief that more brothers standing with linked arms are less likely to accidentally topple into the pool than a smaller group would be; and that with the larger group, we're less likely to have anyone (including the Russians) try to topple us in; and that if the need arises for us to jump in, the linkage will lead us all to jump in together, arms still linked.