Georgia, Ukraine and NATO. Surrounding Russia

Russian worries about Western encirclement are premature

IT IS a decidedly odd race. Mikhail Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko, leaders respectively of Georgia's "rose" and Ukraine's "orange" revolution, are both eager to join NATO, despite grim warnings from Moscow about the dire consequences. The Georgians are desperate to get in, but are nowhere near ready. The Ukrainians look more eligible--except that most of Mr Yushchenko's countrymen do not much want to join.

Recent events in Crimea have encapsulated Mr Yushchenko's predicament. Multinational military exercises supposed to take place around the peninsula this summer do not in fact fall under NATO's auspices; similar ones have occurred for most of the past decade. Yet, after hysterical rumours were spread about the unloading of poison gases and about NATO coup plots, a ragtag mob of Communists and Cossacks blocked preparations for the exercises by a group of American reservists. The Americans left--and the latrines they came to dig remain undug.

Even in a country as wacky as Ukraine, Crimea is unusual: many of its Russian-speaking inhabitants would prefer it to be, as it was until 1954, part of Russia. Sebastopol is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet. The protests were also a by-product of the wrangle over forming a new government in Kiev, which has been going on ever since Ukraine's parliamentary election in March. NATO membership is a sticking-point in the political negotiations.

For all that, it seems clear that most Ukrainians do not want to join the NATO alliance. "Soviet brainwashing," retorts Anton Buteiko, a deputy foreign minister; yet Mr Yushchenko would struggle to carry a mooted referendum on accession. Apart from that hitch, its faster progress in military reform, better hardware and more troops ought to put Ukraine comfortably ahead of Georgia in the membership stakes. The Georgians have made progress, though often more on paper than in reality. They have also tried to ingratiate themselves by helping out in Iraq. But Mr Saakashvili faces a deal-breaking problem of his own: that bits of his country are, in effect, under occupation.

As Alexander Rondeli of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies puts it, Georgia is handily located on the Black Sea, "between oil-rich Russia and the oil-rich Islamic world." It was once a conduit for narcotics and a refuge for terrorists. But geography also points to Georgia's main flaw (see map overleaf). Two separatist enclaves, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, fought their way to quasi-independence in the 1990s, and have been sustained ever since by Russian support. Mr Saakashvili and Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, who have been trading insults for months, met in St Petersburg this week; but agreement on the enclaves is remote.

Mamuka Kudava, who leads Georgia's NATO campaign, says optimistically that joining NATO and sorting out the enclaves will go together. But Vyacheslav Nikonov, a Kremlin-friendly analyst in Moscow, declares that, if Georgia ever joins, it "can forget about South Ossetia and Abkhazia." The Georgians complain that to make the enclaves a decisive factor in their bid would be to give the Russians a veto. Mr Kudava likens the situation to the border disagreements with Russia that Baltic members of NATO brought with them. But taking Georgia into NATO in its current shape might look more like offering insurance for a broken-down car.

In fact, bellicose Russian noises about Georgia and Ukraine joining are partly tactical. Statements last week by the Russian government and in the Russian parliament about the grave danger of Ukrainian accession may have been aimed, in part, at the coalition negotiations in Kiev. Mr Yushchenko detected a "third force" at work in the Crimean brouhaha. Some Russian parliamentarians, behaving more like comedians, were indeed at the scene.

Still, Russia's worries are partly genuine, and not altogether unreasonable. America would be concerned, argues Mr Nikonov, if Mexico and Canada were to join a military organisation led by Russia. Seen from Moscow, NATO expansion is beginning to look endless: the drive to "surround Russia with NATO," says Dmitri Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, will demand "counter-measures". The Kremlin worries about the future of its Black Sea fleet, should Ukraine get in. But even more important than bases, says Dmitri Trenin, of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, would be the sense that NATO membership had permanently reoriented Ukraine out of Russia's sphere of influence.

The Kremlin need not panic yet. The Americans want to bring in both Georgia and Ukraine, but other NATO governments are less gung-ho. One reason is that some of the democratic sheen has come off both revolutions. Another is that many Europeans feel that the alliance is already big enough, and that some newer members joined too soon. Some members also do not want NATO to move further and faster than the European Union. And a few are against because they fear antagonising the Russians. ("Who cares about Georgia?" asks Mr Rondeli, gloomily.)

Mr Saakashvili and Mr Yushchenko are looking for a concrete foreign-policy achievement. For both, NATO membership looks more attainable than early entry into the EU. Mr Buteiko asserts that Ukraine might still join in 2008. But both countries may well find themselves lapping each other on a jargon-littered circuit of "dialogue" and "action plans" for a lot longer than that.

Article says that Russia's worries about Western encirclement are premature: Georgia and the Ukraine will probably not join NATO soon.