Iraq, Georgia, and Russia

Coverage of international events on The Huffington Post is like snow in the desert; its pretty rare and the quality isn’t very good. So I was surprised to come across this post by Lionel Beehner: “Iraq, Not Georgia, Is What Doomed U.S.-Russia Relations” (and I was even more surprised that Beehner didn’t take a swipe at Russia, which he tends to do in his posts).

Beehner makes a good case, saying that the US pressed for NATO membership for Poland, Ukraine and Georgia as a payoff for those countries sending troops to Iraq to, in turn, add some legitimacy to the “Coalition of the Willing” the US put together to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Keep in mind that when Georgia (a nation of just over four million) withdrew their troops from Iraq, they were the third largest contributor of men to the coalition (behind the US and UK). Ukraine and Poland also gave sizeable numbers of troops to the effort.

He makes the further point that NATO expansion is indeed aimed at hemming in Russia, and not just some sort of benign gathering of friends as the Bush administration would like you to believe. This is the viewpoint from Russia and one of the reasons that they have become increasingly belligerent of late.