Shunning Won't Work: Invite Russia to Join NATO

Increased engagement with the bear will avert more crises: Meier

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 20, 2008 12:53 PM CDT

(Newser) – The kneejerk impulse to punish Russia for its Georgia incursion by withdrawing NATO civilities is exactly wrong, Andrew Meier writes in the Los Angeles Times. The only way the West can get leverage, given the case of nerves the Russians have over NATO’s expansion into former Soviet states, is to invite them into the club, too.

It's not as far-fetched as it sounds, he says. Russia and the West are fully engaged in business: some 25% of Europe’s natural gas comes from the east, and Russian oligarchs have been scooping up everything from condos to companies in the US. Even Vladimir Putin, when quizzed on NATO membership in 2000, said, “I do not see why not.” Like a playground détente, Meier thinks making up is better than a standoff. “Now is the time, before the conflagration in the Caucasus spreads, to reverse course and embrace Russia more tightly than ever.”

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Russian soldiers detain Georgian ones. (AP Photo)

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. (AP Photo)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the media at NATO Headquarters after attending an emergency NATO foreign minister meeting in Brussels. (AP Photo)

Russian soldiers sit on tanks with a portrait of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the background, in Tskhinvali, the main city of the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. (AP Photo)

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If our goal all these years, since the Soviet breakup,
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play by our rules,' what
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Shunning Won't Work: Invite Russia to Join NATO