Georgian Army, American Made

But Russia's potential reaction is, of course, the first political challenge to any military effort on that scale. The next problem is how the 10 Central European and Balkan states that are new members of NATO will react. They will almost certainly expect defensive capabilities at least as strong as what the United States offers Georgia. Belatedly, NATO is being forced to confront the challenge of how to defend its new members. A top U.S. general, now retired from a senior post in NATO and willing to talk only on background, says the promise of NATO's founding treaty, the Article 5 vow that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all, was largely ignored as the alliance welcomed those new members from 1999 to 2004. Gen. Charles (Chuck) Wald, the retired U.S. Air Force four-star who was deputy commander of U.S. forces in Europe through the early years of this decade, confirms it for the record: "The attitude was, the more the merrier. NATO didn't really look at the Article 5 part of it."

NATO even dissuaded its new members from ambitious defense plans, according to General Wald. Romania and Bulgaria wanted to build modern air forces—buying several hundred top-of-the-line aircraft. "They were told, don't do that," Wald says. "They were advised they should concentrate on making a 'niche contribution.' Which meant counterterrorism and counterinsurgency forces to operate outside Europe."

So Georgia presents the United States and Europe with an excruciating political dilemma. If Georgia's defenses need rebuilding, what about those of NATO's new members? Already the requests are pouring in. In the immediate aftermath of Georgia, Poland signed an agreement with the United States to have missile defenses on its territory. But the price Poland demanded—and the administration agreed—was that U.S.-manned air defenses would be deployed on Polish soil. Estonia is likely to be next in line. Despite having a sizable and turbulent Russian minority—and having been paralyzed by a Russia-based cyber onslaught last year—Estonia has had no substantive discussions inside NATO about defense of its territory since it joined the alliance in 2004, according to a senior Estonian official in Washington. "That may have to be rethought," he said. The new U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, told the Financial Times last week that NATO needed "planning and exercising" to shore up its defense commitment to its Baltic members, "not just as a political matter but as a military matter too."

After eight years during which the United States concentrated on the Global War on Terror, the debacle of Georgia looks set to refocus the West's attention on the more-traditional challenges of the European continent—and the price of political naiveté. But it also looks likely, in the long run, to confront Russia with more armies than it has real reason to fear.

With Owen Matthews in Tbilisi

© 2008