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Introduction and Synopsis hould the North Atlantic Treaty Organization continue

to expand? An alliance of just twelve countries when it was created in 1949, NATO grew to sixteen members by the end of the Cold War, and has added another thirteen countries since then. This extremely successful security organization protected Europe in the Cold War, came to America’s defense after the 9/11 attacks, and then deployed a major mission to Afghanistan that continues to this day, among numerous other achievements. It has also helped new member states avoid conflict with each other, as with Greece and Turkey during much of the Cold War, and then consolidate democratic rule and civilian control of the armed forces during the period of post-Cold War expansion. It has also become a controversial organization in recent decades, with Russia increasingly objecting to its eastward growth. Great controversy and uncertainty now exist over whether it should someday expand to include not just the Baltic states, which joined in 2004, but other post-Soviet republics, as well, notably Ukraine and Georgia.

This history sets the context for an extremely important issue in U.S. foreign policy today. If the Trump administration is serious about its worthy goal of improving U.S. relations with Russia, how exactly can it do so? After all, Mr. Trump’s two immediate predecessors had similar hopes for a better rapport with Putin; both failed. President Trump himself is already using far tougher words toward Russia than he did as a candidate, and his national security team is generally hawkish toward the Putin regime in Moscow. Russia’s meddling in America’s 2016 elections further mars the situation.

Vladimir Putin and many of those around him are hardedged autocrats, and there will likely be no easy way to put U.S.-Russian relations fully back on track as long as they are in power. But it may be possible to reduce the risks of rivalry and war by focusing on what may be, in Putin’s mind, the fundamental cause of the problem: NATO expansion. We do not owe the Russian strongman any apologies for the enlargement of the twenty-nine-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization to date. Nor should we abandon democratic friends like Ukraine and Georgia to Russian domination. However, there is likely a better way to help them than the current U.S.-led approach.

At present, we have, arguably, created the worst of all worlds. At its 2008 summit, NATO promised eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia, but it did so without offering any specificity as to when or how that might happen. For now, these two countries, as well as other eastern European neutral states, get no protection from NATO. Knowing of our eventual interest in bringing these nations into an alliance that he sees as adversarial, Vladimir Putin has every incentive to keep them weak and unstable so they will not become eligible for NATO membership. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has been considering a domestic referendum on possible NATO membership; this further fuels the flames. We have inadvertently built a type of NATOmembership doomsday machine that raises the likelihood of conflict in Europe.

It is time that Western nations seek to negotiate a new security architecture for those neutral countries in Eastern Europe today. The core concept would be one of permanent neutrality—at least in the formal sense of ruling out membership in a mutual-defense alliance, most notably NATO. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc from Europe’s far north to its south—Finland and Sweden; Ukraine and Moldova and Belarus; Georgia and Armenia and Azerbaijan; and finally Cyprus plus Serbia, as well as possibly other Balkan states. The discussion process should begin within NATO, and then include the neutral countries themselves; formal negotiations could then take place with Russia.

The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to help uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner; after that occurred, corresponding sanctions would be lifted. The neutral countries would retain their rights to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past, even those operations that might be led by NATO. They could think of themselves and describe themselves as Western states (or anything else, for that matter). They would have complete sovereignty and self-determination in every sense of the word. But NATO would decide not to invite them into the alliance as members; ideally, they would endorse and promote this concept themselves as a more practical way to ensure their security than the current situation or any other plausible alternative.

Ideally, this architecture might be codified in treaty form and ratified by key legislative bodies, including, in the case of the United States, the U.S. Senate. It should be couched as of indefinite duration. If, someday, the world were to evolve to where a new security order also including Russia were possible, or if Russian politics and strategic culture evolved to the point where Moscow no longer objected, NATO (or a new organization) might expand further, but only after mutual agreement had been reached.

It is worth underscoring that the new security order would guarantee neutral states the right to choose their own form of government, political leadership, diplomatic relations, and economic associations. Notably, Russia would acknowledge the prerogative of those not yet in the European Union (EU) to join the EU (except for its security-related pledges), should that someday be of interest to them as well as current EU members.

To be sure, the concept of neutrality has not always worked out so well historically, as with the fates of Belgium and Holland in the world wars. In other cases, however, such as Switzerland and Austria, it has helped ensure the sovereignty of the neutral nations while also contributing to a more stable security environment in bordering regions.

NATO must not be weakened under the new paradigm. It has been, and remains, a remarkable organization. It did much to protect the security of democratic states and to preserve peace in Europe during the Cold War. It then successfully changed into a mechanism for stabilizing the post-Cold War European order thereafter, including in places such as Bosnia and, more recently, even distant Afghanistan. It also helped several former Warsaw Pact states and the Baltic states solidify their transition to post-communist polities.

NATO has worked hard on its relationship with Russia since the Cold War. It agreed not to station significant foreign combat forces on the territory of any of its members admitted since the Cold War ended. It also created mechanisms such as the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the Partnership for Peace program, and the NATO-Russia Council to reach out in collegial and collaborative ways to Russia and other former members of the Warsaw Pact.

Yet this is an American, and Western, perspective. Russians in general do not share it. Whether most truly see NATO as a physical threat is a question, but many do see it as an insult—a psychologically and politically imposing former enemy that has approached right up to their border. Russia’s declining population and weak economy when contrasted with those of NATO states—roughly a $1.5 trillion GDP and less than 150 million people, versus a combined NATO total of $40 trillion with 900 million people—contribute further to Russia’s negative view of NATO. This critical attitude is found not only among Russia's current president and older former Soviet apparatchiks, as well as Mikhail Gorbachev, the father of glasnost and perestroika, but even among many younger reformers. Putin’s sky-high popularity at home, partly a result of his crackdown on critics and competitors, is, nonetheless, also an indication of how strong anti-NATO sentiments have become in Russia.

While pursuing a new security architecture for the neutral states of Eastern Europe, NATO should stay strong and resolute in defense of existing members. The alliance is now stationing a total of some 5,000 troops—a modest force, more of a tripwire than a forward defense—in the Baltic states and Poland. Mr. Trump should signal his intention of sustaining

America’s so-called European Reassurance Initiative even as he seeks to negotiate the new security system.

There is no guarantee, of course, that President Putin will prove interested in this idea. Putin may feel he is in an advantageous position to continue to try to weaken NATO, and the EU more generally, by stoking various conflicts, promoting and supporting extremist leaders in Western Europe, fomenting dissent in American politics, and generally keeping the major democratic powers guessing as to what will happen next. He may further conclude that the sanctions imposed on Russia over the Crimea and Donbas aggressions in Ukraine will weaken or dissipate, without any Russian action being necessary, as political forces and leaders change in the West. Putin may also welcome an ongoing standoff with the West for the additional excuses it provides him for his strongman behavior at home and his aggressiveness abroad.

The outcome of any effort to create a new security architecture is, therefore of course, uncertain but it should be attempted, nonetheless. Western leaders should pursue this path confidently and unapologetically, and not portray it as an admission of previous wrongdoing. If Russia refuses to negotiate in good faith, or fails to live up to any deal it might initially support, little will be lost and options for a toughening of future policy against Russia will remain. Indeed, a range of such responses should be developed in advance, including the possibility of expediting consideration of NATO membership for neutral states that are subsequently coerced or attacked by Russia. The hope, of course, is to avoid that. The current strategic situation involving most of the world’s great economies and several of its nuclear-weapons states in Europe is quite dangerous, and it will not become less dangerous if simply left on autopilot.

CHAPTER 1 How We Got Here

|: is hard to believe, but a quarter century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States and Russia again became adversaries. They remain in such a state today. They may not be military enemies, but their respective military establishments now focus largely on each other in modernizing their weapons and devising force posture plans. Some Russians talk openly of already being at war with the United States; a former deputy supreme allied commander in Europe recently wrote a novel about a war pitting NATO against Russia that he intended as a clarion call about something that really could happen. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the United States, General Joseph Dunford, testified to Congress in the summer of 2015 that Russia could be Americas most dangerous security worry in the world. Dunford subsequently placed Russia among his top concerns when devising his “4+ 1” threat framework—with Russia listed along with North Korea, Iran, China, and ISIS/Salafism/violent extremism as the priority concerns of the Department of Defense. President Donald Trump’s early aspirations to put the U.S.-Russia relationship on friendlier footing already appeared to be dashed by the spring of 2017. Russian attacks on Ukraine, a country whose sovereignty the United States as well as Russia and the United Kingdom pledged to help guarantee in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, have destabilized Europe.

Russian cyber transgressions against Estonia, and provocative military maneuvers near the territories or military assets of various NATO nations, have further underscored that direct military confrontation pitting the United States and allies against the Russian Federation is far from inconceivable. Indeed, Russian aircraft maneuvers near NATO territory or military assets produced up to a doubling in the frequency of NATO fighter “scrambles” designed to intercept the offending aircraft in 2016; serious problems persist today.' A Russian concept of “escalate to de-escalate’—purportedly an effective war-winning strategy for any future conflict against the West—has again raised the prominence of nuclear weapons, and veiled nuclear threats, in the Russia-NATO relationship.’

How did we get here? And what can we do about it? This short book begins with the first question, the main subject of this chapter, but focuses its main analytical thrust on the second question. Without claiming that the dramatic deterioration in the U.S.-Russian relationship has any single cause, or that any one change in policy can right it, I nonetheless propose a new security architecture for the currently independent states of eastern Europe-Finland and Sweden, George and Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Cyprus and Serbia (and perhaps other currently neutral Balkan countries, as well). I believe this security construct could significantly defuse the acute crisis and dangers in the U.S.-Russian relationship today. A negotiated agreement should be pursued between NATO nations, Russia, and the neutral countries after intensive consultations between NATO states and the neutral states. The goal would be to create a permanently nonaligned zone in eastern Europe while guaranteeing the full diplomatic and economic sovereignty and territorial security of these same countries. Because the Trump administration, the intended electoral beneficiary of Russian meddling in the 2016 American presidential election, could be the lead player on proposing this new framework, it is especially important to explain why it would not be a concession to Russia or its strongman president. In fact, it would not be a gift to Russia at all.* The security architecture would place stringent demands on Russia to keep its hands off the neutral countries and insist it reach fair agreements on existing territorial disputes (otherwise, sanctions could not be lifted and the overall architecture could not be implemented). It would be explicitly understood, and stated, that any subsequent violation of these and other terms could end the entire accord and revive the possibility that some of the countries at issue would join NATO. Those who might be quick to criticize my proposal should ask if they can really defend the status quo. As of today, NATO has promised Ukraine and Georgia future membership without offering any timetable to that membership or any interim protection—a perfect formula to stoke Russian meddling in those countries and, undoubtedly, an incentive to Moscow to perpetuate the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Current policy has failed by leaving NATO half pregnant with membership for Ukraine and Georgia, and Russia incensed over the situation. Whatever the merits of NATO expansion may have been to date—and, as later discussed, there were respectable arguments in its favor (even if not completely convincing ones)—the project has run its course. Indeed, it has become counterproductive.

THE HEADY DAYS OF THE EARLY 1990s, AND ANTECEDENTS OF PROBLEMS T0 COME

The warming in U.S.-Russia relations that culminated in very positive American relationships with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin in the late 1980s and 1990s took some time to develop. From glasnost and perestroika, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the iconic image of Yeltsin facing down Soviet tanks in the summer of 1991 as the USSR collapsed, the process took more than half a decade. By the time Bill Clinton was elected president in the United States, however, it was possible to believe that U.S.-Russia relations after the Cold War could be headed to almost as happy a place as U.S.-Germany and U.S.-Japan relationships after World War II.

Problems began to develop fairly early on, however. By 1994, adding insult to the injury of the Soviet Union’s own demise, the Warsaw Treaty Organization had also collapsed; meanwhile, NATO was still going strong. East European countries were approaching Brussels about establishing new security arrangements, and then in January 1994, the NATO alliance created the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. Its declared purpose was to facilitate military and political cooperation between NATO and former members of the defunct Warsaw Pact. However, it did not take long for many Russians, including key reformers like Anatoly Sobchak and Andrei Kokoshin, to begin to view PfP suspiciously as a pathway to NATO expansion for these countries.’

As the 1990s unfolded, officials in the Clinton administration felt pressure to reach out to countries like Poland, but they also wanted to support Yeltsin and avoid creating excessive political problems for him at home. They were often told by the reformers around Yeltsin that NATO enlargement would create serious difficulties for the Yeltsin team from Russian nationalists and Communists, and damage the Kremlin’s efforts to pursue a pro-Western foreign policy. Yeltsin himself coined the expression that NATO expansion might augur in “a cold peace.”°

There were reasonable arguments being voiced in the United States to carry out NATO expansion just the same. Some came from diasporas of countries that had been incorporated into the communist world and Warsaw Pact largely against their will and that saw it as only fitting and proper that they be allowed, in effect, to rejoin the West once the Cold War was over. There were additional voices in favor of using NATO to help these former Warsaw Pact states strengthen their young democracies and civilian control of their militaries. And there were those with a long view of history who worried about a return to an aggressive Russia in the future, irrespective of what policies were followed by the West in the meantime. According to this view, Russia’s temporary weakness presented an opportunity that should not be missed.° Already by February 1995, in fact, the Clinton administration had announced its national security strategy of “engagement and enlargement,” in which it underscored that it had “initiated a process that will lead to NATO’s expansion.””

Thus in the mid-1990s the Clinton administration pushed ahead with enlargement while also seeking to mitigate Moscow’s negative reactions. That proved a difficult task. For many Russians, if NATO was still a military alliance and a mechanism for ensuring collective defense, it must be directed against some country—and the Russian Federation was the obvious target.

TABLE 1-1. Member States of NATO

Year joined Belgium 1949 Canada 1949 Denmark 1949 France 1949 Iceland 1949 Italy 1949 Luxembourg 1949 Netherlands 1949 Norway 1949 Portugal 1949 United Kingdom 1949 United States 1949 Greece 1952 Turkey 1952 Germany 1955 Spain 1982 Czech Republic 1999 Hungary 1999 Poland 1999 Bulgaria 2004 Estonia 2004 Latvia 2004 Lithuania 2004 Romania 2004 Slovakia 2004 Slovenia 2004 Albania 2009 Croatia 2009 Montenegro 2017

NATO Member Countries (www.nato.int/cps/en/nat ohq/topics_52044.htm).

Yeltsin won reelection in 1996. From that point forward, the Clinton administration felt less need to hold back. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were soon put on paths to join NATO and became alliance members in 1999. At the same time, Washington and Moscow tried to keep their own relationship moving forward. Notably, in Paris on May 27, 1997, Yeltsin signed the NATO-Russia Founding Acton Mutual Relations. The Founding Act set out the basic political framework for Russia and the alliance to work together, but the forces pushing the two countries apart were rapidly becoming stronger than those holding them together. Subsequent events included the August 1998 Russian financial collapse, the Kosovo war in the spring of 1999, and Russia’s renewed war in Chechnya in the summer of 1999.8

KOSOVO

In 1999 NATO went to war for the first time in its history in response to Yugoslav military atrocities against ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo, which was still part of both Serbia and Yugoslavia.’ The war came only two weeks after the alliance had admitted Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. NATO did not secure authority from the United Nations to intervene; NATO warplanes bombed Serbian forces in the field and, increasingly, Belgrade. NATO forces, with American troops in the lead, then moved into Kosovo to secure the territory.

NATO's intervention shook the Russian establishment.” As Vladimir Putin put it in his March 18, 2014, speech fifteen years later, no one in Russia could believe that NATO had attacked Yugoslavia: “It was hard to believe, even seeing it with my own eyes, that at the end of the twentieth century, one of Europe’s capitals, Belgrade, was under missile attack for several weeks, and then came the real [military] intervention.”"! Moscow could do little about what happened, and Russian leaders took the intervention almost personally, given their longstanding ties to Serbia and their sense of close kinship with fellow Orthodox Christians there.’

NATO justified its operation, of course, as a response to human suffering at the hands of the very same Slobodan Milosevic who had torn apart Bosnia earlier in the decade. However, in Moscow, Russian officials interpreted the intervention as a means of expanding NATO’s influence in the Balkans, not as an effort to deal with a humanitarian crisis.”

In June, at the end of the bombing campaign, Russian forces engaged in a tense standoff with NATO troops in Kosovo. This came as the Clinton administration tried to persuade Russia to take part in the Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR). Moscow had agreed to a similar arrangement a couple of years earlier in Bosnia; Russian troops were still serving there. But this case proved different. After the intervention which, as noted, occurred with NATO but not UN approval, Russia resisted the idea of its forces working for NATO. Moscow also demanded a decisionmaking role in KFOR, and U.S. military commanders were concerned that Russia might attempt to create a “Russian sector” in Kosovo." While these various matters were being discussed in Moscow, Washington, Brussels, and elsewhere, Russian general Leonid Ivashov sent a Russian troop contingent from Bosnia to Kosovo, where it secured the main airport in Kosovo’s capital of Pristina. However, Russian forces were isolated and soon running low on food, water, and fuel. New NATO member Hungary, along with NATO aspirants Bulgaria and Romania, refused access to their airspace for Russian planes seeking to conduct resupply runs. At the same point, supreme allied commander in Europe General Wesley Clark ordered the

NATO commander in Kosovo, British general Michael Jackson, to send in NATO forces to block the runways at the airport. Jackson refused, telling Clark, “Sir, Pm not starting World War III for you.”™ The British did seal off the roads leading to the airport, but they also provided the beleaguered Russian troops with food and water.® The result was not a direct conflict between Russia and NATO, thankfully. But it was another humiliation for Moscow.

During this same period Vladimir Putin was gaining greater power within Russia. Putin had been the head of the Federal Security Service; in 1999 he was promoted to chair the Russian Security Council and gained a key role in managing Russia’s relationships with NATO and the United States. The Kosovo war then occurred and became a defining moment in Putin’s career, one that influenced him deeply.” Within months, he was Russia’s acting president.

OF COUNTERTERRORISM, COLOR REVOLUTIONS, AND NATO EXPANSION

For a period of time around the turn of the century and early in the 2000s, it seemed that counterterrorism might unite Moscow and Washington in common cause. After all, the two countries had been cooperating on nuclear security through various global nonproliferation efforts as well as the Nunn- Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, so it seemed natural to think they could work together when a new threat presented itself.

In November 1999 Putin, then prime minister, wrote a New York Times op-ed asking the American public for support for Russia’s second intervention in Chechnya, which had begun a few months before. He defined the fight as a struggle against terrorism that Americans should understand.

After September 11, 2001, the terrorist strikes on U.S. soil reinforced Putin’s view that America and Russia should be united in purpose. Then-President Putin immediately reached out to President George W. Bush to express his sympathy and offer his assistance.'* Indeed, shortly before the 9/11 attacks, Putin had called Bush to warn him about a terrorist threat that Russian intelligence had identified.” Putin expected Washington would see linkages between al Qaeda in Afghanistan and terrorists in Chechnya. He also believed he could help the United States.” He expected American sympathy and support for his wars against terrorism, especially in light of the terrible terrorist attacks against Russians that began around 1995 and continued into the first decade of the 2000s and beyond.”

That did not happen. Chechnya remained a major subject of contention between Russia and the United States. There was to be no coalition.” The United States saw Russia’s situation as entirely different from its own. The al Qaeda threat justified a global war on terrorism; America and its allies were under direct and unprovoked assault. By contrast, the Chechnya situation, in Washington’s eyes, was an internal conflict. The terrorist acts that emanated from the North Caucasus were directed only against Russian targets. Most Americans felt Russia had largely brought its problems upon itself because of the brutal way it fought the Chechnya campaigns.”

After the 9/11 attacks, Putin was befuddled by America. He even blamed himself for not having been sufficiently emphatic in his warnings and his efforts to fashion a unified front against the extremist threat.”* As time went on, however, he blamed the United States more and more—for being overly assertive in Russia’s backyard and the Middle East, yet at the same time inept in how it wielded power. Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya went badly, demonstrating American incompetence in his eyes. Yet Putin also ascribed almost super-human powers to Washington for its purported roles in the Rose, Orange, Tulip, and Maydan revolutions (in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004-05, Kyrgyzstan in 2005, and Ukraine again in 2013-14, respectively), as well as with the domestic opposition to his own attempt to regain the Russian presidency in 2012. There was apparent contradiction in these contrasting interpretations of America’s supposed omnipotence mixed with sheer fecklessness, but there was probably a good deal of sincerity in both aspects of Putin’s somewhat oxymoronic view of the United States. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, in December 2001, Washington announced it was pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and would move ahead with creating a new missile defense system to counter threats from countries like Iraq or North Korea or Iran—the so-called rogue states or “axis of evil.” Putin’s initial response was relatively muted, perhaps because the 9/11 attacks were still so recent and because both the Putin and Bush presidencies were still in their early, hopeful days.

However, in ensuing months and years, many of the old Russian fears about Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, his “Star Wars” program, were gradually resurrected in Moscow. Putin and other Russian officials expressed growing opposition to the system. Putin came to believe, it would appear, that American missile defense was more about diminishing Russia’s nuclear deterrent than about countering threats from small, extremist states.” The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan was perhaps not so hard for Moscow to stomach. Its eye-for-an-eye character probably made sense to Putin. And the next year, Moscow and NATO established a new NATO-Russia Council at the alliance’s Rome summit. NATO leaders saw the creation of this council as yet one more piece of evidence that the West was bending over backward to help Russia, to treat it with respect, and to assuage its worries about post-Cold War security in Europe. On top of that, Western economic help to Russia had been moderately generous since the Cold War had ended. Russia’s economic travails continued, of course, but they were, from this viewpoint, the result of the inevitable pain of transforming a command economy into a free-market system combined with some bad behavior by Russian oligarchs who were exploiting their fellow citizens with robberbaron-like activities. The major NATO states were doing all they reasonably could to help, in economic and political and security spheres. At least, that was how the West saw it, and at times Putin did not seem to disagree.

Of course not all was well, and the good vibes would not last. That same NATO summit in May 2002 produced decisions leading to the second major round of alliance enlargement in March 2004, including Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. From Moscow’s perspective, the inclusion of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the group was particularly galling because they had been part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.”° The three Baltic states, along with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, were also admitted to the European Union in May of that same year, and Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007.

Moreover, the 2003 U.S.-led intervention in Iraq convinced Putin even more that the United States was looking for pretexts to act hegemonically, throwing its military weight around the Mideast region and the world. Indeed, Putin, as well as Russian intelligence, apparently believed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was bluffing about his possession of chemical and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). They stated this bluntly to U.S. officials on numerous occasions.”” As the intervention quickly went south later in 2003, Putin’s anger at alleged American imperiousness was increasingly combined with disdain for how ineffectually the United States seemed to be employing its power around the world.

When the terrible Beslan school terrorist attack in September 2004 took place in Russia, two years after the bloody Moscow Dubrovka Theater attack, Western reactions to Moscow’s response furthered in Putin’s mind the idea that a double standard was being applied against Russia.** The Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004-05 was important in this regard, as well. Putin was always somewhat dismissive of Ukraine as a truly separate and sovereign entity capable of genuinely independent action. Thus, he believed the massive demonstrations in Ukraine known as the Orange Revolution could only have been orchestrated from the outside.” The Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda and American neo-imperialism more generally were the most likely culprits.*° Putin did not accept the sincerity of U.S. democracy-promotion efforts. He saw their roots in the Cold War and in Washington’s unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of Russia’s political system. And now they were affecting a fairly large country that was very close to home for Russia.

Then there was Georgia. The Kremlin was very concerned about U.S. support for the Georgian government of Mikheil Saakashvili as the Bush presidency progressed into its second term.” The strengthening relationship between Tbilisi and Washington raised worries about Georgia’s eventual membership in NATO. Given Georgia’s distance from Europe and the North Atlantic, it was increasingly hard for many Russians to view NATO’s interest in Georgian membership as anything more than imperial overstretch, and at their own country’s expense.”