NATO's many battlefields

BERLIN, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- NATO has decided to suspend formal talks with Russia -- a necessary step, observers say, but one that opens yet another front in addition to the many conflicts already weighing down the alliance.

On Tuesday, after meeting for hours in Brussels, NATO ministers, in a two-page statement, said they were "considering seriously the implications of Russia's actions for the NATO-Russia relationship."

The statement denounced Russia's military reaction to Georgia's offensive in South Ossetia as being "disproportionate and inconsistent with its peacekeeping role" in the conflict provinces, which also include Abkhazia. Ministers called on Russia to respect "the principles of Georgia's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity."

On Tuesday and Wednesday senior NATO officials continued to issue sharp warnings in the direction of Russia, which is pulling its soldiers out of Georgia at cautious speed -- to put it kindly. This has angered officials in the West.

"There can be no business as usual with Russia under the present circumstances," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said. "As long as Russian forces are occupying a part of Georgia, I cannot see a Russia-NATO Council convening."

That didn't seem to impress Moscow much, however. Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to NATO, described the statement drafted Tuesday in Brussels as mere "hints and mumbling."

"The mountain gave birth to a mouse," he said. "No one wants to and no one can break ties with Russia."

Washington seems like it would want to -- it has tried to persuade NATO member states to steer a much tougher course in the conflict. Yet NATO ministers stopped short of serious action against Russia, as called for by the United States.

NATO's decision to step up the rhetoric and cease talks in the framework of the NATO-Russia Council makes sense and was necessary, according to a German Russia expert.

"It's a rational, symbolic warning shot that adds to Russia's growing international isolation," Hans-Henning Schroeder, an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International Wednesday in a telephone interview. "Will it help? Who knows. One should have summoned the NATO-Russia Council during the crisis, but since that didn't happen, this is a step that makes sense."

The Russian-led peacekeeping in the conflict provinces is no solution for the future, Schroeder said. "Since 1992, this hasn't led to any improvements whatsoever in the region," he said, adding the European Union now had to urge Russia to accept international peacekeeping troops to oversee the cease-fire in the Caucasus.

Yet whether Russia will accept that is up in the air. The Caucasus conflict has turned into a second Kosovo, it seems, and it probably will occupy the alliance for years to come.

That's bad news in the face of several other foreign policy battlefields on which NATO is on the brink of failure.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have launched an increasing number of attacks these past weeks. On Aug. 18, some 100 insurgents killed 10 French troops near Kabul; a day later insurgents attacked German soldiers in northern Afghanistan, but the Germans were able to fend off the ambush.

The attacks led the Senlis Council, an international policy think tank active in Afghanistan, to issue a statement saying NATO's campaign in the Asian country was "failing."

"Until now, Western leaders have been in denial about the true extent of Taliban presence in Afghanistan, and their ability to move swiftly on the Afghan capital," the statement said.

The Senlis Council called on NATO to increase its troop strength in Afghanistan from 53,000 to 80,000 to secure Kabul, as the Taliban were on "the very doorstep of the Afghan capital."

And then, of course, there is the worsening situation in neighboring Pakistan, a country seen by most experts as the foremost hideaway and breeding ground for terrorists wrecking havoc in Afghanistan and all over the world. Add to that Russia's increasing self-confidence and willingness to talk tough, and you have an alliance that is under severe pressure to perform better.

Yet according to some, many of NATO's problems are self-made.

Simon Jenkins, a commentator for the British daily The Guardian, called NATO "a running provocation along the eastern rim of Europe."

"There was no strategic need for NATO to proselytize for members, and consequent security guarantees, among the Baltic republics and border states to the south. Nor is there any strategic need for the United States to place missile sites in Poland or the Czech Republic."

That, of course, is the latest addition to the conflict between Russia and the West: Wednesday's signing of a deal between the United States and Poland to place defense missiles in the Central European state. They would be stationed just 115 miles away from Russia's westernmost border -- so that's going to be another issue in which the West and Russia will be at odds for months to come.