By Henrik Larsen
Denmark
The pressure on NATO as a military alliance has increased significantly since the Georgia crisis, which revealed how easily the so-called frozen conflicts in post-Soviet countries could break out into full-scale war between two countries. Within NATO, the Georgia crisis has resulted in an increase of the already existing divisions between member states in favour or in disfavour of eastwards expansion, especially concerning Georgia and Ukraine. At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April, it was concluded that Georgia and Ukraine will have a long-term membership perspective. But unlike the usual procedure for pre-accession to NATO, the countries were not granted MAP (Membership Action Plan) as an expression of the doubts that were set forward, especially by France and Germany.
The exposure of these internal disagreements has now become the source of external weakness for the Alliance. The military confrontation between Georgia and Russia, which followed several months of skirmishes on the de facto borders of the break-away republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia, came as a surprise to most Western political actors and observers. Not since the collapse of the USSR had Russia used military force to exert power in her “sphere of influence” in neighbouring countries. In this way, Russia effectively demonstrated her position as the dominant power in the Caucasian region, which Moscow later underlined by the official recognition of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
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