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.

earlier related report
Walker's World: NATO dithers in Russia
by Martin Walker
The extraordinary meeting of NATO's foreign ministers Tuesday reached an uneasy and unsatisfactory compromise over their response to Russia's military incursion into Georgia.

They agreed that NATO members "cannot continue business as usual" with Russia and demanded that Moscow withdraw its troops from Georgia immediately. This was perhaps the least NATO could do. But there will be no sanctions, no severing of communications with Moscow, no timetable of NATO membership for Georgia and no suspension of the NATO-Russian Council.

Georgia has not been entirely abandoned. There will be humanitarian aid, a new NATO-Georgia commission to strengthen relations and some pious declarations of support about eventual membership, sometime. But with so many other issues on its plate, NATO is in neither mood nor adequate military shape for an open confrontation with the Kremlin.

NATO is already severely tested by the war in Afghanistan, where only the British, Dutch and Canadians are joining the Americans in doing much fighting (although the French lost a squad of 10 soldiers in an ambush east of Kabul Monday). Some key NATO members, led by Germany, are deeply nervous over their access to Russian oil and gas, and the Germans made it clear they want to keep lines of communication open to the Kremlin.

Even before the NATO meeting began, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said publicly that NATO should not suspend the NATO-Russia Council or try to expel Russia from the Group of Eight or keep it out of the World Trade Organization.

"We need open channels for talks," Steinmeier said, although Chancellor Angela Merkel confused the German stance when she said during a visit to Tbilisi over the weekend, "Georgia will become a member of NATO if it wants to -- and it does want to."

On the surface, NATO seemed split between the moderates (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) and the hard-liners, led by the Americans, the British and many of the ex-Soviet states in Eastern Europe, who see the Russian behavior as "aggression."

Countries like Poland and the Baltic states, with recent experience of living under the Kremlin's authority, see themselves as next in line for Russian pressure unless a firm stand is made now. The British have been warning about the capacity of Vladimir Putin's Russia for outrageous behavior since the murder in London two years ago of a Russian exile by radiation poisoning.

But the policy divisions are more complex than that. The British do not want to make matters worse for BP, the country's flagship energy giant, whose Russian joint venture looks like it is being looted by a curious combination of Russian oligarchs and state agencies.

The Bush administration has the toughest choices to make in juggling a number of different priorities. On the one hand, it wants to support the young democracy of Georgia and to make it clear to Russia that its bullying actions are intolerable. On the other hand, it needs Russian support for any effective diplomatic pressure against Iran to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Which is more important and more urgent? Is it worth sacrificing Georgia to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon? And are there any guarantees that Russia in its assertive new mood will prove a reliable partner against Iran, even if Georgia is abandoned?

The Bush administration faces a further dilemma. One of the main reasons for U.S. support of NATO membership for Georgia is that Georgia hosts the one oil pipeline to Baku and the wider Caspian basin that is not under Russian control. If Georgia is abandoned and Russia resumes effective control of this pipeline, Russia's capability to use its energy weapon becomes even stronger.

Moreover, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads for Warsaw Wednesday to sign an agreement under which 10 U.S. anti-missile missiles will be based in Poland, a move that Russia has described as a provocation designed to nullify Moscow's nuclear credibility. That is why Russia has threatened to aim its own nuclear missiles at Poland as a "legitimate target."

To that extent, critics of the Bush administration have a point when they say U.S. actions have provoked Russia into its grim new stance. But it is not much of a point. A puny force of 10 missiles is hardly sufficient to mount much of a threat to Russia's vast arsenal of strategic missiles and thus is clearly aimed more at deterring Iran than undermining the Kremlin's nuclear credibility.

Given all these competing interests, the strains of the Afghan war already testing the NATO alliance and the cunning way Russia has capitalized on these NATO divisions with promises to withdraw its troops, it is not surprising that the NATO response was so feeble.

"The Alliance is considering seriously the implications of Russia's actions for the NATO-Russia relationship," said the final agreed statement as delivered by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

"We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual," he went on. "The future of our relations with Russia will depend on the concrete actions Russia will take to abide by the words of President Dmitry Medvedev (on the peace plan), which is not happening at the moment."

The announced Russian withdrawal is also not happening at the moment, despite the televised departure of one tank column. But eyewitnesses reported Russian troops and tanks dug in around Gori, the nearest Georgian city to the disputed territory of South Ossetia, and anti-aircraft missiles being deployed. Russian patrols were reported within 30 miles of Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

The initiative remains with Moscow, which can reinforce or withdraw its troops at will, depending on whether it wants to crush Georgia's independence or simply to send a warning message. But the NATO response will hardly encourage the Russians to put down the sword and try diplomacy.

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