That's part of it. The EE countries are I think trying to use the Russia card as leverage to get the US to back them against "Old Europe." Germany and France are pretty much against NATO enlargement, as far as I know (as is 65% of the population of Ukraine). Germany is after all very dependent on Russian gas and is a Russophilic country in general. It's not as if the Baltic States have any other card to play.
It is indeed symbolic. NATO is pretty much useless, and the benefit to taking in a country like Georgia, perched as it is constantly on the edge of civil war, or Ukraine, which could easily perch on the edge of civil war and the population of which is against NATO membership, is not obvious.
--- Wojtek Sokolowski <swsokolowski at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
>
> [WS:] Possible. But do not forget the Russophobia
> of
> the new members of NATO and EU in Eastern Europe.
> One
> possibility is that the "old Europe" wants to
> placate
> these "little pissant countries" (to borrow a
> memorable quote from Richard Milhous Nixon) in the
> area where it does not matter that much (e.g.
> useless
> and largely symbolic military alliance), while
> curbing
> their influence where it actually counts (i.e. the
> economy and institutonal blueprint or EU).
>
> My hunch is that the West wants that Baltic pipeline
> and trade with Russia badly, so to overcome the
> opposition from the pissant EE countries like Poland
> or the Baltics, it throws them the crumbs via NATO.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
>
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