With less than ten months to go in office, Bush is looking to add some luster to a foreign policy legacy seen by many as little short of disastrous. His latest initiative is to give a hefty push to the ambitions of two former Soviet Union states, Ukraine and Georgia, to become members of NATO.
Stopping off in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev for talks with President Viktor Yuschenko, Bush declared that he was strongly behind the two countries' bids to join NATO, for which the first step would be admission to a "MAP" or Membership Action Plan.
He told Yuschenko at a joint media facility that "the U.S. strongly supports your request" and added that he would argue forcefully in Bucharest for that to come about.
The only snag for Bush in his latest ambition is that his eagerness to welcome the former Soviet Republics into NATO is not shared by several of the other 25 members of NATO. It is also bitterly resented by Russia, whose President Putin he will be meeting for the last time face to face in the Russian ski town of Sochi on Sunday. (In May Putin gives way to Dimitry Medvedev, whose Prime Minister he will become).
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http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/01/ukraine.analysis/?iref=mpstoryviewBetcha conversations went like this:
NATO: Are you nuts? Georgia is fighting a civil war and Russia backs the rebels. Are you asking for a toe-to-toe standoff with Russia?
Bush: Russia's a paper tiger. They'll piss and moan, but they'll never do anything, even if Georgia decisively ends the civil war.
NATO: In a pig's eye. Russia will come down hard and the last thing we need is security obligations when they do.
Bush: We'll see about that.
Well, we saw about that.
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