Finalement, le verdict est assez simple : la Géorgie n’entrera pas dans l’OTAN

Il est bon que la réflexion puisse parfois prendre du champ pour retrouver des pensées simples et fortes, et fortes parce que simples. L’article de William Pfaff du 16 septembre pourrait être décrit comme un coup de poing sur la table. Il s’adresse à l’OTAN, après la comédie effectivement grotesque de la réunion de l’OTAN à Tbilissi du début de la semaine. Il demande à l’OTAN de cesser de jouer cette comédie d’une alliance rouleuse d’épaules, qui hausse le menton, qui prend des allures martiales et fronce les sourcils en désignant les Russes du doigt et en serrant contre elle l’excellent et héroïque Saakachvili. Une alliance qui compte ses divisions et sait pertinemment qu'elle n'a pas les moyens de ses poses.

«It was a pathetic event, better forgotten, the visit to Georgia on Monday and Tuesday of NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and ambassadors from all the 26 members of NATO. They were there, the United States said, to demonstrate that “NATO can’t be cowed by the Kremlin.”

»The NATO delegation might have seemed less cowed if it had been made up of generals in uniform. But that would have upset the Kremlin. Perhaps the diplomats should have worn camouflage, as fashionable teenagers do in difficult western city suburbs. They might have looked more muscular for the unhappy Georgians, while not fooling the Russians.

»If NATO really did not want to seem cowed, the ambassadors and the secretary-general might have promised NATO membership to Georgia right on the spot, to be confirmed as soon as the full alliance meets. They might have announced plans for NATO bases and U.S. missile installations. They would not have dreamed of such a thing.

»The truth is that Russia’s incursion into a belligerent Georgia in mid-August, a country in possession of Washington’s assurance that it soon would be given a “membership action plan” for joining NATO, now hasn’t a hope of membership in the alliance – whatever may have been said on Monday about NATO’s “open door.”

»As the eminent French historian of Russia, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse has said, Georgia has now done the greatest service to the new Russia than anyone has done in years. Vladimir Putin should be sending (symbolic) roses to Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili for having precipitated this fiasco.»

Mais l’article de William Pfaff s’intitule «A Solution for Georgia and Russia». Quelle solution? Pfaff énonce une proposition qui s’accorderait plutôt à la mesure et au bon sens qu’à l’hystérie virtualiste.

«For all the quasi-hysterical talk about “resurgent Russia,” Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. had an ideology that condemned all existing governments as illegitimate and was committed (in theory) to overthrowing them all. It controlled an organization – the Comintern – devoted to doing just that. Russia today is a conventional nation-state with no expansionist or revolutionary ideology, only a reasonable concern about not having hostile neighbors. Just like the United States. Everyone knows about the Monroe Doctrine.

»The Georgian government continues to talk about rearmament and revenge. It ought to talk about a special arrangement with the European Union which would be politically and economically advantageous, and give them an international association to which the Russians would have no reason to object, and would indeed find reassuring. Georgia has no real alternative to getting along with Russia. NATO membership now is closed, and was – as they have found out, at heavy cost to their people – always a snare and delusion.»

Mis en ligne le 17 septembre 2008 à 22H36