Cyrill Vatomsky, Where All Politics Are Global

According to a Georgia News Agency (Georgia as in a country not a US state) Georgian Parliament unanimously voted for a resolution to seek NATO membership for their country.

As I have suggested before on numerous occasions here and on my radio show, the West should encourage as many countries as possible to turn towards it. Not all will be capable to join NATO or other Atlantic structures right a way and Georgia will face some serious work ahead, but it is the intent that makes this important.

I am not aware yet of any official Russian statement - a brief Google news search did not yield anything of significance. But rest assured this will not be taken lightly in Moscow, especially in the midst of the brewing crisis over air shield-1 that Pentagon considers deploying either in Georgia or someplace in Eastern Europe.

Even more insightful was the rhetoric, and phraseology used by many parliamentarians that took the floor -

that values declared in the resolution are dear, that Georgia will do all it could to join the organization that brings peace to the world and the region.

Some of it went a bit too far I think - claims that

the main priority for all (sic) Georgians is to join NATO, and surprise, surprise that joining NATO will help resolve the issue of territorial integrity of Georgia - faced right now with breakaway Abkhasia and Osetia regions. Georgia claims that Russia is responsible for stirring up the pot in both regions.

Needless to say it is a challenge to the West, NATO and the US in particular. It does not look like Putin and his government will repeat their non-involvement posture when the Balts, Poles and other Eastern Europeans joined its supposed adversary. On the other hand, the fact that Russia considers NATO a threat to itself and to be an anti-Russia alliance, does not mean NATO is what Russia thinks it is. And it most certainly does not mean that the West should pay attention to Russia's claims in any way other then common courtesy.

Will this be a test of US-Russian relations? No doubt about it. It will also be a test of NATO and the intestinal fortitude of Europeans that are weary of frustrating their main natural gas supplier, cognizant of what happened to Ukraine and Belarus. Georgia is most certainly forcing the hand of the West and it might have been done with a silent nod from Washington.

Will there be another outburst of anti-Georgian nationalism in Russia similar to what I saw there in last October? I hope not, but my hopes are... slim.