Seven New Allies Shift NATO to Russia's Borders

[Judi Lynn]

Seven New Allies Shift NATO to Russia's Borders
Mon Mar 29, 2004 01:24 PM ET


By Saul Hudson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven eastern European allies joined NATO in a triumphant ceremony Monday but the expansion could slow deployments and has angered Russia by shifting the 55-year-old transatlantic alliance to its borders.

The entry of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia increased the members in the U.S.-dominated alliance to 26.

In an immediate reflection of the shift eastward of an alliance forged to fight the Cold War, NATO fighter jets headed to the Baltics, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said.

"Welcome to the greatest and most successful alliance in history," Secretary of State Colin Powell told the nations' prime ministers, who formally handed over their accession documents.
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[daleo]

1. Now that Russia is not Communist

Why is this necessary? I thought countries with MacDonald's franchises never went to war. That was so 1990's - perhaps it is Crispy Creme that makes all the difference now.

[tom_paine]

2. Russia is Totalitarian "Managed Democracy" but then again

so is Imperial Amerika.

Picture "The Great Game" of the 1890s. THAT is where we are now, historically-speaking.

This is just a squabble between two Kings. Naturally, they will maneuver each other deceitfully.

Pooty-Poot and Bunnypants* absolutely are "soul-mates". As corrupt and bereft of conscience as anyone ever was. Each is faced with his own problem, which is how to get rid of that dumb liberal freedom that briefly fluorished during the Old American Republic.

But now the Old American Republic is gone, and the freedom is dying as the Imperials Bush and Putin desire.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. well put

It's not a conflict of ideology, if it ever was. It comes down to Highlander: "there can be only one."

The imperial families of Europe were all blood relations. It didn't keep them from shedding the blood of millions.

[teryang]

4. This NATO expansion is an absurdity

Poland and the other eastern countries are indefensible. Why make a commitment you can't keep? So nuclear war can break out more easily?

What did Bismarck say? I wouldn't give the bones of a dead Pomeranian foot soldier for an alliance with Austria-Hungary? Something like that. What did they call the allied defense of Poland in WWII? The phony war. Yep, we got Russia surrounded now, right where we want em. So what is their response? To rejuvinate their monstrous intercontinental mirved ICBM force. Welcome back the cold war thanks to the limitlessly incompetent and wasteful national security establishment of the so called United States of America.