Obama will be asked NATO question within 24 hours:

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

"Do you support NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, and if so, in the event of a Russian assault on either nation would NATO treaty obligations demand an American military response?"

(Of course Obama and Biden have both discussed the topic before, but it's different when the media spotlight drifts onto a topic.)

I assume the campaign has crafted a bang-up concise, sound-bite answer to that question to maximize any benefit from Palin's answer on the topic.

It's a genuinely tricky subject full of nuance which makes it a tough one to sound-bite. If I was the campaign I might want to arrange for Biden to be asked that first so that his answer can be directly juxtaposed to Palin's, avoiding the Barack vs. Sarah thing.

[Enrique]

1. he will refuse to answer the hypothetical

appropriate, imo, for such questions dealing with war and peach.

[earthside]

2. A Dangerous Hypothetical

NATO membership for Ukraine would be seen by Moscow as very provocative.

You want to set the stage for a war with Russia? Push NATO membership for the Ukraine.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

3. It is not a hypothetical question, as that term is genrally used

It is hypothetical in that it speaks to a potential occurance, but treaty obligations are themselves hypothetical. "If country A does x then country b agrees to do y," or "If imports from country A are x then provision y is activated."

All senate debate over treaties is a discussion of hypotheticals.

[RichardUK]

4. NATO does exist in reality

NATO is an organisation in name only. There is no NATO anymore, there hasn't been since the end of the cold war. All talk of expanding NATO to include the Ukraine and Georgia is just silly b*llocks politics from politicians playing at being Winston Churchill. Someone needs to remind Palin who seems to think Georgia ought to become a member and David Cameron over here - that we don't have the resources to protect Georgia - Georgia is no where near the North Atlantic and their democracy is a fallacy anyway. That countries Government is as corrupt as any traditional Eastern block country and this whole issue is a very unpleasant and pathetic attempt to give Putin something to think about - which I think he just finds quite amusing.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. I'll take a shot at it.

Civilized answer:

"Membership in a mutual defense pact such as NATO is a serious business precisely because it obliges members to certain military responses. That is why extending membership to former Soviet republics like Georgia and Ukraine can only occur in the context of comprehensive regional diplomacy with Russia to remove flash-point tensions involving those nations."

Sound-bite Answer: ???

[thereismore]

9. Also an answer: "You are assuming Georgia being a member of NATO AND Russia

invading Georgia while knowing that Georgia is a member of NATO. Those are two assumptions that our diplomacy will make mutually exclusive."

[iamthebandfanman]

6. if they are part of nato id imagine

itd require a NATO response, not just an american one...

of course something would be done if a nato country was attacked by another non-nato country... thats kinda the point of nato...

now whether or not he supports Ukraine and georgia being a member, thats a different story

[nsd]

7. TPM notes a distinction in the Obama-Biden position.

link

More details from an informed reader ...

There's a bit more on Georgia and Ukraine and NATO. What Obama and Biden favor is for NATO to offer these two countries accession to the "Membership Action Plan" (or MAP), a process set up in the late 1990s to help aspirant countries prepare for possible membership in the Alliance. MAP isn't a promise of membership, and the last members to join NATO were in MAP for nearly a decade. It would take at least as long for Ukraine and Georgia to become members of NATO, not least since one of the criterion for membership is that there are no territorial disputes involving the country that is requesting membership... A lot of mumbo jumbo on NATO accession procedures, this. But here's the kicker: What Palin said is that Ukraine and Georgia should become NATO members now. Not even Bush is arguing that. (He, too, favors MAP.) McCain was with Bush on this until recently and, I assume, if asked still is. Palin didn't know the distinction, and is suggesting that these countries get into NATO tomorrow. She may not realize that this is a decision that NATO members need to make collectively, all 27 of them, which won't happen, given that MAP was denied the countries just a few months ago...

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. Excellent. Now sound-bite it.

[chieftain]

10. I just read a piece on TPM that says that Obama supports

Georgia being admitted into NATO's MAP process which is an application for membership that can last up to 10 years and requires there be no extant border disputes at point of entry into the organization. Marshall says this is what Bush also supports and McCain did but may have changed recently.
I was relieved to read this since I think our inviting Russian border states to be part of a mutual military assistance pact to be recklessly provocative and of little value. We are not all Georgians and ought never be.

[leveymg]

11. A majority of NATO members won't vote for membership at this time.

Question is hypothetical, and an answer would be irresponsible as conditions might change.

[Iterate]

12. Separate the issues

Suggest working with Russia and the European allies the possibility of separating the complex issues of Russian, ethnic Russian and Russian border state security from the matter of NATO membership. Mention and praise the current EU efforts. Suggest regional talks, patience, consensus. Emphasize the huge and complex obligations that NATO membership implies, for all parties. Even if it takes ten years to resolve, that’s ten years of peace. Those states couldn't’t be defended anyway, only retaken at huge cost.

Sound-bite? Simple and visceral.

“Old thinking makes new wars.”

“Any schoolyard bully can pick a fight.”

Preemptively reclaim courage – the courage it takes to sit down with someone you disagree with, with strength in your own convictions, and confidence in your intelligence to see your way through problem.

“Anyone who would blithely suggest war with Russia either has no understanding of history or has given little thought to the horrors of 40 million dead.


Pre-guessing is much better than second guessing.