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By Dylan Matthews
I really don't follow Strobe Talbott's logic here:
In one of my first meetings with Vladimir Putin, before he became president, he spoke of his country's zapadnichestvo, its Western vocation. Yet it now appears that beyond the undisguised animosity that Putin bears toward Saakashvili, he and his government regard Georgia's pro-Western bent and its aspiration to join two Western institutions, NATO and the European Union, as, literally, a casus belli. If that is the case, the next U.S. administration -- the fourth to deal with post-Soviet Russia -- will have to reexamine the underlying basis for the whole idea of partnership with that country and its continuing integration into a rule-based international community.Let me get this straight. A nuclear power regards a small, weak, young state's aspirations of NATO/EU membership as a casus belli. Thus, Talbott wants to cut the nuclear power off from the "rule-based international community" since the advancement of the weak state is just that important.