German Views on War in Georgia

There is a new paper worth checking out from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, which gathers together several articles to debate the various perceptions of the Russian invasion of Georgia and its policy implications for Germany and the European Union.  The editor warns that the Georgia crisis has proven that international security organizations such as NATO and the OSCE are unable to prevent conflict between hostile states, and that Europe needs to come up with a new security architecture that will incorporate Russia without abandoning the concerns of Eastern member states (meaning that they should take up Medvedev’s pre-war offer from last June).  The Ostpolitik of the Franco-German axis must look inward before dealing with Moscow, they argue.

This paper provides a good summary of the dominant assumptions, flawed as they may be, that Berlin holds with regard to EU-Russia relations.