Radio Free Europe is reporting that during a visit to the country of Georgia, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the South Caucasus country will join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, despite Russia’s strong opposition. See: “Stoltenberg: Georgia Will Join NATO, And Russia Can Do Nothing About It.” See NATO statement on NATO-Georgian military exercises. The country of Georgia borders Russia, Turkey and the eastern end of the Black Sea. It is about 2,000 miles from the Atlantic.

Stoltenberg is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on April 3.

STEPHEN F. COHEN, sfc1 at nyu.edu
Available for a limited number of interviews, Cohen is professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, he is the author, most recently, of War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.

He recently wrote the piece “Even a Vacuous Mueller Report Won’t End ‘Russiagate.’”

Cohen writes: “The top Democratic congressional leadership evidently has concluded that promoting the new Cold War, of which Russiagate has become an integral part, is a winning issue in 2020. How else to explain Nancy Pelosi’s proposal — subsequently endorsed by the equally unstatesmanlike Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, and adopted — to invite the secretary general of NATO, a not-very-distinguished Norwegian politician named Jens Stoltenberg, to address a joint session of Congress? The honor was once bestowed on figures such as Winston Churchill and at the very least leaders of actual countries. Trump has reasonably questioned NATO’s mission and costs nearly 30 years after the Soviet Union disappeared, as did many Washington think tanks and pundits back in the 1990s. But for Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, there can be no such discussion, only valorization of NATO, even though the military alliance’s eastward expansion has brought the West to the brink of war with nuclear Russia.”