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NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer paid a visit to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, on Oct. 4, amid rising tensions in Russian-Georgian relations and internal Georgian politics.

NATO views Georgia as a key buffer state in the Caucasus, one whose mere existence holds Russia in check. At the same time, the former Soviet state is too dysfunctional and isolated for NATO to ever be able to adequately defend it. So NATO follows a somewhat schizophrenic policy of holding out membership as a possibility but never adding Georgia to NATO’s official candidate list.

This position gives NATO plenty of wiggle room, and wiggle is precisely what de Hoop Scheffer did during his visit.

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