Not surprisingly, we have Cheney visiting the region before slinking off to an undisclosed location, and he is very clear on the fact that he wants a new cold war for political advantage, NATO membership for Georgia and the Ukraine, and pretty much anyone else, if only because it pisses off the Russians. (see here, here, and here)
Of course, the Ukraine’s coalition government appears to be on the verge of collapse, and while Ukrainian President Yushchenko is still going for NATO membership, while PM Yulia Tymoshenko* is more cautious, and less viscerally anti-Russian (and anti-ethnic Russians in the Ukraine) than the president.
It also appears that while the Ukranians are interested in EU membership, support NATO membership is somewhat more tepid.
Even with that, there is no unanimity within the EU over Ukraine’s membership.
I’m not sure if this is because of concerns with Russia, because the Ukraine is really not ready in terms of things like transparency, or because the EU is already suffering from massive growing pains and transfer payments from it’s breakneck expansion of the past few years.
Meanwhile, NATO appears to be taking a leading role in the rebuilding of the Georgian military, with NATO networking with NATO radars and their early warning system.
Meanwhile, we have a pretty good rundown of Georgian misstatements and flat out lies about the war, and that Georgia had been planning its invasion of South Ossetia for many months, as evidenced by this story from April regarding the radars being moved into the conflict areas.
What is clear is that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was hoping to draw NATO into his war, which is a pretty good reason not to even begin considering EU or NATO membership for Georgia until it is clear that the firebrand politician has left the stage; he was engaging in nuclear chicken by proxy.
In any case it appears that the Russians are deescalating, with a promise to withdraw all troops from Georgia proper.
*Why, oh why can’t news happen in places where the names are easy to spell?