PARIS — As NATO foreign ministers gather Tuesday for an emergency meeting on the Georgian crisis, Europe is divided over how to balance its ties to Russia with concerns over the country’s new aggressiveness. The European dilemma is clear, said Clifford Kupchan, a director of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm in Washington. ‘How do they square their increasing energy dependence on Russia with their increasing political discomfort with Putin?’ he said, referring to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin. ‘It’s a very hard circle to square.’ As the United States looks for more than symbolic gestures on how to support Georgia and another former Soviet republic, Ukraine, there is a split between ‘old and new Europe’ – roughly Western and Eastern Europe, Mr. Kupchan said. New Europe, backed by Britain and Scandinavia, is taking a harder line toward Russia, while old Europe ‘will only be reinforced in its view that Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for NATO.’ After Russian behavior during the Georgia crisis, said Jacques Rupnik, an Eastern Europe expert at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences-Po, ‘There is little disagreement now in Europe about the nature of the new Russia.’ Those […]