As this maybe the crosspost of your dkos diary, this maybe right, but for continental Europe, 'NATO or not' has big consequences. Because 'we' are have no obligation to defend Ukraine. By the way, there were as well treaties, which guarantied, that the balitc states would not become NATO members. Treaties made in that time seem not to have any binding power today any more.

I'm not talking about moral, but purely economic and security national issues: For continental Europe to allow Ukraine becoming a member of NATO has huge costs while zilch benefit.
Europeans are not willing to sent their full army to defend Georgia or Ukraine. If European energy security is build on these countries, then the EU is dependent on US military support. The US willingness to do so, is extremely expensive (loyality issues come to mind, see recent history) and can change every 4 years, when a new president is elected.  
If there is a partnership with Russia, huge investments into infrastructure are done by Russia. This guarantees a long term commitment. As Jerome has pointed out often enough, such investment is so large, that every side has a strong interest that delivery and payments go on. When Russia stopped gas delivery to Ukraine, the main issue was, that Ukraine is not paying the world market prices. The EU has an interest, that competitors like the Ukraine don't work with cheaper gas than our companies. The reasonable move therefore is the baltic sea pipeline to circumvent Ukraine, not to rely even stronger on the Ukrainian-Russian relationship - and backing Ukraine.
Even full dictatorships can be cooperative, see the gulf countries, when it comes to delivery of their energy.
Good Russian-EU relationships are the much more important than the protection of unnecessary provocative half-democratically elected eastern European govs.

And for moral issues alone, we could as good invade Zimbabwe. And so far I haven't seen any really good reason, why Georgian politicians think a South Ossetian independence is unacceptable, while I have seen lots of claims, that it is.

Gemach, gemach