Regarding NATO, and treaties in general, there is a general notion of “good faith” involved in things like that. If Georgia had actually joined NATO and then attacked South Ossetia, the likely result of Georgia asking for aid would have been the same: crickets. I.e., “you started it, we have no obligation to come bail your rear end out of the mess you created.” In short, if a treaty was negotiated in bad faith, its signatory countries will decide “uhm, no, we won’t comply with that.” And there is no effective mechanism to compel the signatory countries to do so. There are reasons why nations generally comply with treaties and play along with the fiction of international law, but those reasons don’t apply to starting WWIII on behalf of some nimrod who poked the Russian bear and then demands to be bailed out of his stupidity.