NATO is strengthening its force in East Europe, where the US is redeploying additional contingents. It is also holding large-scale military exercises near Russian borders and is planning to double the strength of its rapid response.
The Rossiya Segodnya Press Center hosted a round table entitled “NATO: Current Strategy. Back to the Past?” The North Atlantic Treaty was signed 66 years ago to introduce a 12-state joint defense system intended to “protect Europe against Soviet influence.” Over time, the number of member-states has grown to 28. Despite its assurances to the contrary, the alliance has swallowed up states that used to form the defunct USSR’s zone of influence or were its constituent parts. A quarter century ago (1991), the bipolar system (which brought NATO into being) ceased to exist. However, the alliance, as is evident from last year’s events, still regards Russia, the legal successor to the USSR, as a force to be combated. In an expression of this, the NATO summit held in Wales in September 2014 made a strategic about-face to confront Russia.
Today, NATO is strengthening its force in East Europe, where the US is redeploying additional contingents. It is also holding large-scale military exercises near Russian borders and is planning to double the strength of its rapid response. Some NATO members have even signaled their readiness to supply lethal weapons to Kiev.
The Valdai International Discussion Club’s expert Alexei Fenenko, a leading research fellow at the Institute of International Security Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences who took part in the round table, believes that NATO’s policy towards Russia has not changed much over the last 20 years. It is suffice to recall that the US National Security Strategy stated that Russia had preserved the Soviet military potential and the Soviet military-industrial complex, failing to dismantle it like Germany or Japan did. Logically then, NATO’s fight against the “Soviet threat” has grown into a fight against Russia.
Fenenko thinks it inexpedient to say that NATO-Russia relations have been positive over the last 20 years. Signed in 1997, the Founding Act was suspended in 1999 in connection with events in Yugoslavia. The Rome Declaration was signed in 2002 and the 2004 Istanbul summit on antimissile defense revised the main components of the Act.
In 2000-2004 there were active attempts to promote Russia-NATO partnership, to establish a partnership against new threats and hold a more or less constructive dialogue despite the fact that both sides’ contemporary military doctrines were oriented toward conflict with each other.
The period from 2001 to 2004 was also marked by attempts to organize a joint fight against new threats and to create a new European security system or reform the former one. According to the expert, this was the only positive period in the history of NATO-Russia relations.
Alexei Fenenko touched on the current crisis, noting that an essential point was that Russia and NATO signed an important deal related to the Founding Act in 1997. It was concluded that NATO was accepting new members but not building military infrastructure on their territory or deploying nuclear weapons and military forces.
The current Ukrainian crisis enables NATO to revise the 1997 deal. According to Fenenko, we are witnessing a real attempt to deploy NATO’s military infrastructure, although these are just the initial sketches. It is also obvious that NATO is seeking to partner with other countries, these being not only Ukraine but also states in northern Europe.
Sweden has been stepping up an anti-Russian hysteria over the last six months against a background of rumors that it is likely to conclude a partnership with NATO. In Finland, there are increasingly loud statements about a Russian threat and the need to promote relations with NATO.
All of this constitutes attempts to revise the Founding Act, which will mark its 20th anniversary in 2017, when the opportunity will become available if not for talks, then for a dramatic change in the situation in East Europe.
According to Fenenko, there are two scenarios for relations with NATO.
In the first scenario, Russia accepts an agenda for reducing the risk of a “fight” in 2017 and negotiates a reform of the Founding Act, possibly in a different format than before. But as soon as it starts negotiations, the question will arise as to what could replace the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). This will usher in a dialogue on the status of a number of countries, like Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, and possibly Finland and on what forces can or cannot be deployed in East Europe. Fenenko believes that on the whole this is a positive agenda for Russia-NATO relations.
The second scenario is extremely negative. NATO starts deploying its military forces, thus pushing forward the threat of a new Cold War with unpredictable consequences.
The expert community has coined a new term: “NATO Spring”. What NATO is doing in a general sense is building a Pax Americana. In a narrower sense, it is exploiting the situation generated by the NATO Spring. There is no illusion as to which country is the beneficiary of the current state of affairs.
The event was also attended by Dmitry Danilov, the head of the European Security Section at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Andrei Sidorov, the deputy dean of the World Politics Department at Lomonosov Moscow State University, and Prof. Vladimir Shtol of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
