NATO Will Have To Resume Cooperation With Russia

There are many international issues that cannot be resolved without Russia, including the struggle against terror, drugs, weapons of mass destruction and the proliferation of nuclear technology. NATO will have to resume cooperation with Russia, which also needs to cooperate with NATO, because philosophically speaking, this is a case of “objective reality as the source of our sensations.”

Valdaiclub.com interview with Viktor Litovkin, head of the ITAR-TASS military news editorial office.

NATO has officially stopped cooperation with Russia under all its civilian and military programs. What will be the result of this decision?

It is an unpleasant decision, but Russia will survive. Actually, there has been more talking than actual working under the few cooperative Russia-NATO and other high-profile plans. Russia-NATO cooperation was mostly limited to mutual visits by heads of state, ministries and departments and delegations. We held joint military exercises, though not with NATO as a bloc but with individual members, such as cooperative operations in the Mediterranean, the struggle against pirates off the Horn of Africa and consultations. NATO has always kept aloof of deepening cooperation with Russia. There has always been mutual mistrust, and so our contacts did not satisfy the declared aspirations and goals.

The most effective area of our relations was the transit of NATO cargo to Afghanistan across Russia and, in general, cooperation as regards Afghanistan. But even this cooperation was fragmented. NATO has actually failed to achieve the goal set to it by the UN Security Council: to stop the proliferation of drugs. Afghanistan is our only cooperative project today, but continued cooperation with a self-centered organization that disregards Russia’s national security interests is open to question.

This is not the first breach in our relations with NATO, and it will not be the last one. The first breach in our relations, including under the Partnership for Peace program, was when NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999. The second was when NATO refused to cooperate with Russia after Moscow helped South Ossetia repel Georgia’s military attack in August 2008. NATO was “offended” by Russia’s decision to protect Russian peacekeepers and Russian speakers in South Ossetia. We survived that decision, and later NATO resumed bilateral cooperation. I believe that this time, too, NATO will be compelled to resume cooperation with Russia in a few months.

There are many international issues that cannot be resolved without Russia, including the struggle against terror, drugs, weapons of mass destruction and the proliferation of nuclear technology. One way or another, NATO will have to resume cooperation with Russia, which also needs to cooperate with NATO, because philosophically speaking, this is a case of “objective reality as the source of our sensations.” Russia will cooperate with NATO, which consists of 28 nations, because it includes leading European states, although we are cooperating more actively and effectively with individual NATO members, such as France, Germany and Italy, under joint military-technical and other projects.

How has NATO changed since its establishment 65 years ago?

The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union undermined the essence of NATO, which was established as a military bulwark against the USSR and its socialist allies. NATO officials did their best to find a new reason for using the bloc’s military component and preserving that largely bureaucratic and deskbound organization. The first thing they did after the Soviet Union’s dissolution was to bomb a European country, Yugoslavia, a massacre that had no connection to the fight against terrorism.

NATO did the same in Afghanistan, where it deployed troops under a UN mandate, but it will hardly be able to report to the UN and its Security Council on the fulfillment of the mandate. The bloc’s leadership has no reason to say that its work in Afghanistan was effective. NATO also bombed Libya and is supporting Syrian rebels. In short, NATO failed its mission.

When Russia responded to the Crimeans’ decision to reunite with Russia, taken at a legitimate referendum, NATO hastily laid aside its declarations of partnership and shared goals with Russia and revealed its anti-Russian and Russophobic nature. All statements and actions by the Brussels officials indicate that NATO was established to deter Russia and will always act in this vein.

Will you comment on the appointment of Jens Stoltenberg as NATO’s next secretary general? Will this change the bloc’s agenda?

I do not think the bloc’s agenda will change much. You should understand that NATO is not an independent organization but an instrument of US influence on European nations and global politics. NATO has always been controlled by Washington: NATO never changed its attitude toward Russia if Washington didn’t, and vice versa. The United States provides 70% of the NATO budget, and American generals hold many leading positions in the bloc. We can assume that the NATO secretary general’s personal qualities would be able to influence relations with Moscow, but NATO’s fundamental stance, which is formed in Washington, will not change.

Will NATO continue its eastward expansion? During their recent meeting in Brussels, the member states again discussed partnership with Georgia. Will NATO move closer to the Russian border? Will the bloc establish permanent bases in the Baltic countries and deploy more troops in Eastern Europe and the Baltics? Is this a realistic threat?

NATO has announced its readiness to grant membership to the remaining Balkan countries, but I do not think Ukraine or Georgia will be invited to join. The reason is that NATO’s main admission principle is the absence of territorial disputes with the candidate countries’ neighbors. Ukraine wants Crimea back, and Georgia has territorial disputes with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and so neither country can be admitted to NATO.

On the other hand, NATO has been known to violate its international commitments and internal provisions, and so it will not be surprising if it finds a way to deploy military units, for example US troops, in Ukraine without making it an official member. NATO will certainly claim that it has no connection to such bases, just like it claims to have no military bases in Romania, Bulgaria or Poland. NATO argues that these are US bases and ballistic missile defense systems, and that it is not responsible for what the United States does. This double-dealing policy can lead to many surprises.

NATO has upgraded the Baltic countries’ infrastructure for the deployment of its troops, but sending relatively large military forces there will be an open violation of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. In this event, Russia will have to take adequate response measures, as we have warned Brussels and Washington that we would do. They should not be surprised to see the Iskander-M ( SS-26 Stone ) mobile theater ballistic missile systems and other Russian military units on the border with the Baltic countries. Russia has deployed its fighter planes in Belarus on a rotating basis after NATO and the United States sent six F-15 fighter jets and a refueling plane to Lithuania (in addition to the four F-15s deployed there in January) and a dozen F-16 planes to Poland.

We will have to respond to what NATO does. It will not be a large-scale response, but it will be sufficient to protect our national security. 

Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.