The items examined were: the war and a build-up of NATO troops in Afghanistan, cooperation with Russia, a new NATO general-secretary, and a Muslim response to his election.
The Strasbourg summit became the first NATO summit after the "war in the Caucasus" and the freezing of relations with Moscow; the latter, incidentally, had no effect on Russia, but created serious difficulties for the military organization. The restoration of relations with Russia has been prompted by purely pragmatic considerations, as well as President Obama's new strategy of "taming Afghanistan." Afghanistan needs a safe corridor for the supply of arms and other cargoes, while Pakistan cannot be regarded as such a corridor now.
So, whether you like it or not, you have to be friends with Moscow again. That, in point of fact, was why the summit did not raise the issue of NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. However, this does not mean that it is removed altogether. It has been shelved so as not to anger a country designated as an additional "Afghan corridor." Now, perhaps in early June, the Russia-NATO Council will meet at the foreign minister level. At any rate, that is something which the Obama administration would like to see.
In Strasbourg and in its "domain," unprecedented things sometimes happened, connected with a new architecture of global security. Apart from NATO's role in this structure, mention was also made of President Dmitry Medvedev's proposal dealing with an entirely different scheme, one which would embrace the whole of Europe, America and Russia.
There was also a third option. Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, talking to reporters ahead of the summit, said that under a new security set-up Russia could in fact join NATO. "We need Russia to solve European and global problems. It would be fine if Russia joined NATO." The last time such a bold move was made was in 1954 when all Soviet embassies received a secret letter signed by Molotov, saying Moscow was ready to discuss NATO membership "with parties concerned." NATO could not even find a stock response to that inventive joke by Nikita Khrushchev.
Calls to expand partnership with Russia now being heard in NATO countries (excluding, of course, the bloc's eastern members spoiled by their "Soviet grooming") sound surprisingly frank. Of course, behind these calls are NATO's efforts to find a new niche in a radically altered world, but mostly it is attempts to find the most acceptable way of endorsing a new role for the bloc whose very existence is becoming increasingly absurd. The strengthening of a real hard-nosed partnership with NATO (let alone Russia's membership in it) will create the paradoxical situation of a country embracing a bloc set up against it. Its further conversion from a military into a political and military set-up, which seems to be in the offing, will produce a structure parallel to the UN, with an appropriate borrowing of duties from it for NATO's benefit. Which is already happening in Kosovo. And in Afghanistan.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
