Rasmussen calls for a “genuine, new beginning” in NATO-Russia relations

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin) ­-- ­Either NATO is changing its policy or its new Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen from Denmark is a little too energetic. Some new bosses display this sort of unusual enthusiasm after their appointment. Be that as it may, in a speech at a security conference in Carnegie Europe in Brussels on September 18 he made an unusual announcement. It sounded almost fantastic. His predecessor from the Netherlands, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, never said anything of the sort.

Rasmussen’s speech and the answers he gave to the subsequent questions were almost fully devoted to Russia. The speech came after President Barack Obama’s recently announced decision to shelve his predecessor’s plan to deploy a missile defense system in Europe and implement his own plans for a missile defense system.

Incidentally, Rasmussen confirmed that this decision does not at all mean that the United States has fully scrapped its missile defense plans in Europe, as some hotheads in Eastern Europe and Russia have mistakenly said, either in joy or consternation.

Speaking about this decision, Rasmussen said that the missile defense system “can include all allies and protect all allies.” He spoke a day after Obama made his announcement, which means that he knew about the American President’s plans in advance.

He was bound to know about the decision, because he is to meet with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in a couple of days. This meeting will be the last stage in his preparations for a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow. Mr. Rasmussen will most likely come to Russia in October, but an exact date for his visit has not been set.

Rasmussen will clearly not start by openly trying to persuade Russia to accept Obama’s new plan immediately and react with what is already being called a “symmetric” response at NATO headquarters. It is enough for him to state the position of the alliance, which generally coincides with Obama’s proposals. However, it follows from his statements that NATO will actively lobby them in Moscow.

Rasmussen expressed NATO’s readiness to move even further and incorporate Russia into the new missile defense plan: “Both NATO and Russia have a wealth of experience in missile defense. We should now work to combine this experience to our mutual benefit.” He also stated that “we should explore the potential for linking the U.S., NATO and Russian missile defense systems at an appropriate time,” although he did not specify how this potential will be used.

Naturally enough, at an upcoming meeting in Moscow, Rasmussen and Medvedev will discuss how Russia and NATO will develop and even expand their relationship, which was frozen after the conflict in the Caucasus. After a routine of “generous indignation” over Moscow’s “aggressive” policy in the region, NATO itself decided to improve the relationship. NATO officials realize that without Russia, NATO (and the United States) will not make any progress on any of its goals, including in Afghanistan, or in connection with the common efforts against terrorism, piracy, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

This was the first long speech by Rasmussen since his appointment as Secretary-General of NATO. By and large, it may disappoint the markedly anti-Russian contingent within the alliance. For the most part, this contingent includes the members that have joined NATO relatively recently, after 2004, such as the Baltic countries, Poland, etc. In addition, it will particularly depress Mikheil Saakashvili’s Georgia and Viktor Yushchenko’s Ukraine, which are happy to see any cooling of relations between Russia and NATO, the EU, or PACE. Rasmussen was too emphatic in stressing the need for resuming and developing cooperation with Russia for Tbilisi and Kiev to like his speech. He announced his resolve to restore and normalize relations with Moscow as soon as he assumed office on August 3.

Rasmussen is convinced that improving the NATO-Russia relationship will benefit the alliance’s members in Eastern Europe. Considering how stubbornly all of these East European allies objected to better relations between NATO and Moscow, this statement sounds somewhat mocking. However, apparently NATO believes that catering to the needs of its new members is counterproductive.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.