Russia - NATO: “The Third Dimension” of the Partnership

It's time to stop treating each other as potential adversaries.

October 19 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he would take part in the Russia-NATO Council summit on 19-20 in November in Lisbon. The agenda of the upcoming summit includes key issues for Moscow and Brussels: missile defense, the CFE Treaty, nonproliferation weapons mass destruction, the fight against terrorism, Afghanistan.

WHAT WILL BE DISCUSSED?

Afghanistan remains one of the main problems of the alliance and occupies an important place in its plans concerning the development of relations with Russia. As part of the long-term strategy of stabilizing this country and creating conditions for the withdrawal of its military contingent of the bloc, the NATO Combined Forces Command in Bruunsum (the Netherlands) developed a plan under the code name “Anaconda”. It envisages a concentric impact (power, humanitarian, educational, social) on Afghans in order to suppress the rebels, attract the vacillating, develop elements of civil society, and strengthen local power structures. Moreover, NATO members are carefully studying the experience of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, although they believe that the fundamental difference of the current situation is that the alliance relies on the UN mandate and broad international support in its actions.

In preparation for the Lisbon summit, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen slightly opened up the plans for the transformation of the bloc, which are to be reflected in the new Strategic Concept.

First of all, it is the modernization of the defense potential of the alliance and the potential of deterrent, for example, in cyberspace and missile defense. This is a very costly event. The Secretary General acknowledged that due to the financial crisis, the Allies are forced to reduce military spending. However, he warned against over-cutting them: “We must avoid too deep cuts, otherwise in the future we will not be able to ensure the security on which our economic prosperity rests.”

Steps are being taken to improve the crisis management process through a comprehensive approach, "which coordinates political, civil and military efforts aimed at achieving common goals," and military and civilian leaders "carry out joint planning and complement and support each other in their actions."

And finally, NATO must “build deeper, broader political and practical partnerships with countries around the world” in order to provide security through cooperation.

The Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense of the bloc member states at a meeting of the NATO Council in Brussels on October 14 discussed the first draft of the new Strategic Concept presented by the Secretary General. In his speech, Rasmussen stressed: “My unswerving intention is that at the Lisbon summit a more modern, more efficient union and more capable of working with other partners around the world.”

“The new Strategic Concept,” the Secretary General said, “should reaffirm the main task of NATO - territorial defense, but at the same time modernize the ways to implement it, including cyber defense and missile defense. It should clearly define the task of NATO - to carry out crisis management across the spectrum, as well as authorize and equip the Alliance to fully interact with our civilian partners. ”

However, the United States is strenuously “pushing” its own concept in the alliance, according to which cyberspace is considered as potential theater of operations as other battlefields. Moreover, the Pentagon does not exclude the use of weapons against sources of hacker attacks aimed at strategic facilities of the United States and Washington's allies. The Americans offer their NATO friends to create in the future a joint unified system of collective cybersecurity. Representatives of Washington periodically inform NATO members about the formation of views on cyber defense. For example, they recently presented a set of proposals for cooperation at a forum in Brussels sponsored by the independent research and think tank Security & Defense Agenda, which regularly brings together representatives of the EU, NATO, government officials, industry, academia and other organizations.

Along with cyber defense and energy security, missile defense remains one of the Alliance’s top priorities. Rasmussen called on NATO ministers to decide on building capacity to protect Europe from the threat of a missile attack: “More than 30 countries have or are acquiring ballistic missiles, some of which can already reach Europe. Considering how immeasurable losses a missile attack can cause one of our cities, I believe that we cannot afford not to have an anti-missile defense potential. ” The Secretary General expressed the hope that by the Lisbon summit the Allies would be ready to take on this task.

Developing the topic of NATO reform, Rasmussen returned to the idea of ​​optimizing financial policy. According to him, “the Alliance is effectively spending money. Acting together, we will provide greater security than if we act alone. ” The Secretary General said that the military authorities and the NATO agencies need to be reformed, and the Allies should together buy and operate more weapons and military equipment, since they cannot afford it themselves.

NATO ministers also considered a package of questions on building relations with the European Union. Indeed, in the Portuguese capital at the same time with the summit of the alliance, the EU summit will be held, at which US President Barack Obama’s speech is expected. In addition to economic issues, the head of the US administration will also touch on the military-political aspects of cooperation between the United States and the countries of the Old World, including the mission in Afghanistan, the problem of Iran. In turn, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, in a joint statement on the Lisbon agenda, stressed the great symbolic importance of holding two summits at the same time, which should indicate the Allies' intention to strengthen transatlantic ties in order to maintain a global security regime .

NOT A SECONDARY CHALLENGE

Thus, in the fall of this year in Lisbon, the entire process of NATO development, including partnerships with the EU and Russia, will receive a new additional impetus. In this regard, naturally, new initiatives should also appear in contacts between Brussels and Moscow, which are carried out with varying intensity in the historically established three areas: political dialogue, military cooperation and the so-called third dimension, including humanitarian, scientific, educational and public diplomacy.

An analysis of the implementation of this triad under the auspices of the Russia-NATO Council (NRC) shows a clear predominance of political and military issues. In fact, today the NRC meetings are preceded by a meeting of representatives of the parties in three committees — Preparatory, Military Preparatory, Science for Peace and Security and working groups — on operations and military cooperation (including the Afghanistan subgroup), defense transparency, strategy and reform, on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, on missile defense, on civil emergency planning, the Airspace Cooperation Initiative. There are also two special working groups (for logistics and the fight against terrorist threats in the Euro-Atlantic region).

From the standpoint of the prospects for the development of Russia-NATO relations, an obvious bias towards military-political aspects can hardly be considered justified, since the issues of humanitarian and educational issues, whose significance is steadily increasing, remain outside the agendas of the meetings. The fact is that the improvement of political and military confidence-building measures does not at all mean an automatic projection of the achieved results onto the “third dimension” mentioned above and ultimately into the sphere of human relations. But after all, it is precisely this area that is decisive in creating a climate of mutual trust and understanding for the long term between Russia and the NATO member states.

It is known that the crisis of confidence is removed by working together on major issues. One of such problems in the sphere of relations between Russia and NATO may be educational topics. Today, this area of ​​cooperation, being declared as an important component of the partnership, is practically absent in the system plan both in Russia and in the countries of the alliance.

As a result, the stereotypes of the past are still strong in the mutual perception of the parties, which hinders the progressive development of relations, gives rise to distrust and mutual phobias. Such a state of affairs is not only unfair, but also fraught with germs of geopolitical, sociopolitical, interfaith and inter-ethnic contradictions. Such contradictions, instead of the intention declared by Russia and NATO to build relations based on a dialogue of cultures and common human values, have often already resulted or may result in a conflict standoff, in local wars.

Therefore, even taking into account the very changeable vector of Russian-NATO relations, today we need a systematic, long-term approach aimed at accelerating development in the Russia-NATO partnership of the so-called third dimension, including the field of education. Some high-ranking experts recognized the urgency of this problem and the need to consider it at the NRC in the future at the presentation of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative project held in Moscow on October 9 in Moscow.

The experience of relations between Russia and NATO over the past 20 years has shown: a vision of the world of universal values ​​and ideas about the intercultural dialogue of our partners from NATO countries do not imply that such a dialogue is conducted not from a position of strength, but from a position of equality. In this context, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact Organization as a step of goodwill assumed, on the basis of reciprocity, the immediate self-liquidation of NATO and certainly not its unrestrained expansion to the east. International law, the UN Charter, the clearly expressed position of Russia did not deter our partners in the dialogue of cultures from large-scale missile and bombing attacks on defenseless Yugoslavia, its dismemberment and rejection of part of the ancient Slavic land that historically belonged to Serbia. There was no understanding between Russia and NATO (as well as Russia, the European Union and the USA) and during the conflict in the Caucasus in August 2008.

The list of such examples can be continued. However, even these few references to recent history quite convincingly show that the basis of mutual misunderstanding between Russia and the West is not only political, military-political or economic contradictions, which, of course, in most cases are decisive. One of the reasons for the lack of noticeable progress in Russian-NATO relations is also that the mutual study by partners of interethnic, intercultural, interethnic and interfaith problems is often based on the principles of rivalry and the Cold War.

In linguistics, one of the peculiarities of human communication is known, when two partners, fluent in one and the same language, but pictures of the world that emanate from a different vision, can talk about the same subject and completely agree with each other, but actually keep in mind completely different things. A so-called quasi-understanding effect arises, which itself harbors the germ of conflict. It is especially dangerous because it appears against the background of imaginary verbal consent and subsequently each of the parties begins to suspect the partner of deception, deceit, treachery. And such a situation can lead to a social, inter-ethnic, and even armed conflict.

A natural step to prevent the occurrence of such situations is to work together to harmonize approaches to the vision of the world, to strengthen the true understanding. In this context, one of the steps would be to launch joint research under the auspices of the Russia-NATO Council, for example, on strategies for preventing and resolving conflicts through linguistic and cultural partnerships, as well as improving interlingual and intercultural communication in learning and teaching foreign languages. It assumes the presence of a wide field for joint activities of specialists from many interested countries.

As a working body for the implementation of a joint research project (let's call it “Russia-NATO Relations: Language, Culture and Peace”), a consortium of universities based on several domestic and foreign universities and CSO civil society organizations can be formed under the auspices of the Russia-NATO Council. civil society organization). Each of the universities participating in the consortium on mutually agreed curricula and plans will be able to take on lecture courses for students, organizing their practice, conducting on a reciprocal basis internships for teachers, scientific work on separate areas of relations between Russia and NATO (including peacekeeping and humanitarian aspects of the partnership, the development of a strategy for resolving conflicts at the intercultural level, the mutual study of culture, religious denominations, languages, preparation of written x and interpreters).

The objectives of the project are to inculcate skills of communication skills, respect for other cultures, lifestyles and thoughts in the course of their professional training to students of partner universities, to teach how to correctly perceive the reality of NATO countries and Russia. On this basis, it is important to give the students the basics of conducting the negotiation process, taking into account various cultural approaches, as well as mediation in the prevention and resolution of interethnic, inter-ethnic and interfaith conflicts. Obvious is the need to jointly develop recommendations for the adaptation of participants in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in a foreign language culture. The consolidation of acquired knowledge can be carried out at joint seminars, round tables, and role-playing games on the problems of Russia-NATO relations.

The sequence of steps to implement such an initiative could be as follows: determine the range of Russian and foreign participating universities, organize study of partner programs and curricula by universities to further steps to ensure their compatibility, decide on a budget, coordinate the issues of student and teacher exchange. A good example of such an approach can serve as a successful EU program "Tempus", "Erasmus Mundus", the Seventh Framework.

Of course, NATO is first and foremost a military-political bloc, for which the experience of the European Union can be considered non-indicative. However, one cannot deny the particular attractiveness of such an initiative for the European members of the alliance, since the combination of the potentials of Russia and NATO, Russia and the EU in the political, economic, military, cultural and humanitarian spheres will undoubtedly help strengthen Europe and become a new pole of influence in the world. .

The urgency of the immediate deployment of work on the practical implementation of the educational component of the partnership between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance is quite obvious. Undoubtedly, the USA, the EU, NATO are serious factors shaping the situation in the world, an objective geopolitical reality. The countries of NATO and the EU are our close and even immediate neighbors. Therefore, any realistic Russian policy should proceed from the need to look for ways to cooperate with them, which should be facilitated by the mutual study of culture, religious peculiarities, and languages.

However, partnership with the alliance must be developed to the extent and on those issues that are necessary and beneficial to us in terms of our national interests. At the same time, it is necessary to counteract all attempts to impose solutions on Russia that do not correspond to its goals. Any euphoria in such a difficult field as relations with Brussels is inappropriate. It would be politically unjustified and would not respond to the moods of the majority of our population. But there should not be a blind rejection of NATO either. It is impossible for practical reasons, and therefore unwise. In order to develop a balanced approach to this policy, vital for both parties, it is necessary to inculcate in young people and the population as a whole respect for other cultures, lifestyles and thoughts, to learn to properly perceive the reality and culture of NATO countries and Russia.

CONCLUSIONS ARE

1. Relations between Russia and NATO should naturally develop, albeit at different speeds in relation to the various members of this bloc, groups within it. An important practical component of such relations should be their educational component, permeating all the main areas of the Russia-NATO partnership: political dialogue, military cooperation, as well as humanitarian, scientific and public diplomacy issues.

2. A natural step in the development of the educational component should be joint work on harmonization of approaches to the vision of the world, strengthening of true mutual understanding. To this end, under the auspices of the Russia-NATO Council, it is advisable to launch joint research on strategies for preventing and resolving conflicts through linguistic and cultural partnership, as well as improving interlingual and intercultural communication in learning and teaching foreign languages.