What is dangerous sly NATO diplomacy
The policy of the unrestrained expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance has turned this alliance from a guarantor of the security of its members, which is formally declared in NATO doctrinal documents, into a real and immediate threat to global security, including the security of each of the allies. With reference to some shared values in NATO, states are adopted whose value orientation is often highly questionable. Such a “motley” list of participants makes the block more and more uncontrollable and gives its policy a high degree of unpredictability.An example of criminal irresponsibility is the actions of Turkey - a NATO member since 1952 - against an aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Force, which took part in an operation against international terrorism in Syria, in which Russia and Turkey were considered partners. This event once again seriously tested the unity of the alliance, the system of shared values declared by it and its readiness to support the actions of the state, whose unpredictable and adventurous policies put the world in danger of serious conflict.
The ability of NATO to control and bear joint and several responsibility for the criminal actions of its members is doubtful.
Remaining committed to the policy of double standards, NATO closes its eyes to the acquisition by Turkey of oil from ISIS terrorists, to deliveries from Turkey weapons terrorist gangs, which is regarded by international law as a direct support of international terrorism. However, international sanctions against Turkey were not adopted.
Recall that in the 1974 year, Turkey, without any reaction from NATO, occupied the northern part of Cyprus. Negotiations on the unification of the island, held under the mediation of the UN, have so far been fruitless. It is Turkey that periodically arranges armed provocations against Greece - NATO allies, putting at risk international stability and security.
However, Turkey, of course, is not the only or even the main violator of international rules. It follows in the wake of more serious international players: the United States and NATO itself, which unleashed aggression against Yugoslavia, destroyed Iraq and Libya. One of the consequences of such actions is the emergence of IS, a surge of terrorist activity, flows of refugees to European countries.
REASONS AND CONDITIONS OF NATO EXPANSION
The processes of expanding NATO and forming partnerships of the alliance are subordinated to a single plan and are carried out within the framework of a single set of mutually agreed goals, the resulting vector of which is aimed at establishing global US domination. At the same time, it is the American military and economic power that is dominant, ensuring the successful implementation of the entire range of necessary measures to globalize the alliance’s responsibility: the parameters of its military potential without American participation remain purely regional.
The expansion of geographic coverage is due to the desire to exercise political, economic, ideological influence on the states that are within the scope of coverage, using for this purpose the potentials of "hard" and "soft" power. Solving this problem implies creating an alliance with additional coordination, planning and control capabilities related to maintaining and building up individual and collective capacities to confront challenges, risks, hazards and threats, and promote their own values.
The practical realization of such opportunities is based on the consistent development, within the framework of the mutual obligations of the Allies, of the necessary infrastructure, the deployment of military forces and equipment, and the implementation of an appropriate information policy.
The main motive of expansion was the desire to take control of the West vast territories in Central and Eastern Europe and in the post-Soviet space and thereby prevent the emergence of new states (primarily renewed and strengthened Russia) that could pose a threat to the security of the US and NATO allies. At the same time, the United States sought to prevent the excessive independence of the European Union in the military sphere and led to the formation of the natocentric model of the world with the shadow dominance of Washington in it.
An important motive for supporting the expansion was the transformation of NATO during the 50 years of its existence into an extensive and influential bureaucratic structure with its own corporate interests, giving prestigious and well-paid work to a large number of civilian and military employees (at the headquarters of NATO there are about 4200 people, another 5200 people in other structures of the alliance).
In addition, a war broke out in the Balkans, in which the United States, Germany and other influential Western countries intended to achieve their own geopolitical goals under the pretext of the need to involve NATO in peacekeeping efforts. A weakened Russia could not be the center of attraction for the former allies, who proclaimed the course of return to Europe, which implied their entry into NATO and the EU.
STUDY ON THE EXPANSION OF NATO
The NATO expansion strategy and the geopolitical goals of this process were first presented in a concentrated form in the “Study on NATO Expansion”, prepared in September 1995 by the American corporation REND. The document substantiated the need to expand the functions and powers of the bloc due to the occupation of the geopolitical space left by a weakened Russia. The authors of the study, covering up the true goals and objectives of the strategy to create a new global security architecture controlled by the United States, outlined a vision of the prospects for expanding the alliance and the tasks of preparing and implementing this large-scale operation.
To deceit in the question of expansion, our Western "friends and partners" began even before the advent of research. Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev recently recalled that “after the reunification of Germany in 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany, the USA and other Western countries promised him that“ NATO will not move to the East a single centimeter. ” But the Americans, he said, did not fulfill this promise, and the Germans showed indifference to this. “It is possible that they even rubbed their hands, rejoicing at how successfully they managed to inflate the Russians,” said the former Soviet president. Apparently, all the Russians had nothing to do with it, and the then incompetent and weak-willed leadership, who in fact played the role of traitors and grave-diggers of their country, managed to “inflate”.
However, it was the study that laid the foundations for the strategy of the American global domination project, part of which was to be NATO’s transition from a classical alliance that opposed ATS within the framework of the historical confrontation between the two socio-political systems to an organization with a broader set of military-political functions and an expanded zone of influence .
The study is focused on achieving several groups of goals.
The first group of goals envisages the creation of a kind of information and propaganda shell, designed to hide the true intentions of the West to form a global dominance model based on NATO. To this end, the document includes discussions about the new role of the alliance and the need to expand the organization, which in the post-Cold War period has become one of the pillars of the new Euro-Atlantic security architecture. The alliance’s determination to promote the preservation of the territorial integrity of European states, to prevent internal conflicts and the creation of lines of influence in Europe was emphasized.
At the initial stage, the expansion strategy focused participants of this process primarily on ensuring the compatibility of infrastructure facilities in the CEE countries with the aim of a possible substantial increase in the military capabilities of the bloc on Russia's western borders. The task was to prevent the Alliance from a kind of “drift” from the military-political to a greater degree of political structure, in favor of which after the end of the Cold War some influential European states came out. The United States saw this as the danger of the North Atlantic Alliance losing its capacity and set the task of turning NATO into an organization responsible for security not only in Europe, but in the world as a whole.
At the same time, a partnership mechanism with Russia was created, which was intended to disguise the anti-Russian orientation of NATO expansion. It was also taken into account that the presence of the Russian representatives in the partner structures of the alliance should have contributed to the formation of recent allies of the Department of Internal Affairs and the CIS countries to give an impression of Russia's supposedly rather calm attitude towards expansion and push them to take further steps towards rapprochement with the alliance. As the future showed, with far-reaching goals, Ukraine was included in the number of NATO’s privileged partners.
The document laid the foundation for the subsequent expansion of the functional sphere of NATO in several areas.
First, in the partner countries, a network of information missions of the alliance began to be created at an accelerated pace, which, in close contact with other nongovernmental organizations under the auspices of the United States, studied the internal situation and looked for ways to influence it in the direction necessary for the West, including the preparation of color revolutions, the phenomenon of which, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, "continues to evolve and is today becoming global."
Secondly, strengthening its position in key areas of communications, the alliance secured control over the global transport infrastructure and world raw materials. In addition, contacts were established on interaction in the information sphere and cyberspace.
The second group of goals was devoted to creating a broad institutional framework for cooperation of the alliance with the UN, the CSCE (then the OSCE), the WEU-EU in ensuring global and regional security. Here, NATO’s mood to act strictly within the framework of the UN Charter (which was repeatedly violated by the alliance, for example, in Kosovo) was strongly emphasized, to develop cooperation with the OSCE and the EU in resolving conflicts, conducting peacekeeping operations, and confronting the new PSIA.
Increasing the number of NATO members and expanding the alliance’s partnership zone to the countries of the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean, developing consultation and cooperation with other international, non-parliamentary and non-governmental organizations (Council of Europe, WEC Assembly, International Committee of the Red Cross, etc.)
The third group of goals had a purely practical orientation and was intended to provide training for candidate countries to join the alliance through the profound transformation of state structures, primarily the armed forces and infrastructure, to ensure the necessary compliance with NATO standards. An important role in achieving these goals was assigned to the Euro-Atlantic Cooperation Council (soon renamed the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, EAPC) and the Partnership for Peace Program (EAPC / PFP). The authors of the document frankly stated: “PfP has an important role to play in preparing potential new members for NATO membership,” and the EAPC / PfP will ensure continuity of influence from NATO on all partners in the bloc expansion process. NATO has proved to be true to its crafty policy. According to Evgeny Primakov, “we were then“ thrown up ”the idea that the Partnership for Peace was associated with the desire to find a way out of the most difficult situation with the goal of“ unleashing the idea of NATO expansion ”. Here is such a wise “diplomatic” cunning.
Thus, the foundation was laid for NATO’s gradual globalization through coordinated actions by members of the enlarged alliance to strengthen the collective defense capabilities, improve the command and control system and alliances, develop conventional and nuclear forces, explore, finance and ensure interoperability. The contribution of alliance members to collective defense was envisaged under one of three options: “full participation in an integrated military structure and collective defense planning; not participating in an integrated military structure, but full participation in collective defense planning; not participating in an integrated military structure and collective defense planning with limited military cooperation. " After the return of France in March 2009 to the integrated military structure of the unit (excluding participation in the Nuclear Planning Group), the first of these options is fully implemented, which makes the alliance a powerful consolidated tool for implementing plans for global domination of the West, and the process of military-political and economic European integration puts the US under tight control.At the same time, the document focuses on the interaction between NATO and the WEU, whose functions in the military sphere in the 2011 year passed to the EU. At the same time, NATO, in words recognizing institutional pluralism in Europe, purposefully implemented its own concept of “mutually reinforcing institutions”. As a result, the OSCE and the EU have been embedded in minor roles in the new NATO-centered architecture of European security, designed to meet US global ambitions.
RUSSIA AND NATO EXPANSION
The implementation of the NATO expansion strategy against the background of the weakening of Russia and the well-known internal turmoil in our country ultimately led to Russia pushing the periphery of the process of creating a new system for ensuring regional security in Europe. This was facilitated by the strategy chosen by the Russian leadership during the 1991 – 1993 period to support the “package” expansion of NATO by joining all countries of Eastern Europe, including Russia, which did not justify itself.
However, in the autumn of 1993, Russia is beginning to consistently oppose NATO expansion to the East. In November 1993, an open report was prepared by the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, which noted the undesirability of joining the alliance of CEE and Baltic states. At the same time, the report acknowledged that “Russia has no right to dictate to the sovereign states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) whether to join NATO or other international associations”.
In the RF Military Doctrine adopted in the same year, the expansion of military alliances was ranked among the main sources of military danger for Russia. Categorically stated the position of Russia Primakov in July 1996 of the year (at that time - the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia) in an interview with the British Foreign Minister: “There are two“ red lines ”regarding NATO expansion, which we will not go on. Vertical - a situation in which the military infrastructure at the expense of new members of NATO threatens our territory is unacceptable for us. Horizontal is for us unacceptable the participation in NATO of the Baltic states and other former republics of the Soviet Union. ” The future showed that it was not possible to withstand the categorically stated position.
As a result, the Russian leadership decided not to move away from a negative position regarding NATO expansion and at the same time to negotiate with a view to minimizing the consequences that threaten our security most and do not meet our interests. In other words, focus on the impact on the expansion process.
The general concept of US foreign policy on expansion issues was first outlined in the US National Security Strategy adopted in 1996. This document considered the expansion of the alliance through the traditional lens of ensuring the national interests and national security of the United States. In this context, the important unifying and stabilizing role of the alliance in Europe was emphasized, where under the auspices of the United States a peacekeeping operation is being carried out in the Balkans under NATO support, the first enlargement of NATO is being prepared within the framework of the PFP program, substantial progress has been made in the nuclear arms reduction negotiations with Russia, zones free of nuclear weapons have been created in Ukraine, in Kazakhstan and Belarus, with these states joining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Serious attention was paid to the expansion of NATO in the official documents of the US Congress, in the reports of the State Department and the Pentagon, which addressed the composition of the first group of candidates for membership in the alliance, the timing and costs associated with their admission.
In general, the expansion of NATO and partnership programs in a pragmatic manner were viewed by the United States and by the majority of the bloc member states as an objectively necessary and justifiable process from the point of view of keeping the economic, military potential and infrastructure of the former Soviet allies in Central and East in the interests of the West Europe.
Russia's objections to expansion were virtually ignored. From a formal point of view, in order to influence the growing negative reaction of Russia to the steps of NATO expansion, she took some diplomatic maneuvers. Russia was invited to PFP. A joint permanent Russia-NATO Council was established, followed by the Russia-NATO Council. However, these forums failed to reach the level of joint decision making.
The Founding Act included assurances that NATO countries “have no intentions, plans or reasons for deploying nuclear weapons in the territories of new members”, and further that “under current and foreseeable security conditions, the alliance will carry out its collective defense and other tasks through ensuring the necessary compatibility, integration, and amplification potential, rather than through the additional permanent deployment of substantial combat forces. ”
The founding act is essentially a political declaration of intent, and not a legally binding document. At the same time, the signature of the President of the Russian Federation under him in fact testified that Russia had come to terms with the expansion of NATO.
NATO'S GLOBAL EXPANSION
Thus, one of the most significant steps in expanding NATO’s global reach before the end of 90 can be attributed to NATO joining new members and expanding partnerships, including relations with Russia and the former Soviet republics, and strengthening interaction with other international organizations.
The management of activities in these large-scale programs required a radical restructuring of the alliance's management system in the context of expanding global coverage, creating interaction mechanisms and managing a wide network of partners. Further steps in this direction are being taken within the framework of the alliance's programs - the Partnership for Peace, combined with the opportunities created by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC / PfP), the Mediterranean Dialogue, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and the Initiative for Southeast Europe. Each of these programs contributes to the further expansion of the geographical coverage of NATO and its ability to influence events in areas remote from Europe.
Under the pretext of ensuring regional security, key importance is given to the deepening of relations between NATO and Ukraine. In accordance with the collective defense function, NATO’s military planning involves the deployment of forces and means of forward deployment and deployment near Russian borders, which makes Ukraine one of the key elements of Russia's containment strategy. At the same time, the issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO does not depend on technical readiness, which is unlikely to be achieved in the foreseeable future, but is on a political plane and will be determined both by resolving the conflict in the southeast and by the general orientation of relations between Russia and the West. Under these conditions, the wording of the NATO 2008 Bucharest Summit of the year promising to “someday” return to the issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO acquires a qualitatively new sound and should today be considered “as the fundamental basis for moving toward membership”. Only instead of “someday” the question “how and when?” Becomes actual.
In recent years, the new important vector for expanding NATO’s geographical reach has been the accelerated development of alliance ties with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. This trend is taking into account the actions of Washington to shift the center of gravity of US interests from Europe to the APR and provides for increased cooperation with the so-called contact countries - Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Pakistan and Japan. These steps are being carried out in line with the US strategy aimed at creating in the APR future regional quasi-military blocs with the participation of the United States. Special partnerships are established between NATO, Afghanistan and Iraq. Possibilities of military cooperation with China are being explored.
In the Central Asian region, NATO’s activities are focused on strengthening military-political interaction with the countries of Central Asia, which aims to enhance their ability to conduct joint peacekeeping, humanitarian, search and rescue, and other operations related to countering NATO security forces. The NATO strategy in the region was built around the task of using the transit capabilities and territories of the Central Asian countries to supply NATO troops and coalition forces in Afghanistan. At the same time, this task was gradually transformed into a long-term goal of finding opportunities to maintain its presence in the region after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2014.
The tasks of NATO in the Caucasus seem to be very similar, where the main external factor stimulating the alliance’s interest in the region is the growing struggle of the main actors of world politics for energy resources, as well as control over their transportation routes from Central Asia to Europe through the countries of the Caucasus.
Such actions are being carried out in line with the US strategic line on using NATO partnerships to spread its influence in the APR, in Central Asia and in the Caucasus simultaneously with attempts to weaken the positions of China and Russia there. At the same time, Washington intends to strengthen its influence on the key states of the region — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and to a certain extent — on India.
A course is being pursued for the further development of NATO’s comprehensive strategic interaction with the EU. The priority areas of relations are considered practical cooperation in operations, improving consultation mechanisms, building up coordinated mutual efforts in the area of developing capacities and avoiding duplication in order to achieve maximum cooperation efficiency.
Special attention is paid to the development of relations with the European neutral countries - members of the EAPC / PfP. These are Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria, which actively joined the alliance's partnership initiatives at the beginning of the 90s. As a result, a high level of compatibility of the Armed Forces, the state and military planning systems of these countries with NATO standards is achieved, which in a certain situation may contribute to their rapid integration into the alliance.
In general, the current NATO partner policy is aimed at simplifying the process of forming partnerships and expanding the geographic coverage of the alliance. At the same time, the creation of operational mechanisms for flexible use in the interests of the alliance of partners' opportunities is carried out without expanding their access to political decision-making and planning of operations.
An important trend in the development of NATO can be considered as an increase in efforts to use the bloc as a global unifying structure for regional organizations providing international security, as well as direct links between NATO and China, Japan, India, Australia. To the same end, the NATO-EU strategic partnership is to be further developed, as well as the improvement of the legitimate legal framework for NATO-UN relations with the OSCE.
RESULTS OF NATO EXTENSION IN PROJECTION ON TODAY'S DAY
In full accordance with the NATO globalization strategy, the operational capacity of the alliance’s coalition forces is currently being built up, envisaged by the “NATO Action Plan for Enhancing Response Preparedness” approved in September 2014 at the September summit in the UK. NATO has already repeatedly written about this side of NATO activities.
Through Washington’s efforts, NATO is turning into an instrument designed to contain Russia and preserve US global dominance.
The results of the analysis of the state and development prospects of NATO as a model for ensuring regional security with clearly defined intentions to give the military-political bloc global coverage against the background of the implementation of the US strategy to contain Russia require the adoption of a wide range of measures to ensure the national interests and national security of our country.
With the transition of relations between Russia, the United States and NATO from intense rivalry to confrontation, it is important not to allow it to grow into a direct military clash, which can be achieved through reasonable compromises, including the search for an acceptable format of relations with the United States and NATO.
The West will make compromises, having only made sure that Russia has powerful armed forces, a modern economy and production. Another important condition is to ensure the Russian military-political, economic and cultural influence, primarily in the post-Soviet space, which can be achieved both by developing mutually beneficial relations on a bilateral basis, and by strengthening the EEU, CSTO, CIS and SCO. The basis for building up these two key components ensuring the country's reliable position in the modern architecture of international security is Russia's emergence from the crisis on a development trajectory with the inclusion of an innovative, high-tech sector of the economy, and increasing efforts to develop Siberia and the Arctic. To strengthen the influence, active foreign policy is also extremely important, including in the information sphere, which implies coordination and unification of the efforts of Russia's partners and allies.
In general, for Russia, the importance of relations with the West remains. At the same time, it is necessary to transfer a substantial part of foreign policy and economic efforts to other promising regions, located south of the country's borders, in the APR and Latin America. The decision of the Russian leadership to conduct a military-military operation to protect the national interests of our state in Syria was timely. Such a diversification of relations will expand the geographical framework within which various initiatives can be implemented in the interests of strengthening national security of Russia, ensuring the security of its allies and partners, and purposeful work is being carried out to form a new European and global security architecture.
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