By Vestnik Kavkaza
Yesterday, commenting on a possible decision by NATO on location of heavy weapons on the territory of Romania, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Lukashevich said that this would be “an unprecedentedly dangerous step, violating all existed agreements, and primarily the Founding Act of Russia-NATO.” According to the documents, the sides promised not to accumulate weapons and military vehicles – “significant military forces.” Lukashevich says that “the term is a complicated configuration; and the sides didn’t manage to figure it out at the stage of development of the document. We insistently demanded negotiations for specification of the term. NATO administration refused to do this. As a result, the most important Russia-NATO document was left without specification of what 'significant military forces' meant.”
“If the Romanian government finds it possible to accumulate the presence of NATO in its territory, including establishing a powerful 'armed fist', they should understand their responsibility and the consequences of such a step for regional security. The principle of mutual restriction should operate. Thus, Russia has a right to consider this significant factor in its military planning,” the representative of the Foreign Ministry said.
Meanwhile, the head of the department of international organizations and global political processes of world politics of Moscow State University, Andrei Sidorov, said that NATO is currently rediscovering the meaning of its existence. And it has found it in the context of the Ukrainian events.
The expert says that he is skeptical about the American administration: “In the 6 years that Obama has been in power 4 defense ministers have been changed there. During the term of Bush two ministers were replaced, and then Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld in changing the military-defensive strategy from diplomacy and force to force and diplomacy, in part at least. And there came a logical transition.”
According to Sidorov, NATO has always guaranteed an American presence in Europe: “From 2007 there was an attempt to build another structure - the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the so-called economic NATO. Negotiations are going on, but now the only structurally and institutionally formalized structure is NATO, which brings together the two sides of the Atlantic. This is despite the fact that the United States and the Obama administration are trying to return to a policy of balancing. This is the policy with which this administration came to power, the balancing of the decreasing obligations of the United States in Europe, and therefore that the costs will decrease and at the same time the US presence in the Pacific will increase. If you remember, in 2009, declaring the main thesis of his administration's policies, Obama said that he will be the first Pacific president of America. Certainly, the current situation calls for the US to go to the very same policies of balancing, in the sense that it is 4 days since Russia joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. All the US's allies are participating there. The bank officially opened in October 2014, but the Americans are not there - it's a Chinese project. China proposed the establishment of a free trade zone within APEC.”
The arrival of Russia on the APEC markets is not likely to be welcomed by the United States. And it is keeping Russia in Europe through military pressure.
According to the expert, “the United States, under the decrease of their pressure on Europe, are forced to put pressure on Russia, especially because Russia has direct access to the Pacific Ocean, where Europeans are also trying to reach and where, it is considered, the future of the world lies, which is what interests the United States. From this point of view, such a revitalization of the Alliance in connection with Ukraine allows the United States to reduce the amount of resources. If there is an enemy, if Russia is aggressive, one will inevitably have to spend more money. It is clear that from the point of view of a number of European allies, Russia is not as dangerous to the United States as the Soviet Union had been. Therefore, one does not really want to give the money. But on the other hand, there are the former Russian satellites, former parts of the Soviet Union, countries that were republics of the Soviet Union, the economic prosperity of which will depend on whether they will be treated as outposts, as a deterrent element in the European security system against the aggressive element that is wishing to conquer, enslave and destroy everything it can in Russia.”
