RUSSIA IN NATO? DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH.
By Paul Taylor, European Affairs Editor
BRUSSELS, Sept 27 (Reuters) - A decade after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, could Russia join NATO?
Despite tantalising comments from President Vladimir Putin, most Western
and Russian experts say: "Don't hold your breath."
In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States, Putin has
offered sweeping anti-terrorism cooperation with the West and approved
closer cooperation with the 19-nation Western military alliance, long
seen as a bogeyman in Moscow.
Against that background, Putin made the latest in a series of intriguing
comments on the possibility of joining Russia's Cold War nemesis on a
visit to Berlin on Wednesday.
Asked whether Moscow sought NATO membership, he told German newspaper
editors: "All depends on what is offered. There are no grounds any more
for the West not to hold these talks."
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, who meets Putin in Brussels
next Wednesday, sidestepped the question diplomatically, noting that the
alliance does not invite countries to join. They first have to apply.
U.S. President George W. Bush, like his predecessor Bill Clinton, has
been careful to avoid ruling out the possibility of eventual Russian
membership.
But cynics in both East and West have tended to regard such "open door"
talk as little more than a sop to Russia as it grudgingly watches former
Warsaw Pact allies - and perhaps soon the ex-Soviet Baltic states -
admitted to NATO.
NOT SERIOUSLY CONTEMPLATED?
Privately, Russian and Western officials doubt Moscow is seriously
contemplating seeking membership.
They argue that Putin may be signalling goodwill towards an organisation
still regarded with visceral mistrust by many in Moscow, but also
challenging the West to explain why NATO should admit other east
European democracies but not Russia.
"In reality, I don't see Russia putting in an application. Russia still
wants to be equal with the United States, and certainly not with
individual NATO countries. They still believe the U.S. runs NATO
completely," a senior NATO official said.
A Kremlin official accompanying Putin told Reuters: "The expansion of
the alliance at present is a second stage problem, about which one
should not make excessive noise."
There are strong arguments for questioning the practicality of Russian
membership.
Admitting Russia would stretch NATO's land borders across central Asia
to China and oblige the alliance to extend its Article V mutual defence
clause to any attack on the sprawling Eurasian giant.
Given that NATO takes all its decisions by consensus, many fear it would
become politically neutered and turned it into a U.N.-style talking shop
subject to vetoes from Moscow.
A senior NATO officer spoke with horror of the alliance being
transformed into "the OSCE with an integrated military command" - a
reference to the largely toothless, 54-nation Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe.
Yet Russian troops already serve alongside NATO peacekeeping forces in
Bosnia and Kosovo, and there are Russian diplomats at NATO headquarters,
staffing a Permanent Joint Council created in 1997 under a Founding Act
that established special relations.
THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE
Even before the attacks on New York and Washington shook up the global
strategic picture, some Western analysts were starting to think the
unthinkable.
Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College, London,
argued that the logic of NATO's transformation from a Cold War defence
pact into a pan-European security organisation was that it would
eventually embrace Moscow.
NATO's admission of Spain in the 1980s and Poland, Hungary and the Czech
Republic in 1999 had established it as a community of democracies with
common values.
"The logic of this process leads to the position where it can only be
completed by including Russia," Freedman wrote in the Financial Times in
August.
Since September 11, some see that process being accelerated by growing
cooperation in fighting terrorism.
"People will have to start thinking seriously about Russian membership
of the alliance. It becomes much more relevant now," said Simon Lunn,
secretary-general of the consultative NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which
includes Russian lawmakers.
"Of course, some people will say it would be the end of NATO. But NATO
is already changing in reality in ways that no one could have
predicted," he said.
Putin could breach a powerful taboo if he becomes the first Kremlin
leader to visit NATO headquarters next week, though Russian foreign and
defence ministers have done so before.
Robertson played down that possibility on Wednesday, saying he could see
no "ideological or theological" grounds why the Russian leader would not
want to enter the grey NATO building, but he was happy to meet him
elsewhere in Brussels to spare him the drive and the security problems.
Many experts believe that seeking NATO membership could prove
psychologically unacceptable to Moscow as it would mean accepting a
greatly diminished role in Europe and the world.
"It will be a very long time before Russia applies, if they ever do," a
U.S. diplomat said. "The mindset of most Russian officials is a visceral
and archaic hostility to NATO and all it stands for because of their
current diminished position."
Russian analyst Vladimir Baranovsky said attitudes in Moscow towards the
alliance were changing, but there were good grounds to promote practical
cooperation rather than membership.
"Russia is a big country with lots of security challenges, not just in
Europe," Baranovsky said. "Nobody would ever want Russia in NATO. The
United States would not want an alternative nuclear pole within the
alliance and no one in NATO wants to border on China."
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
