By Nigel Chamberlain, NATO Watch
Following his discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at NATO Headquarters on 18 February, Secretary General Rasmussen said: ''Last year we made significant progress in our practical cooperation. We also adopted an ambitious NATO-Russia Council Work Programme for 2013. Now we need to focus on implementing it''.
In 2012, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) cooperated on training counter-narcotics officers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, training maintenance crews for the Afghan Air Force helicopter fleet, and expanded transit facilities through Russia for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. In December, NRC foreign ministers agreed a work programme for 2013 which expands existing projects and also builds on cooperation in areas such as counter-piracy and counter-terrorism. Ways to advance the NATO-Russia dialogue on missile defence were also discussed.
No further details of these discussions were provided on the NATO website but Mr Lavrov later told Russian journalists that:
The US and NATO argue that nothing can be changed in their missile defence plans. At the same time, auditors in the US Congress have already questioned the usefulness of the proposed system. Russia, as it turns out, is not alone in harbouring apprehensions concerning American missile defence. This opens possibilities for a productive dialogue in which Russia and the US, the main proponent of missile defence programmes, could sort out and resolve their differences on the matter.
He said that Russia will not accept deeper strategic arms cuts unless the US drops plans to deploy weapons in space and extends binding guarantees that no American missile defence installation on European soil will compromise Russia’s deterrence capability.
The Foreign Secretary added that NATO’s plans to hold exercises to practice a joint rebuff to an aggressor in North Eastern Europe are pointless, because NATO is not under threat in this theatre:
Overall, NATO appears to be retreating to its statutory mission of collective defence against aggression in the European theatre. Accordingly, joint war games in Northern Europe are on its immediate plans. Questions arise as to who is the aggressor in this area. Apparently, there are people inside the NATO Alliance who remain stuck in Cold War mentality and believe it is still necessary to keep NATO as a closed military bloc. But even with these people, Russia is prepared to start a dialogue.
Mr Lavrov also said that Russia is seeking clarifications concerning NATO’s role after its scheduled pullback from Afghanistan in 2014. “NATO says it will stay in Afghanistan in limited advisory and coaching roles. Russia would like to know in exactly what kind of roles”.
This seems to suggest that there is going to be a lot of papering over the ever enlarging cracks in NATO-Russian relations with the prospect of limited progress on the bigger issues in the agreed work programme for 2013 – unless the US reconsiders its missile defence plans, military exercises in Northern Europe are curtailed, or redefined, and a clearer picture emerges of exactly what NATO’s role in Afghanistan, post-2014, is going to look like.
For an overview of Russia’s foreign policy and relationship with NATO, please see NATO Watch’s review of The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the struggle for Russia by Angus Roxburgh.