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Sergey Lavrov in Foreign Policy Magazine: NATO Takes Universal Military Posture
30 April 2013
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov granted a long interview in March with Foreign Policy editor Susan Glasser. Some highlights: On NATO : "NATO has lost its raison d’être after the disappearance of the Soviet Union. NATO is clearly in search of a reason to exist basically, and the new concept which NATO endorsed at its latest summit raises some questions because NATO was created as a defensive alliance. It is now proclaiming its right to act militarily anywhere, anywhere on Earth..., it comes into confrontation with NATO obligations — with NATO members’ obligations — under the United Nations Charter and under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Because we have proclaimed in OSCE the principle of indivisible security, and we said that no one of us would increase our security — no one would increase his security at the expense of security of others. And missile defense is a case in point because missile defense is certainly considered by Russia as creating problems for our security. That’s why we again and again come back to this. But ideally we would like this principle of indivisible security to be made legally binding.... I am convinced that NATO is becoming more and more ideological and its expansion is absolutely artificially promoted, creating unnecessary dividing lines.... "Russian military doctrine says that we see a danger not in NATO as such, but in NATO trying to play a global role with global military reach, NATO making its military posture universal. Not NATO as such, but this intention to grab everything. And the second — again, not threat but danger — we see in NATO expansion accompanied by moving military infrastructure closer to our borders. When the NATO-Russia Council was created, when the Warsaw Treaty was dismantled there was a deal, which was repeated later, that there would be no movement of NATO east. Then this honor pledge was not honored, and when the Russian Federation and NATO established their relationship in the late ’90s there was a pledge on paper that there would be no substantial combat capacity of NATO moved to the territory of new members. This is not honored. Therefore we would really be very much eager not to be dissatisfied with political promises but rather get some legally binding guarantees.... "The rule of law has been promoted by our Western friends exclusively for domestic policies—at the level of nation-states. As soon as you ask them to discuss the rule of law internationally, they’re not so eager." |