Although Ambassador Burns was bound ex officio to say that relations between Russia and NATO remained a substantial factor of European security and played an increasing role in the war on terrorism, he, despite all his diplomatic skills, found it hard to conceal that everything between Moscow and Brussels had lately not been so smooth as one or the other capital might like. One pointer to this is that NATO Secretary-General Jaan de Hoop Scheffer has not visited Moscow for a long time, whereas his predecessor came to the Russian capital at least every six months or once a quarter.
The Russia-NATO partnership is increasingly becoming a bilateral rather than a multilateral affair, such as the Russian-Italian IONIEX-2004 exercise in the Ionic Sea. There were similar Russian-French naval maneuvers in the North Atlantic that saw a Russian nuclear-powered submarine, the Vepr, call at the French port and military base of Brest. Another example came in the form of the Russian-American Northern Eagle exercise in the Atlantic, which featured two large anti-submarine ships from Russia's Northern Fleet, the Admiral Levchenko and the Severomorsk. Even last summer's Avaria-2004 anti-terrorist maneuvers to protect nuclear military facilities on the Kola Peninsula failed to attract monitors from all NATO's 26 members. Only 17 countries were represented.
Russia has also granted the right of free transit across its territory to Afghanistan to only Germany and France, rather than to every member of the anti-terrorist and anti-Taliban operation. Naturally, this fact did not escape the expert and journalistic community concerned with Moscow-Brussels relations.
Why have these relations cooled to such an extent recently? Mr. Burns tried to answer this question himself.
Some officials in Moscow, he said, continue to believe that NATO could not meet today's challenges, and the alliance's eastward expansion threatened Russia's security. But this is far from the case, the ambassador claimed. Our countries, Mr. Burns said, have not yet exhausted all the potential of the Russia-NATO Council. He pointed to areas of coordination between Moscow and Brussels such as work to substantiate and develop a missile defense in the European theatre, efforts to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies, rescue operations for submarines in distress, theoretical and practical conferences of officers from twenty seven countries (NATO + Russia) to formulate a common understanding of command language and general managerial principles, as well as other points which have not been given due coverage in the press. NATO enlargement does not present any threat to Russia, he stated. It is a stabilizing factor for Europe and not only for the continent. The alliance has helped to avert many conflicts and now continues to play a peacekeeping role both in the Balkans and in Afghanistan.
Not everyone at the meeting agreed with these opinions. In particular, Major-General (Ret) Vladimir Dvorkin, chief scientific fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), remarked that it was impossible to see how a sea rescue operation could be part of the anti-terrorism effort, while talk of creating a European anti-missile defense system had for some reason failed to go beyond political declarations. These, as well as other, points are not helping to boost confidence between Russia and NATO. Neither is the lack of a real mechanism for the operational compatibility of military units in states that belong to the NATO-Russia Council.
Moscow-based experts also referred to how American nuclear weapons in European nations that are not members of the nuclear club also interfered with efforts to improve the climate of trust. Another negative factor in this process is increased activity of the NATO leadership in former Soviet states, especially in the South Caucasus, which is causing concern in the Kremlin and among its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Mention was also made of Lithuania's refusal to let Russia's military cargoes bound for the Kaliningrad region pass through its territory, and other actions undertaken by Brussels and the alliance's states that did not promote understanding between them and the Russian capital.
However, Mr. Burns, as is perhaps customary for a diplomat, while not denying commonly known facts, claimed that all of these actions were only designed to achieve one objective: bolstering stability on the continent, as well as around Iraq and Afghanistan, where individual NATO countries and their joint structures are combating terrorism. US nuclear weapons are in Europe, in his opinion, for the same purpose: to protect America's allies in the alliance that do not possess such weapons.
True, the key issue remained unsolved: Who should America's nuclear weapons protect its European allies from? The answer can hardly be terrorists.
There was much discussion on the meeting's fringes about the "double standards" employed by some NATO members in the so-called joint struggle against terrorism. The point is not only that alliance capitals continuing to welcome and host the emissaries of Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, but also that mercenaries from NATO member states, as well as Arab countries, are increasingly joining the ranks of Chechen terrorists. These include citizens from Canada, Turkey (more than 25 of them have been killed in Chechnya over the past five years), and people from other countries whose governments fail to take appropriate measures to end the activities of various separatist and terrorist organizations on their territory.
There was also some discussion of Afghanistan, a country where 10,000 NATO officers and men have been conducting an anti-terrorist operation for several years, while the flow of drugs from the country across the border with Tajikistan, rather than diminishing, has dramatically jumped in the recent period. Mr. Burns did promise that the alliance would soon launch a new operation in the north and west of the country, which should help solve this problem.
Naturally, those attending the meeting said they were seeking ways to achieve rapprochement and mutual understanding. Mr. Burns was absolutely correct when he said that it would be unrealistic to believe that all the obstacles that had accumulated in the cold war and thanks to the myopic acts of individual politicians could be overcome in one or two years.
Russia and NATO are already moving and will continue to move towards each other. We are not yet friends, but neither are we foes any longer. Although we are not yet allies, we have already become partners. Not in the full sense of the word, of course, but we are gradually approaching this step by step.
