The Alliance sprang a surprise on Russia several days before the NATO summit. Our country became a member of a new international military-political organization, the NATO Twenty; something of an improvement compared to the old structure, and meant to deal with global political objectives, without displacing the Alliance of old. It should be mentioned here that Russia-US relations and Russia-NATO relations are one and the same thing, since no one will challenge the leading role of the United States in NATO.
Relations between Moscow and Washington, as well as between Russia and NATO, are best described by Lenin's old cliche: one step forward, two steps back. We see the same thing all over again. The NATO Twenty was established for Russia, but the Americans immediately explained that the Alliance would not be transformed into a political bloc, though such a transformation was clearly what the Kremlin had expected. This means that Russia will be heard out attentively (as it was heard out in the past, within the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace Program and the Russia-NATO Council) but no more than that. The Alliance will do what it thinks best. No one is urging Russia to become a fully-fledged member of NATO or the European Union. Neither is Russia striving for full membership there.
On the whole, Russia-US and Russia-NATO relations remain problematic. No true rapprochement has taken place over the past decade. Both sides are to blame for this situation. With Russia everything is clear. The inertia of confrontation and the appropriate way of thinking are too strong. A substantial part of the Russian political elite lives in the grips of the old system of coordinates, viewing Russia as one of the two leading world powers and thinking that disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact is a kind of mistake which will be corrected one day. These politicians are hurt by the disrespect the West treats Russia with, mourn withdrawal from Lourdes and Cam Rahn, are jittery over NATO presence in the former Soviet republics from the Baltic states to Georgia to Kyrgyzstan, and object to NATO expansion. The anti-NATO component of the Russian mentality remains strong, and the idea of integration with the West is popular only with narrow right-wing political circles and with the presidential administration.
All this is well-known but anti-Russian moods in Europe and America are much more interesting a subject for contemplation. No one over there harbors any illusions with regard to potential reincarnation of the Soviet Union. It is clear that the inertia of the old cliches and way of thinking is weaker in NATO upper echelons than it is in Russia. After all, the Alliance was established in the first place as a structure of defense against the Soviet Union and its satellites. The enemy disappeared over a decade ago, with nothing or no one to replace it.
The international war on terrorism is supposed to provide a new enemy for NATO, and Russia is the West's theoretical ally in this respect. Is it a proper replacement? Can the semi-mythical Al Qaeda, with its Osama bin Laden, replace the all too real Warsaw Pact with its millions-strong armies, nuclear weapons, and thousands of aircraft and tanks? It cannot. The Americans would like to get bin Laden and kill off his militants in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They want this, but not strongly enough to decide to strike at the real centers of Islamic terrorism. Washington never says a word about Saudi Arabia, where the monster currently known as Al Qaeda was bred in the first place... Neither the Americans nor Europe so much as criticize Saudi Arabia with its medieval system of government, let alone carry out any military operations on its territory. The Afghanistan saga itself is about to enter a dead end, because the allies don't know what to do about Afghanistan now, and would not want to stay there much longer. And as soon as they leave, the return of Al Qaeda and the Taliban (under new names) will become inevitable. This means that the counter-terrorism operation is not over yet - because Washington and Brussels don't know how it should be completed so that it won't look like a shameful withdrawal, as in Somalia nine years ago.
It follows that a phantom no one intends to seriously fight has replaced the quite real Soviet Union as an enemy of the Alliance. So how can NATO justify its existence in its former form? We hear the answer to this in the speeches of the leading Western politicians: apart from the war on terrorism, the new strategy of the Alliance includes peacekeeping operations which are beyond the capacity of the UN blue berets. Western leaders proceed to list these operations, placing special emphasis on Russia's involvement. We hear that in Bosnia and Kosovo we are practising cooperation between Western and Eastern armies, which will become a model for future cooperation all over the world.
All this looks nice, but it's unconvincing. Russia's military presence in the Balkans has been merely the proverbial case of showing the flag, from the very beginning. No U-turns over the Atlantic will conceal the fact that Russia is no longer a world power. The symbolic battalions in the Balkans: we should thank the West's political tact toward Russia for those.
Let's forget about any hard feelings and grievances. It is best that we do so, particularly since Moscow lacks a coherent foreign policy and the Kremlin is just trying to formulate it in the broadest terms.
NATO was all right as a defensive military-political alliance. Unfortunately, it is definitely a failure in the role of a global gendarme that puts an end to wars and roots out terrorism. Despite NATO intervention, Bosnia has not become a peaceful European country. It remains a land divided by mutual hatred, split into ethnic and religious enclaves, and utterly dependant on foreign relief aid. Kosovo has not become a zone of joint prosperity for the Serbs and Albanians. It became an Albanian monoethnic pseudo-state where the international forces are helpless against terror and violence. When the ethnic conflict in Macedonia broke out, the Alliance did not even intervene, restricting its response to calls for peace. NATO was afraid that it would merely get another Kosovo, which it would not know what to do with. The conflict in Macedonia shows that NATO doesn't have a strategy of crisis management for situations such as this; and, more importantly, understands that it doesn't have one. Neither did NATO in general show its political or military prowess in the Afghanistan conflict. Essentially, it is the US Army over there - with minimal West European contingents whose role doesn't exceed that played by the Russian battalions in Bosnia.
There can be no doubts that the war in Afghanistan and conflicts in the Balkans are not the most serious challenges the world faces. There are much more problematic areas in the world, and no one knows what is going to put out the fires there. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan are sliding toward large-scale war, and the idea that NATO could force them to remain at peace is laughable. The situation in Indonesia resembles a war between the Muslim majority and the Christian minority... Last but not least, how is NATO going to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict? In this particular case, we hear active speculation about the necessity of intervention. Perhaps, even some organizational measures are taken. There are serious doubts, however, that American, British, and German soldiers will be able to prevent terrorist acts committed by suicide bombers. They will only be able to force peace on Israel, preventing actions of vengeance on its part. That will be easier and much better from the point of view of global public relations. On the other hand, in that case NATO will all but side with the Arabs against Israel, and it will look anything but a peacekeeping operation.
NATO's problem is that it has not found its place in the new world. Excusing their reluctance to change and change the Alliance with them, NATO officials proclaim readiness to deal with global challenges like terrorism and ethnic wars, although these are tasks the Alliance is not prepared to handle.
American influence is another problem. Once the strongest country in the Alliance, but still an ordinary member, it has become the only power with enough strength and resources for military campaigns. All other NATO members are doing stunts. The military, economic, and political might of the United States is so great that it can operate solo, utterly disregarding both its allies and countries like Russia. Meanwhile, the political establishment of the strongest country in the world is surprisingly ignorant of the essence of conflicts raging on other continents. Unfortunately, this fact doesn't prevent the American elite from arrogantly prescribing solutions, or using US military might. Hence appearance of the quasi-states like Bosnia or Kosovo where terrorism and ethnocracy prosper under the protection of American bayonets: the terrorism which the last remaining global power, and the alliance it leads, ought to be fighting - now that the world's communist system is history.
Elites in the United States and NATO will change sooner or later, and the nature of our relationship will change too. We can only hope that they will improve. It will happen, however, only if we improve first. For the time being, we are going to cut our nuclear arsenals; we will not need them against the West in any case.