Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 28 2010
Russian `nyet’ to nato extension east
by Hajrudin Somun*
The Balkans are, in these spring times, crowded with so many
high-level visits, failed conferences, empty promises and
controversies about further regions’ accession to the European Union
and NATO that it would be better to wait for better circumstances
regarding the first part, considered by the complex term
Euro-Atlantic, and focus on the second one.
It is not to say that the NATO accession process is going more
smoothly and that it is less politically motivated and dependent, but
it has wider geopolitical scope, broader impact on the Alliance’s
relations with Russia, clearer actual position and greater urgency.
First, contrary to the EU approach limited for the time being to the
Balkans, the NATO enlargement strategy could be regarded as a
comprehensive political and security development on the broader area
ranging, let us say, from Bosnia to Crimea. That region, encompassing
the Black Sea, had been for a few centuries the scene of political and
military struggle for dominance between Russia, the Ottoman Empire and
Europe. The year 1878 was pivotal and a turning point in that regard:
by defeating the Turks, the Russians established control over the
northern Black Sea coasts, but were pushed back — more or less
together with the Ottomans — from the Balkans by the European great
powers’ decisions at the Vienna Congress.
And what is the situation we are witnessing more than 130 years
later? After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, there
are similar developments on the same geopolitical outlines, with the
only difference being that we call them rivalry more often than a
struggle for dominance.
After a pause caused by the 1990s Balkan wars, Western powers have
launched diplomatic offensives to regain the European positions lost
by the emergence of communism. A joint strategy was adopted to
expedite the integration of countries created by the break-up of the
Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to the Euro-Atlantic alliances. The
Partnership for Peace (PfP) was created as a transitional form for
testing the capabilities of a further approach to NATO. Neither did
they hesitate to use the alliance’s military means, namely in Bosnia
in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999, to stop the Serbian military efforts to
transform most of the former Yugoslavia’s lands into a Greater Serbia.
In the Balkans, Bulgaria and Romania were accepted in to NATO and the
European Union, regardless of the level of European standards achieved
in judicial reforms and the fight against organized crime and
corruption, a prerequisite imposed on other regional countries not
having such high security and military importance.
Western alliance approaches Ukraine and Georgia
Similar efforts, however, failed when the Western alliance approached
the Russian borders and tried to draw Ukraine and Georgia closer to
NATO membership. The former American administration, pushed by
President Bush’s bulldozer policy, caused great damage to the US and
European modern diplomacy by that premature move, checking the advance
of those two countries towards Euro-Atlantic integration for a few
more years, if not decades.
In the meantime, Russia re-emerged as the global power in the new
multi-polar world, using its energy resources rather than conventional
arms and nuclear weapons. Its undisputable leader Vladimir Putin,
being president or prime minister, has shown his muscles particularly
towards neighboring countries seeking to bring NATO to Russian
borders. With Ukraine he used the price and supply of gas, a vital
resource, to initiate an economic crisis and popular dissatisfaction
with the pro-Western government of that country. The final result was
that the pro-Russian candidate Victor Yanukovych won the recent
elections. Georgia was punished for its NATO plea two years before in
a much harsher way. Tensions between the two countries that already
existed led to the August 2008 South Ossetian war.
That war and the Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhasia
that was justified by the earlier unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s
independence, strongly supported by the US and majority of the UN
member-states, has increased rivalry over the disputed region. As
stressed by Today’s Zaman a few days ago, the Russians are intent on
continuing with their `backyard’ politics, seeking `to have complete
control of any integration in the Caucasus.’ A good example in that
regard is Moscow’s dealings with Armenia and Azerbaijan that have
expressed their ambitions to join the Euro-Atlantic integrations, but
that have the grave dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh as well. When
Russians tell Armenians to normalize their relations with Turkey, they
are also saying to Azerbaijanis at the same time: `See how your
[Turkish] brothers are selling you out.’
While putting aside temporarily the membership issue, NATO is not
giving up the intention to move nearer to the Western sphere all that
area of the Caucasus and Central Asia that has once again become an
important route towards China and South Asia. It keeps its doors open
by the PfP programs and other forms of cooperation, such as GUAM (the
regional cooperation with Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).
Yes, we almost neglected it, but Moldova is also on that line being
drawn around the Black Sea-board. Leaving the Caucasus in a form of
status quo, we are sailing again towards the Balkans, where the topic
of NATO enlargement is still a hot spot.
The subject of the EU and NATO accession processes was removed by the
integration of Bulgaria and Romania from the east, and Hungary and
Slovenia from north, to the peninsula’s central part that is commonly
called the Western Balkans. I avoid using that term — aren’t there
enough other Balkan divisions! Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo are meant by that
vague expression. All of them are on the waiting list for the EU.
Croatia is closest, and Kosovo probably most distant on that route.
Regarding NATO, Croatia and Albania have already been there since
2009. From the alliance’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen,
and the commander of NATO joint forces, Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, who last
week toured the region, it could be understood that for Montenegro
only procedural problems are left and for Macedonia, the name dispute
with Greece remains to be solved.
The black Balkan hole
Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina have been left in that
black Balkan hole, each possessing a specific position, but common
interdependence as well. Still waiting to be accepted by the UN and
being regarded by Serbia as part of its territory, Kosovo is far from
being considered for NATO membership, although having on its soil more
NATO troops than some member states and a huge US military base, Camp
Bondsteel. Bosnia and Herzegovina, also under an international
protectorate, was expecting desperately to be granted the Membership
Action Plan (MAP) for NATO last autumn and is still waiting to see if
it will get it at the alliance’s next ministerial meeting to be held
in Tallinn, on April 22. It hopes a stronger NATO covering might
prevent the country’s further destabilization by the Bosnian Serb
nationalist and secessionist rulers of its entity Republika Srpska.
The EU and NATO authorities, however, are using the NATO MAP card to
push the Bosnian politicians to adopt constitutional reforms before
the elections that will be held in the fall. They recognize that the
Bosnian Serb leadership is the key obstacle to such reforms, but they
are not ready to impose them using the mandate given by the UN and EU,
or to organize a new international conference on Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
Contrary to all other Balkan countries, Serbia plus half of Bosnia
and Herzegovina (its entity Republika Srpska) regards the NATO
intervention in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999 as `NATO
aggression’ and its member-states as `NATO villains.’ The Serb public
has never been informed of Serbia’s atrocities against Kosovo
Albanians and its aggression against Bosnia. In fact, Serbia wants the
West to accept it in the EU, but not in NATO. And it is a Moscow
slogan that Serbia falls under, `To the EU yes, possibly, but to NATO,
not at all, nyet!’
NATO expansion was even clarified as a national threat in the new
Russian military doctrine, announced in February by President Dmitri
Medvedev. But the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said there was
still space to cooperate with the West in other fields, such as
missile defense and curbing strategic nuclear and conventional arms
arsenals. Those matters are already being discussed prior to the
Washington superpowers summit to be held in April.
That `nyet’ could have a stronger impact if directed at countries
closer to the Russian borders. The Balkans, however, offers proof of a
stronger rivalry between NATO and Russia. It evokes times of bipolar
struggle for interests in the region. Besides the significant NATO
presence in Kosovo, Russia is also concerned by Romania’s approval of
the deployment of US interceptor missiles on its territory as part of
a missile shield to protect Europe. From the other side, Russia uses
Serbia’s anti-American sentiments to keep it more distant from the
Euro-Atlantic alliances. In addition to significant energy deals and a
pledge of a $1.5 billion loan, Russia will build by 2012 in the
Serbian town of Nis a humanitarian center for emergencies with
potential military use. The investor in that center that might easily
be transformed into a standard military base is the Russian ministry
for emergency situations that, besides being the wing of the country’s
military intelligence, has its own paramilitary force as well. Perhaps
a recent comment by The Economist regarding Serbian President Boris
Tadic’s refusal to attend any conference if Kosovo’s leaders are
invited could be put in that framework. It said that `staying away
would have only enhanced Serbia’s international image as a
recalcitrant regional bully that refuses to accept the reality of
Kosovo’s independence.’
*Hajrudin Somun is the former ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina to
Turkey and a lecturer of the history of diplomacy at Philip Noel-Baker
International University in Sarajevo.
28 March 2010, Sunday
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