... bring together both NATO countries and those which did not belong to the alliance, including Russia, into a single community. But since the beginning of the 2000s, there has been a process of politicisation of the OSCE in favour of the interests of Western countries. Russia has increasingly viewed NATO expansion as a security threat. Instruments such as the Russia-NATO Council were unable to absorb the growing contradictions. The lack of effective and equal institutions that would take into account the interests of Russia and integrate it into ...
... European nations whose governments and parties did not share Soviet ideology and views. The expert also noted that the recent exercises held by Western countries in the Baltic Sea have already proven to be aggressive. The overall situation ahead of NATO’s 75th anniversary threatens the development of Russia’s relations with the West, which are nearly nonexistent anyway.
Ivan Safranchuk, Professor at the Department of International Relations and Foreign Policy of Russia of MGIMO University, stressed at the roundtable that NATO’s purpose was questioned back when the bloc was ...
... assumption that should not be put to test under any circumstances.
Ivan Timofeev:
Russia-West: Rising Stakes
What are the worst prospects and how to prevent it from happening?
Andrey Kortunov:
My worst-case scenario is that we are going to see more and more Western engagement into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which will ultimately turn NATO into a direct party to the conflict. Some Western leaders, like French President Emanuel Macron already entertain such an option, at least, in principle. If there is a large-scale NATO-Russia military confrontation in the center of Europe, it would ...
... most of humanity. Those of us who remember have only to recall how NATO, instead of disbanding, ignored Russia’s concerns and attempts at serious dialogue, expanded, and then illegally bombed Belgrade, ignoring the UN. That was not enough, as the West then destroyed Iraq (lying, into the bargain) and Libya, and tried to destroy Syria. Russia kept warning NATO to stop, but the latter had, and still has, no reverse gear, controlled as it is by enormous financial interests.
Greed was, and is, the order of the day. Russia’s attempts to move closer to, and even join, NATO, were cynically rebuffed, just as ...
Working paper № 69 / 2022
Working paper № 69 / 2022
The working paper explores the factors that predetermined the Western switch from divergence to convergence in the 2020s along with the key features of the commenced consolidation within the ranks of the Collective West. Is current Western unity incidental or strategic? Is it transient or long-standing? How much ...
... well as a sense of decent manners.
Finally
If you have got this far, you may agree that it is time to conclude. As a former diplomat turned historian of diplomatic history, this is what I have gathered, simply put: following the West’s failure to westernise Russia during the Yeltsin years, it was unable to accept this failure, since the NATO business juggernaut had no reverse gear. Once atavistically anti-Russian Poland and the Baltic statelets had jumped on the bandwagon, prodded by the US and EU, it was only a question of time before Moscow would have to react in one way or another....
... are being put to the test. The outcome will have repercussions that go far beyond Europe
The military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine is not an ethnic conflict: ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians are fighting on both sides of the frontline.... ... for the World Order after the Russia-Ukraine conflict
It would be hard to argue that Ukraine has already emerged as a model of Western-style liberal democracy. But the country is persistently moving in this direction—slowly, inconsistently and with understandable ...
... puts it bluntly: the main reason for the ongoing Ukrainian crisis is NATO’s expansion towards the East. In your recent interviews (to German news outlet “Spiegel” and the Greek “Kathimerini”) you argue the same thing: reckless promises of NATO membership made to Ukraine provoked Russia to the highest degree. This narrative, however, is at odds with the Western mainstream media mantra about “Russia’s hostile and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.” Will U.S./EU audience one day realize what in fact went wrong?
Andrey Kortunov:
Restoration, Reformation, Revolution? Blueprints for the World Order after ...
... the Germany’s economy, social fabric, and government support from the “Green” party in the process.
What we are curious to see, is whether the US and Euro economies will survive or experience a crash and depletion of confidence worse than 2009. Western voices say that “Russia has brought NATO together”. Well—after the current Western songs and hymns are replaced with realism or despair (or a new US President Trump in 2024), we are actually curious whether the Atlantic alliance will survive much longer.
Debate is good. We see different ...
... South.
In practical terms, the challenge is to square the circle: move towards the equivalent of the Stalin-Mao 30-year treaty of Friendship and Cooperation while reshaping it in a manner explicable and acceptable to India.
The interlock of the U.S.–NATO–EU in the West and the AUKUS in the East can only be balanced off by an alternative Eurasian community or system, with its structures and superstructures, embracing Russia and China, and constituting an alternative antipode or counterpoint.
Sovereignty & Self-determination
Some problems cannot be avoided but must be grappled with instead. These problems exist in the domains of the conceptual and of political strategy....
