21.08.2021, Moscow.
NATO is in a constant search for evidence of its own relevance, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said, as Kommersant reported on August 22.
After withdrawing from the Cold War with the USSR and terminating the existence of the Warsaw Pact Organization, NATO turned out to be an organization that no one needed.
“In order not to fall by the wayside of history and to generate this very relevance that could be presented to public opinion, an ‘open door policy’ was invented, thus violating the promises made by Western leaders to Mikhail Gorbachev in his time,” Grushko said.
He added that the process of NATO expansion eastward has crossed out the very possibility of forming a truly collective security system in Europe and the Euro-Atlantic and created a vulnerability for the entire organization.
Grushko noted that the vulnerability of alliance members in the Baltic region is used by them as the main argument in the struggle for resources and military budgets. Unnecessary games and “the logic of geopolitical competition” have led to destabilizing consequences in Europe.
“We remember well from the history that it is very difficult to reverse this spiral of hostile politics and hostile military planning. Is all this worth proving the relevance of NATO?” Grushko said.
After the eastward expansion, NATO continued to prove its relevance through interventions and operations in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya. The situation in Afghanistan draws a line under the era of large-scale operations. In addition to this, attention to the “Russian threat” will be attracted more and more in the future, Grushko added.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
