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52 Beyond Ukraine. EU and Russia in Search of a New Relation NATO members and Russia would work as equal partners on a wide spectrum of security issues 12 . Counterterrorism was identified as a major terrain of cooperation, together with the development of joint initiatives, including crisis management, peacekeeping, air defense, joint exercises, and search-and-rescue operations 13 . The NRC organized unprecedented joint assessments of the terrorist threat and peacekeeping operations in the Balkans 14 ; it allowed Russia to contribute to Operation “Active Endeavour” in the Mediterranean, while at the NATO Istanbul summit in 2004 the alliance and Moscow agreed on the development of a Joint Action Plan on Terrorism. The results of these engagements led, at one point, to then Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov’s proposal to rename the NRC the “New Anti-Terrorist Organization” 15 . Nonetheless, while bridging mutual differences and institutionalizing a degree of cooperation, the NRC represented – after the agreement leading to the PJC – another missed opportunity towards a comprehensive resolution of those issues that had been left unresolved by the 1989-1990 settlement. Certainly, both sides had their own share of responsibilities for this failure. NATO was unwilling to make the concessions (such as Moscow’s deeper involvement in its decision-making process, together with an explicit assurance of no further enlargement) that would have been necessary to accommodate Russian grievances – dreading the prospect of empowering the Kremlin with veto power on the alliance’s decisions – and conceived the NRC as a token gift. Although the agreement had a large symbolic significance, the difference between the PJC and the NRC was more apparent than substantial; as emphasised by former NATO Secretary 12 “NATO-Russia relations: a new quality”, Declaration by Heads of State and Government of NATO Member States and the Russian Federation, available at http://www.nato.int/cps/ar/natohq/official_texts_19572.htm. 13 “NATO Factsheet on Terrorism” is available at http://www.nato.int/terrorism/factsheet.htm. 14 See the NATO-Russia Council Practical Cooperation Fact Sheet at http://www.nato.int/nrcwebsite/media/104666/nato-russia_council_factsheet_final_2013-11-07_trilingual.pdf. 15 S. Ivanov, “Russia-NATO”, speech given at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 13 July 2004. Quoted by D. Lynch (2005), p. 151.
After Maidan: Re-Starting NATO-Russia Relations 53 General Lord Robertson, it had “more to do with chemistry than arithmetic”. Russia did not obtain a veto on NATO’s decisions; if NRC meetings failed to reach a consensus, the alliance could always return to the format of ‘19’ 16 . For its part, the Kremlin did not resign itself to accepting junior partner status and continued to call publicly for the alliance’s transformation into a true Pan- European institution that would overcome fault lines in Europe and welcome the Russian Federation as an equal member 17 . Moscow also displayed a deep-seated desire to base its NATO relationship on the principle of ‘equality’, ‘reciprocity’ and ‘parity’, in which Russia’s status as a great power and influence over the post-Soviet space was acknowledged – a vision firmly embedded in President Putin’s 2005 statement to the Russian parliament that the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20 th century and in the ‘spheres of influences’ concept of Stalinist memory 18 . With NATO members lacking appetite for a revision of the post-Cold War settlement and unable to reach a consensus on relations with Moscow, domestic politics in Russia, centred on authoritarian modernization, and the Kremlin’s attempt to reinforce its authority and tighten its hold on society, did not facilitate closer interaction with the West 19 . As a result, NATO-Russia relations continued to be based on occasional and mainly ad hoc arrangements; while both sides had their own pragmatic motivations for expanding cooperation, the alliance’s members remained reluctant to entrust Moscow with decision-making prerogatives in areas of mutual interests, including the fight against terrorism. Without a vision to overcome long-standing diffidence and unwilling to consider marriage, the West offered Moscow cohabitation arrangements, that served useful functions without, however, providing satisfactory longterm solutions, while Russia displayed little practical interest in 16 T. Forsberg, G. Herd (2015), pp. 47-48. 17 L. Ratti, “Resetting NATO-Russia Relations: A Realist Appraisal Two Decades after the end of the Cold War”, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2013, p. 144. 18 E.B. Rumer, A. Stent, “Russia and the West”, Survival, vol. 51, no. 2, April-May 2009, p. 94. 19 W. Safire, “Putin’s ‘Creeping Coup”, The New York Times, 9 February 2004.
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