The November 20 summit of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) in Lisbon, Portugal resulted in three critically important military decisions. The sides have agreed to cooperate in Afghanistan, decided to resume Theatre Missile Defense Cooperation, and agreed that they pose no threat to each other, which gives one hope that they will eventually create a European security system that suits both sides.
"That alone draws a clear line between the past and the future of NATO-Russia relations," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Afghanistan: Cooperation based in desperation
The summit's decisions on Afghanistan include an agreement on broadened transit arrangements through Russian territory for non-lethal ISAF goods, a move to expand the counter-narcotics training of Afghan troops and the decision to establish an NRC Helicopter Maintenance Trust Fund in 2011.
Apart from that, more helicopters will be delivered to Afghanistan and more Afghan pilots, technical specialists and narcotics police specialists will be trained in Russia, which will also train narcotics police officers for Pakistan.
Along with the recent agreement on the supply of 21 Mi-17 Hip helicopters and a large batch of small arms, this underscores Russia's growing involvement in the Afghan operation.
NATO's mission in Afghanistan, which began over nine years ago, is often described as a failure. NATO has not eliminated the Taliban or stabilized the Karzai government enough to ensure that it could maintain internal security on its own. However, the United States, NATO and Russia have no alternative to supporting Hamid Karzai in spite of the rumor that his government may have been involved in talks with the Taliban.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on October 14 that contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban are just beginning, and it's unclear if they will bear fruit. Clinton and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates discussed the Afghan conflict in closed-door talks in Brussels with NATO colleagues in mid-October. (http://www.voanews.com/russian/news/Clinton-Gates-Afghanistan-2010-10-14-104996719.html).
The fall of Karzai's government in these circumstances would be catastrophic, especially for Russia in light of the vulnerability of its CSTO allies in Central Asia.
Russia and NATO will have to do their best to continue the Afghan mission. Russia's role in the war has been growing, and now the Afghan Army's capabilities depend on the supply of Russian helicopters, which experts say are ideally suited to the Afghan terrain.
The Afghan Army has over 30 Soviet/Russian Mi-17 Hips and a number of the Mi-24 Hind combat helicopters, and Russia is to send another 21 helicopters there soon. The planned NRC Helicopter Maintenance Trust Fund will service these helicopters.
Afghans are also in need of Russian-made small arms. They still use Soviet-made Kalashnikov submachine and machine guns and rely on Russian arms to stock up their arsenals.
A trap for NATO and Russia?
The participants in the Lisbon summit agreed to complete the transfer of security responsibility in Afghanistan to local forces by the end of 2014, after which they would consider withdrawing their troops. Some have described this policy as "Afghanization."
The Afghan Army needs to be bolstered to be capable of maintaining peace in the country.
It can be reinforced only with foreign support, including Russia, which is expected to supply weapons to Afghanistan, many of them free of charge.
When the United States decided to increase aid and send technicians, advisers and weapons to South Vietnam in 1960-1961, no one expected that the decision would have such dramatic consequences. Fifteen years later, the Soviet Union fell into the same trap, starting with military-technical cooperation to support the Afghan government and ending by sending troops there. That 10-year war was one of the nails in the Soviet Union's coffin.
Will they make the same mistake?
The Soviet Union's experience with war in Afghanistan proved that it is possible to create national armed forces capable of maintaining relative stability in the country. The Najibullah government controlled Afghanistan for three years after the Soviet troops pulled out, ceding power only when Russia ended its material and technical assistance.
NATO now hopes to use the same arrangement, but it has taken it a long time to convince member states that it is worth a try. Initially, they hoped for an easy victory and so did not pay enough attention to training the Afghan armed forces.
The 150,000-strong Afghan army will continue to grow, but the number of troops is not the most important factor in conflicts. For an army to be effective, it needs a lot of things, from reducing the number of deserters to having modern weapons. These objectives can be achieved, but the process will be expensive, and Russia is one of the countries that is expected to finance it.
Apart from the obvious goal of transferring some NATO functions to the Afghan Army, its creation has several other, less obvious objectives.
To begin with, a combat-ready army would dramatically enhance the political standing of the Karzai government; in this case, several years later the talks with the Taliban would be held in fundamentally different conditions.
NATO missile defense system is old news
At the summit in Lisbon, NATO leaders decided to develop a missile defense capability to protect their populations and territories in Europe against ballistic missile attacks. According to the business daily Kommersant, (http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1544060), the Russian president proposed discussing the possibility of creating a joint missile defense system to ensure mutual security, with Russia protecting NATO from missiles launched in the east and southeast and NATO protecting Russia from attacks from the west and southwest.
This proposal would have signified the first step toward the integration of the Russian and NATO military systems if not for an uneven distribution of responsibilities.
Threats to NATO from the east and southeast, which Russia has pledged to monitor, originate in the Middle East, where several countries have created and produced ballistic missiles, which have an increasingly large range.
The picture to the west and southwest of Russia and NATO is fundamentally different. The only countries there that are capable of creating and producing ballistic missiles with a sufficient range are NATO members.
Clearly, Russia and NATO do not want to develop a missile defense system against each other, which makes one wonder why Russia has offered to protect NATO. What could it get in return? This is the most difficult question in relations between Russia and NATO, and there is still no answer to it.
Shrinking military threat
The Lisbon summit approved the Strategic Concept for the Defense and Security of the Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which states that NATO wants "to see a true strategic partnership between NATO and Russia, and ... will act accordingly, with the expectation of reciprocity from Russia."
The new strategy could seriously impact the European security system, which remains a subject of debate. NATO intends to "enhance the political consultations and practical cooperation with Russia in areas of shared interests, including missile defense, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, counter-piracy and the promotion of wider international security," the document states.
The sides have agreed that they pose no threat to each other, which is a significant admission provided that their actions correspond with this statement. In part, this can already be seen in the troop reductions made by NATO member states, yet at the same the infrastructure created for a potential war against the Soviet Union still remains.
Significant progress in this area cannot be accomplished overnight, and the first steps will most likely be made by the alliance's unofficial leader, the United States. In the next few years, the United States could dissolve its Second Fleet, in charge of fleet operations for defense of the East Coast and afloat training in the North Atlantic for more than 60 years, leaving only a small force for training personnel and providing logistic support.
It is fair to say that the "U.S. national interests are no longer centered in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. ... You don't need a three-star admiral there for the one or two exercises a year," said Norman Polmar, a nationally respected naval analyst (http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/08/navy-rumors-surround-second-fleet-fate-083010w/).
This could be the best evidence for the United States' lack of aggressive intentions toward Russia. This would be evidence not for the establishment on either side of the ocean, which no longer believes in such a threat, but for the public, which continues to live by old stereotypes.
The remaining steps could be even simpler and motivated by political logic and the ongoing economic crisis. A reduction of NATO's armed forces will gradually rule out even a theoretical possibility of an armed conflict with Russia. One can only hope that in the next two or three years the sides will formalize this de facto position in a new European security treaty.
The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
