NATO-Russia Council Sows Contention Instead of Calm

By Brooks Tigner
Defense News, 19-25 January 1998

BRUSSELS — The new NATO-Russia council, trumpeted as the answer to Moscow’s
problems
with the Western alliance’s enlargement, instead is a battleground for renewed disputes about
expansion and clashes over post-Cold War relations.

What prevents the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council (PJC) from working as a tool to
bring
the two sides closer together is that NATO and Russia have different, and sometimes opposing,
strategic goals for the body. So instead of promoting new cooperative efforts, the PJC has been
bogged down since its inception in power struggles over procedure, agenda items and other
minutiae, NATO and Russian sources admitted last week.

The PJC was signed into existence by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and NATO heads of
state
May 27, but held its first meeting Sept. 26 when Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov met
his counterparts in New York.

In a July 29 speech at Columbia University, New York, NATO Secretary-General Javier
Solana
heralded the PJC as putting NATO-Russian relations “well on track.”

But such lofty sentiments since have been dampened, NATO and Russian diplomats said.

“There is a clash of cultures at every level of participation between Russia and NATO,”
Klaus-Peter Klaiber, NATO’s assistant secretary-general for political affairs, said Jan. 15 during a
two-day conference here on NATO enlargement.

For example, NATO nations have agreed, at strong U.S. insistence, to put a high priority on
bolstering national and collective efforts to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction,
and devising methods to counter the use of nuclear, chemical and biological arms.

Russia’s participation in this effort is critical, as Moscow has been accused of aiding suspected
proliferators, such as Iran, in obtaining weapons of mass destruction. So far, however, there has
been little more than polite and general discussion of the issue between NATO and Russian
leaders and no movement on the issue within the PJC.

At the same time, Moscow’s preoccupation lies elsewhere: in minimizing the scope of any
subsequent NATO enlargement; finding outlets in Central and Eastern Europe for its defense
products; and stepping up industrial cooperation between its defense research and production
facilities and those of NATO nations.

These different, and sometimes opposing, goals have led to a stalemate between NATO and
Russian officials on establishing productive discourse within PJC.

For example, NATO officials have resisted recent proposals by the Russian Defense Ministry
to
set up an exclusive, 16-plus-1 consultative channel between Moscow’s armaments planners and
the coordinating body within NATO for common defense industrial projects, the Conference of
National Armaments Directors, according to NATO and Russian officials.

NATO and Russia also are clashing over whether the PJC should have a role in formulating
plans
for developing allied military infrastructure, such as new command and control networks, on the
territory of new members.

NATO intends early next year to admit the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in what
alliance
officials insist will be only the first wave of new members to be allowed into the 16-member
alliance in the post-Cold War era.

Russian diplomats explain that Moscow wants to have a say in how NATO will extend its
military
infrastructure into the new member countries, something NATO officials repeatedly have insisted
is not on the table.

“The PJC’s founding act includes wording that we [NATO] are prepared to talk about
infrastructure, but this has a completely different meaning for Russia,” said Klaiber. “It wants to
discuss and participate in infrastructure developments in the three newcomer countries. We are
not prepared to do this.”

The upshot is that the PJC has achieved next to nothing, and actually has served to highlight
the
continuing disconnect between Western and Russian views on European security.

“They [the Russians] are pushing the [PJC] envelope in every direction and we’re trying to
keep
the flap on it at the same time,” one European diplomat said Jan. 15.

Independent observers put it more bluntly.

“Russia wants the maximum policy insight that they can achieve within the NATO-Russia
structure. And if I were in Moscow, that would be a legitimate goal,” Sir Michael Alexander,
chairman of London’s Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, said Jan. 15. “There is
going to be tension and difficulties within the PJC for a long time to come and we should all be
aware of that.”