NATO is “doomed to failure” in the 21st century for lack of “a reason for existence,” according to Russia’s top diplomat.
“The attempts to adapt the institutions dating back to the era of bipolar confrontation to realities of the 21st century are doomed to failure,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday at an international foreign policy forum. “In particular, the North Atlantic Alliance has remained part of the Cold War paradigm as it tries to find a reason for existence … NATO has destabilized and continues to destabilize the security structure in Europe.”
Lavrov made that claim as he elaborated on the need for a “post-West world order,” as he put it at a European conference in February. That “renewed world order” would be governed by “a uniform interpretation” of international law. Lavrov’s comments come as western leaders, alarmed by Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Middle East, are boosting NATO defense spending and calling for new military developments to maintain a technological edge.
“International relations have reached an important fork,” Lavrov said. “Either we will continue to waste our time and resources, which is fraught with a new arms race, further expansion of the space of instability, chaos, and uncontrollability, or the leading centers of civilization will manage to reach an agreement and unite their efforts based on broad international partnership with the central coordinating role of the U.N.”
U.S. leaders, particularly in Congress, blame Russia for the ongoing tensions. Senate lawmakers voted to pass an expansive package of new sanctions over Ukraine. The sanctions bill would also punish Russia’s partnership with Iran in supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the ongoing Syrian civil war and the cyberattacks conducted against the Democratic party and state election systems in the 2016 elections. And Russia’s ongoing military build-up, including a violation of a Cold War-era arms control treaty, has some American leaders calling for a major increase in U.S. defense spending.
“It’s better to win an arms race than lose a war,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Monday.
Lavrov defended Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to annex Crimea and invade eastern Ukraine, however, saying that Ukrainian leaders were oppressing ethnic Russians and thus rendering the invasion a matter of national honor.
“Had we not done what we did, we would have betrayed our civilization which our forefathers developed over centuries and who then spread it over vast territories,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov also said that, had Russia not intervened to help Assad, the United States might have “joined forces with the terrorists” to overthrow the regime.
“The reverse side of the ‘West-centric’ globalization model, the persistent desire to measure others by one’s own pseudo-liberal values, impose changes from the outside with no consideration for local traditions and even use force to remove undesirable regimes, has been a surge in international terrorism,” Lavrov said.
