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NATO Unveils Plans to Grow as Kerry Reaffirms U.S. Desire to Remove Assad NATO Unveils Plans to Grow, Drawing Fury and Threats From Russia
(about 2 hours later)
BRUSSELS — NATO announced plans on Wednesday to enlarge its membership, a move that brought an angry response from Moscow, as Secretary of State John Kerry sought support from the alliance as he reaffirmed Washington’s desire to remove President Bashar al-Assad of Syria from power. LONDON — For the first time in six years, NATO on Wednesday invited a new member to join the military alliance, prompting a heated response from Russia and further underscoring escalating tensions between the Cold War adversaries.
Tensions between NATO and Russia were already high after Turkey, an alliance member, shot down a Russian warplane last week, and the decision to invite Montenegro to join the military alliance adds another layer of complication to efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria. The invitation, to tiny Montenegro, came nine years after the Balkan nation began the process of accession. But the timing of the offer came at a particularly delicate moment as the West is trying to persuade Russia to link forces to help defeat the Islamic State and end the civil war in Syria.
Mr. Kerry told a news conference after a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers here that the goal of removing Mr. Assad, who has benefited from the support of Russia, did not necessarily mean “regime change” in Damascus. In Moscow, the invitation to Montenegro — which has a population of about 600,000 and little military capacity — prompted fury and threats. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that a NATO expansion would be met with unspecified retaliatory measures from Russia.
The army should not be allowed “to implode” or the health and education systems to fall apart, Mr. Kerry said, describing those possibilities as “disastrous.” “The continuing expansion of NATO and NATO’s military infrastructure to the East, of course, cannot but lead to response actions from the East, namely the Russian side,” Mr. Peskov said.
But Mr. Assad must go because he “does not have legitimacy to heal the country,” said Mr. Kerry, who called on Russia and Iran to support a peaceful transition of power in Damascus. After gunmen linked to the Islamic State killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13, President François Hollande of France flew to both Washington and Moscow in an effort to create a broader alliance against the extremist group. Mr. Hollande judged that the attacks on Paris and the downing of a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt, also claimed by the Islamic State, had altered Russian calculations.
“That is not regime change — that is Assad change,” he said. But his effort has crumbled under these new tensions, which have only accentuated the differing goals of the countries involved. On Tuesday, President Obama said no one should be “under any illusions” that Russia, which has made a priority of propping up President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, would shift its focus to attacking the Islamic State’s positions in Syria. On Wednesday, the British Parliament appeared headed toward approval of joining the United States and France in bombing Islamic State targets in Syria.
In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, said that NATO’s expansion would be met with retaliatory measures from Russia, Reuters reported, and Russia was also reportedly planning to halt joint projects with Montenegro. After years in which Russia and NATO coexisted with relatively little overt rancor, diplomatic, economic and military strains have been building steadily. Russia and NATO have clashed over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and military involvement in eastern Ukraine, and over Russian fighter jets entering NATO airspace, especially in the Balkans and most recently over Turkey, a NATO member. Last week, the Turks shot down a Russian fighter entering Turkish airspace to bomb Turkmen tribesmen in Syria, raising questions about whether NATO could be drawn directly into a military conflict with Moscow in defense of Turkey.
The invitation to Montenegro, a small Balkan nation once part of Yugoslavia, to join NATO was “another step toward the full integration of Europe and toward the common defense,” Mr. Kerry said. NATO no longer regards Russia as a “strategic partner” but as a country seeking to undermine the post-Cold War order and restore its sway over the old Soviet empire, prompting a degree of confrontation that is reminiscent of the Cold War in tone.
NATO would also maintain a “persistent presence on NATO’s eastern edge,” said Mr. Kerry, who underlined that this was to “provide assurance.” Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, chairman of the Duma’s defense committee, said: “They are ready to admit even the North Pole to NATO just for the sake of encircling Russia.” The invitation to Montenegro, he said, means that NATO “was and remains an adversary of Russia.”
The invitation to Montenegro was also not sprung “out of the blue sky” on Russia, Mr. Kerry said. He suggested that Moscow had overreacted and was misconstruing the further expansion of NATO to include Montenegro. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was present when the invitation was made by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, denied any such intentions, saying that the alliance “is not focused on Russia per se or anyone else.” He added that the invitation to Montenegro, which was eager to join, was “another step toward the full integration of Europe and toward the common defense.”
The alliance “is not focused on Russia per se or anybody else,” Mr. Kerry said. He added that an expanded NATO could help members counter threats including those posed by extremists from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. The quandary for Washington and Europe is that any solution in Syria requires Russian participation and influence with Mr. Assad and the Damascus regime. But Washington, NATO and the European Union are not prepared to link progress on Syria to other issues, in particular any easing of sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea.
Moscow, he said, should focus on the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the eastern areas of Ukraine in exchange for the lifting of Western sanctions after Russia annexed Crimea and helped foment a civil war in East Ukraine. Russia wants to bolster its position in the Middle East and has much less interest in attacking the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Turkey is most concerned with blunting Kurdish aspirations toward independence, while Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-dominated Gulf countries are most interested in defeating Mr. Assad and his Shiite allies, rather than attacking the Sunni Islamic State.
Mr. Kerry said that progress had been made on sealing the porous border between Syria and Turkey, which has been an important lifeline for the Islamic State and an irritant for the countries fighting the militant group. The United States, for its part, wants Mr. Assad to leave power, but not necessarily to destroy his regime, which would create further chaos and even more refugees and migrants — the issue that preoccupies most of the European members of NATO.
He said that talks on Sunday with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey could lead to the closing of a stretch of the border that runs for about 60 miles. “President Erdogan is completely committed to and ready to proceed with Turkish forces and in cooperation with others, to help guarantee that the remaining portion of the border is sealed,” Mr. Kerry said. “The problem with the Hollande effort had nothing to do with Montenegro or Turkey, but with the fact that the parties he’s trying to pull together don’t see the problem the same way,” said Ivo H. Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO and president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
There would be further consultations between Turkish and American military authorities to ensure that the border could no longer be used to move “illegally transported oil,” a crucial source of funds for the militants, or “the passage of foreign fighters in one direction or another,” Mr. Kerry said. “Only for the United States, France, Britain and some western allies is the problem predominantly ISIS. Hollande failed in Moscow not because of Turkey, but because Putin has no real interest in going after ISIS. Everybody thought everything would change on Nov. 13,” the day of the attacks in Paris, Mr. Daalder said. “But nothing has really changed.”
That effort could involve a combination of air power and forces fighting on the ground in Syria, he said. While everyone wants to avoid Russia-NATO tensions, “there are lots of reasons for those tensions, like Ukraine, the Baltics and the Black Sea,” said Camille Grand, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a policy institution in Paris. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t reasonably work together on issues where we have at least overlapping interests.”
Mr. Kerry also praised efforts by Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain to allow his country to join the United States in carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria. Mr. Grand said that France believes it can work with Russia on Syria and that Europe can compartmentalize its other security issues with Moscow. “The issue is difficult to manage but doable perhaps so long as we avoid Putin’s effort to link everything, and NATO countries are clearly unprepared to go down that route,” he said.
Mr. Cameron, who faces a crucial vote in Parliament later on Wednesday about whether to authorize airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, was taking a “very important step,” he said. NATO’s supreme commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, said on Wednesday that there was little chance that Russia would meet a year-end deadline for a peace deal in eastern Ukraine, saying the calmer situation there did not mean the end of the conflict was near.
“Russia still supports its proxies in eastern Ukraine,” General Breedlove said. “It is not very likely that we can get everything we need in Minsk by the end of the year,” he said, referring to the 12-point peace deal signed in the Belarus capital in February.
Mr. Daalder, the former NATO ambassador, said that tying NATO membership offers to Russian responses would be fatal to the alliance. “Any overt linkage between what you do in NATO and with Russia in Syria has bad consequences,” he said. “You’d be saying that membership is not dependent on the NATO treaty but on what we want from Russia.”
In any case, he said, the successful negotiation of a nuclear treaty with Iran with complete Russian participation, during a fierce confrontation over Ukraine, shows that business can be done if interests align.
“If there is a cease-fire and movement in Syria, it won’t be because Russia wants to do anyone a favor, but because Russia judges that it is in its own interest,” he said. “We could have a confrontation over Ukraine yet cooperate on Iran, and the same should apply to Syria.”