The bloc’s ongoing expansion is motivated by a desire to create confrontation, a senior diplomat claims
Having an enemy to fight is essential to NATO’s survival, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko has argued.
The diplomat added that the bloc’s expansion is largely motivated by the need to antagonize nations so they can fit the role of an enemy.
“NATO is the kind of organization that cannot live without an enemy. If it didn’t have one, it would have died,” he was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency on Monday.
“They have declared Asia as a zone of alliance interest, pushed the zone of their defense right to the border with China,” he noted.
Grushko said the conflict in Ukraine stems from NATO’s stated intention to eventually accept Kyiv as a new member, while ignoring Russia’s national security concerns. The alliance is still trying to bring Ukraine in, he said, adding that he does not believe the United States and its allies are acting rationally on the issue.
NATO’s leadership claims it has an open-door policy, saying each nation has a sovereign right to choose it as its security provider. Its charter, however, requires all members to approve any enlargement, a fact that came to the fore after Turkey stopped the accession of Finland and Sweden over their alleged protection of terrorist suspects.
The US-led military alliance declared the inclusion of Ukraine one of its goals in 2008, dismissing Moscow’s warning that such a move would cross a red line. After the 2014 coup in Kyiv, the new Ukrainian government dropped the nation’s policy of neutrality and said joining NATO was its primary goal.
When Russia sent its troops to Ukraine in February, NATO’s covert expansion into Ukraine was cited as one of the main reasons. Organization members trained and armed the Ukrainian army and established military infrastructure in the country without formally accepting Kiev’s membership, Moscow said.
(RT.com)
Source: sn.dk