NATO and Russia Mend Fences After Years of Tension

A couple of years ago, the tension between Russia and NATO was verging on open hostility. In August 2008, just four months after NATO agreed to let Georgia join the alliance, Russia sent troops into the country to repel a Georgian attack against one of its separatist regions, and after a weeklong war, it occupied a fifth of Georgia's territory. Days later, NATO announced that it could not "go on with business as usual" until Russia pulled back its troops. It kept that pledge for two years, but now, whether out of pragmatism or fear, NATO is the one that's pulling back.

On Nov. 19-20, it was nothing but business as usual with Russia at the NATO summit in Lisbon, an event that glossed neatly over the fact that Russia's troops have only increased their presence in Georgia's disputed regions since the war. On Tuesday, the yielding tone of the summit appeared to spread to the Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, who made a startling capitulation. During a speech in France, he promised only peaceful dealings with Moscow in the future, even if Russia "refuses to withdraw its occupation forces, and even if its proxy militias multiply their human rights violations" on Georgian soil. Unsurprisingly, the Russian side is taking this as a resounding victory.

The Russian ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, told TIME on Tuesday night that the divisions of the past two years, when official ties with NATO have been frozen, helped uncover the "red line" that the alliance is unwilling to cross. "The 2008 crisis was a test," he said. "For NATO, it showed that even though their lover boy [Georgia] got a thrashing, they will not enter into conflict with Russia." Rogozin said that despite Saakashvili's overtures, the Georgian President "remains a criminal" in Moscow's eyes. "He shot Russian peacekeepers, which under international law is an attack on our entire country," he said. "But none of this impedes our relations with NATO."

This was clear at the Lisbon summit, where Russian President Dmitri Medvedev was treated as the guest of honor, and NATO went further than ever to placate Russia's concerns over the alliance. It invited Russia to help build a missile-defense umbrella over Europe, a system that Russia has always seen as a threat to its arsenals. And in the new "strategic concept" that NATO adopted on Nov. 20 — its first in 10 years — the alliance declared for the first time that "NATO is not a threat to Russia."

But the white-flag-waving wasn't mutual. Russia's military doctrine, which states that NATO expansion is a top threat, was not discussed at all, and at one point Medvedev gave a stern reminder of Russia's distrust. "Our participation [in the missile-defense system] should be absolutely equal," he told the summit. "Either we participate in full, exchange information, answer for the resolution of this or that problem, or we don't participate at all. But if we don't participate at all, then, for obvious reasons, we will have to defend ourselves."

Amid the vows of friendship and cooperation, this veiled threat seemed to get lost at the summit, as did the issue of Georgia's occupation, which is not mentioned in NATO's new strategic concept or in the joint statement of the NATO-Russia Council. The latter document, issued on Nov. 20, simply calls on Russia and NATO to "refrain from the threat or use of force against each other as well as against any other state, its sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence." In the context of conflict with Georgia, this can be read as a nonbinding promise that Russia won't do it again.

But that's not very reassuring for the Georgian government. Giorgi Kandelaki, deputy chairman of Parliament's foreign relations committee, says Russia's military presence in the occupied regions "still amounts to a threat against our capital" that has only grown over the past two years. Asked whether anything had happened in Georgia that could explain NATO's change of heart toward this situation, he says, "Maybe something changed in NATO, but nothing changed in Georgia."

What has changed in NATO, it appears, is its stomach for challenging Russia in the former Soviet space. Russia has shown that it will not back down to Western pressure in its backyard, and for NATO, the help that Russia can provide on global problems — Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, terrorism — is just too valuable to risk a confrontation in Russia's neighborhood. In any case, those are the lessons Russia is coming away with. "What's important for NATO and the E.U. has little to do with Georgia," ambassador Rogozin says. "Your typical U.S. citizen has a very murky view of what's going on in such places. The most important thing for them is to diffuse tensions."

Now, with the tensions over Georgia as good as forgotten, Russia and NATO are cooperating again on a list of issues. In Afghanistan, Moscow has agreed to help with training and supplies, and if the joint missile shield eventually gets built, Russia could do a lot to help deflect a rocket from, say, North Korea. But most of the projects on their to-do list require a lasting partnership between NATO and Russia, and the two have never been able to avoid conflict for more than a few years. In Moscow's military circles, some are already looking forward to the next round of tensions they would like to see diffused in their favor.

"For instance, NATO still has this open-door policy, which allows anyone to try to join. This spits on the interests of Russia," says defense analyst Konstantin Sivkov, who served for 12 years as an adviser to the Russian General Staff before taking leave in 2007. "Or look at the United States," he adds. "They put Patriot missiles in Poland, F-16s in the Baltic states. Why is NATO infrastructure moving into the post-Soviet space? If we're really going to be partners, we're going to need more respect than that." And so the baiting game is likely to continue.