NATO's Strategic Concept should be updated to clearly state that Russia is the main threat to the alliance's security.

This was stated by Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu before the summit of foreign ministers of the bloc countries in Brussels.

“We need a new strategic concept that is in line with today's reality — the worsened security situation in Ukraine due to Russian aggression.

This document should clearly indicate that Russia is the main threat to the security of the alliance.

The new strategic concept should also reflect the strengthening of the position of deterrence and defense on the eastern flank of NATO, and not only on it, ”said Aurescu.

In addition, according to him, NATO should focus on strengthening the resilience of allies and an innovative agenda in relations with partners in the alliance.

Recall, on the eve of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the bloc was allegedly ready for Russia's actions in Ukraine and on the day the Russian special operation began, it put its defense plans into action by deploying an additional contingent on the eastern flank.

“Now in the eastern part of the alliance there are 40,000 troops operating under NATO command.

In addition, there are US troops in Europe with a total number of 100 thousand people.

Other allies also expanded their presence.

This suggests that we have indeed been adapting to the aggressive actions of Russia for several years," Stoltenberg said.

"Confrontation Machine"

Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly stressed that increased NATO presence on its borders is unacceptable.

Russian President Vladimir Putin drew attention to the fact that the alliance actually convinced the Russian side by deception that there were no intentions to expand its zone of influence to the east.

The Russian leader recalled this in December 2021 against the backdrop of a dialogue between the United States and Russia on the development of security guarantees in Europe.

“Not an inch to the east,” we were told in the 1990s.

So what?

They cheated.

Just blatantly deceived.

Five waves of NATO expansion.

And now, please, in Romania, now corresponding systems are appearing in Poland,” the head of state said during the annual press conference.

  • Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron

  • AP

  • © Thibault Camus

Then the president noted that Russia would do in this regard what it considers necessary, namely, to ensure its own security.

Later, at a press conference following talks with French leader Emmanuel Macron in early February, Vladimir Putin dismissed claims by Western politicians and NATO leaders that the alliance was defensive.

“I would also like to note that they are still trying to reassure Russia with arguments that NATO is a peaceful, purely defensive organization, a purely defensive alliance.

Citizens of many states have seen from their own experience how true this is, I mean Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and, in fact, the corresponding large-scale military operation against Belgrade without the sanctions of the UN Security Council,” Vladimir Putin recalled.

He stressed that in the NATO military strategy of 2019, Russia was directly called the main threat to security and the opponent of the alliance.

Putin also drew attention to the fact that Russia's main proposals for security guarantees in Europe, sent by the US and NATO, remained unanswered.

“I will not open every article, but on all key issues: the non-proliferation of NATO, the non-deployment of strike systems near our borders, the return of NATO infrastructure by 1997, there is not just a position on any of these points, and even the answer is “no” or “ Yes".

The impression is that we did not even raise these questions.

They were simply bypassed,” Putin said.

Later, in his address to the Russians on February 21, the Russian leader said that in 2000 he asked US President Bill Clinton about the possibility of Russia joining the alliance.

Putin noted that the reaction to his question was very restrained, and the real attitude of the North Atlantic Alliance towards Russia was manifested in its further actions.

Already after the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov, in an interview with the American television channel PBS, stressed that Russia does not intend to strike or attack NATO member countries.

At the same time, he stressed that the alliance is "not a machine for cooperation and security, but a machine of confrontation."

"Dispersed for many decades"

It is worth noting that the leadership of the alliance, in addition to mentioning Russia in a negative context, is increasingly declaring a threat that allegedly comes from China.

These accusations intensified after Beijing refrained from condemning the Russian special operation and called on all parties to dialogue.

“We see that China does not want to condemn Russia’s aggression and, together with Moscow, has begun to question the right of nations to choose their own path,” said NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg on April 5.

  • Meeting of Foreign Ministers of NATO countries

  • AP

  • © Olivier Matthys

Speaking about the formation of a new strategic concept for NATO, Stoltenberg stressed that "for the first time, it will also have to take into account China's growing influence and policy of coercion on the world stage," as it "represents a systemic challenge to our security and our democracies."

At the same time, analysts are confident that NATO has long planned to reformulate its strategic concept in such a way that the Russian Federation and China would be named the main antagonists of the alliance.

Therefore, as Sergey Ermakov, a leading expert at the RISS Research Coordination Center, noted in an interview with RT, the statements of the Romanian Foreign Minister were only a repetition of the obvious.

“But after the well-known events related to Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, the alliance is now proposing to significantly toughen its position towards Moscow.

As for Romania, they naturally propose to shift the focus in their favor to the security of the Black Sea region, given that Bucharest is also striving to take a more significant position in the bloc,” Yermakov explained.

Dmitry Litovkin, editor of the newspaper Nezavisimoe Voennoye Obozreniye, shares a similar point of view.

In a conversation with RT, he suggested that the real leaders of the alliance would not particularly consider the opinion of the Romanian side.

“This is a dwarf state that is trying to make loud statements at the general level, raising its status,” the analyst says.

At the same time, he drew attention to the fact that Russia has long been designated a geopolitical adversary of NATO and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

“Unlike the Warsaw Pact, which has ceased to exist, the alliance has not changed since the Cold War and has not transformed its policy.

This is a very "crafty structure".

When Russia called on the bloc to refrain from expanding to the east, NATO pointed out that they had a collegial form of government and no opportunity to influence everyone.

It is clear that this is not true.

And no matter what they say now, it is so obvious that we have diverged for many decades, ”the expert stated.

Sergei Yermakov, for his part, recalled that the bloc announced a policy of containing Russia back in 2014 at a summit in Wales.

“Then the alliance announced that it was abandoning the model of strategic partnership with Russia and would follow precisely the policy of the so-called two-track approach - containment and dialogue in one bottle.

But in fact, we saw, of course, mainly containment.

Now at the conceptual level there will be even less dialogue, ”the analyst predicts.

He also believes that the current situation could have been avoided if the alliance had thought about how it builds its security architecture back in 2010, when the previous strategic concept was adopted.

Dmitry Litovkin, in turn, is sure that it is useless to try to get any guarantees from NATO, despite the fact that Russia's proposals on the security situation in Europe were the most acceptable option for resolving contradictions.

“They ignored these proposals, just as they ignored the concerns of the Russian Federation in the 1990s, when Moscow asked not to expand, and received only a verbal promise in response.

Now it is clear that it is impossible to agree with them - these are people who are not responsible for anything now and are not going to answer in the future, ”summed up Litovkin.