Garcevic in Time on NATO-Russia Relations
Ambassador Vesko Garcevic, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was interviewed for a recent article on NATO-Russia relations as NATO celebrates its 70th birthday.
Garcevic was quoted in an April 4, 2019 article in Time entitled “Breaking Down the Complicated Relationship Between Russia and NATO.”
From the text of the article:
After the collapse of the Soviet Union though, NATO began to redefine its purpose. Vesko Garcevic, a former Montenegro ambassador to NATO, says the new mission became to ensure the democratization of newly post-communist republics, which the alliance considered crucial to guaranteeing a stable Europe. After joining NATO, most of the countries then became E.U. members.“It was no longer not just about security. It was also political. That’s why the alliance has survived for so many years,” he says.
But Russia has repeatedly made a request that NATO has rejected: to refuse to accept new members in its “backyard” (or neighboring countries), says Rasmussen. “It wasn’t for the West or Moscow to decide whether those countries should join NATO. Each and every country has the right to decide its alliance and affiliation,” says the former NATO ambassador Garcevic.
By 1999, when it became clear that NATO and Russia had irreconcilable views over the future of the post-Soviet republics, the alliance “turned into a security challenge” for the Kremlin, according to Garcevic. It was a “critical turning point,”he says, noting that Russia started to become more anti-Western. As the years went on, nostalgia for the Soviet Union became more apparent. In 2005, Putin famously said the breakup of the Soviet Union“was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
In theory, NATO’s door “remains open to any European country” that meets membership requirements. However, former Montenegro ambassador to NATO, Garcevic believes the reality is constrained by fear over a resurgent Russian threat. “I can’t see further NATO enlargement happening in the near future. European countries are very cautious about Russia’s reaction.”
Rasmussen and Garcevic are confident NATO will continue to exist because “its task to protect democracy and human rights is eternal.” Collective security has never been more important, they say. But the alliance’s existence has also perhaps never been more threatened by a lack of unity among political leaders. NATO’s ability to protects its members is as much about political strength — sending the right signal — as military capability.
During his diplomatic career, Amb. Vesko Garcevic dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He had been a Montenegro’s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as a Montenegro’s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School.