NATO has for the past two decades suffered from an identity crisis. It is a crisis that it has failed to resolve either by enlargement east or by its desperate efforts to reform its agenda to include every conceivable theme: fighting terrorism, energy security, cyber-defence, piracy and climatic change. The expansion of NATO's functions always risked leaving the alliance short of breath. The financial crisis increased the risk. And what we see in Afghanistan are signs that it is wheezing unhealthily.

Afghanistan has shown the limits of the alliance's resources, even after enlargement. Afghanistan has also revealed the gaps in its decision-making structure: to achieve its goals, it needs a high degree of co-ordination between member states, but its decision-making process is weighed down by its search for consensus. It is now out of the question that NATO can have global ambitions, a possibility discussed vividly a short time ago by my NATO colleagues.

In suggesting a solution, I find myself – very unusually – compelled to agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski, a constant critic of Russia and a national security adviser to US president Jimmy Carter in 1977-81. He argues that the alliance should forge co-operation with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CTSO) – an organisation that, like NATO in western Europe, is responsible for security issues in Eurasia. It is an argument that Russia has been making for years.

Both NATO and CSTO are engaged in repelling the same threats in their zones of responsibility, including threats emerging from Afghanistan. Together, they could repel them and limit negative developments within Afghanistan. But neither Russian troops nor CSTO's collective operational response force could be deployed in Afghanistan.

Russia will not, however, drop its objections to the alliance's enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia in exchange for NATO's formal recognition of the CSTO, as Brzezinski, ‘an old friend of Russia', suggests. Russia wants serious practical engagement involving both organisations, including joint peacekeeping. Perhaps eventually a joint NATO-CSTO structure, along NATO-Russia Council lines, could aim for synergies between the two organisations' capabilities to respond to common threats.

If NATO agrees to refrain from making military plans regarding CSTO member states and extends its hand, Moscow is ready to shake it. Such co-operation might also mobilise the capabilities of other important regional organisations in which Russia participates, primarily the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which brings China together with Russia and four central Asian states. How China might react to outreach by NATO is not something I can predict. What is clear is that, if NATO's mission in Afghanistan collapses, the SCO will be left to deal with many problems. Western politicians desperately seeking an exit strategy must understand that. NATO cannot simply give up its UN mandate and leave a broken pot behind it. Russia was among those countries in the UN Security Council that granted the mandate. We therefore want to know what the alliance is planning and poised to do in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, some among our NATO partners wrongly persist in seeing Russia as a threat. Russia limited its armed forces to unprecedented levels in its north-west territories. It does not want militarisation in this region, which is why it has called for a new treaty on European security.

The areas of mutual interest between Russia and NATO are very broad and the potential for co-operation is significant. Indeed, to a certain extent, the future of NATO as an organisation primarily responsible for security issues in the Euroatlantic region will largely depend on the fulfilment of this potential.

NATO is primarily a military union, and its objective should be consolidating security. Building up a common zone of guaranteed security along with Russia could smoothly blend with the new strategic concept of NATO and breathe new life into the alliance's transformation process.

This would mean that the alliance would need to abandon what appears to be its mindset – that there should be only one power centre. But the alternative is that NATO and Russia will both remain in the cold. There is no certainty that the alliance is capable of successfully managing alone the tasks that it faces today. The success of many a NATO mission, including in Afghanistan, depends on the quality and extent of Russia's involvement.

Dmitry Rogozin is Russia's permanent representative to NATO

Source: European Voice