The United States lists dependent countries that are useless for NATO

Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, named the useless NATO countries that are part of the alliance. To this he pointed out For more information, see the article for the National Interest.

The expert clarified that Albania, Slovenia, Montenegro and North Macedonia have become for the United States “an obligation, not an asset”.

Carpenter likened US politics to a Facebook user who indiscriminately adds people to their friends list. At the same time, he noted, the only difference is that Internet friends are not able to drag Washington into unnecessary wars and conflicts.

The analyst pointed out that when US officials called allied regimes established by Washington with military force in Afghanistan and Iraq, “it became clear that they had lost even a minimal understanding of this concept.” This became especially noticeable after Kabul fell to the Taliban almost overnight. (the organization is banned in Russia)…

Unwillingness to negotiate

On December 17, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced draft agreements with NATO and the United States on security guarantees. The documents contain calls not to view Moscow as an enemy, not to create a threat of military escalation and to abandon NATO’s eastward expansion. Russia also suggested that the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance not include Ukraine in the organization.

In response, the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell called Moscow’s conditions to stop further expansion of the alliance “completely unacceptable” and noted that this was “a purely Russian agenda.” He stressed that Moscow had presented its agenda in writing for the first time. “Only the winners do this: they say that this and that are my conditions,” he said.

After that, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called on NATO to “collect money and return to the 1997 borders.”

Security issue

Earlier, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov warned that Russia would develop “vulnerabilities” for Western countries if they continue to pursue a course of creating military threats to Russia. He stressed that “we have come to the point where there is nowhere to retreat.” He also pointed out that “for Moscow, the military development of Ukraine by NATO member states is an existential threat.”

On December 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about retaliatory measures for NATO’s eastward expansion. He noted that they can become very different, but depend on the specific proposals of Russian military experts. Also, according to him, the Kremlin has already voiced its proposals on strategic security guarantees to the United States and NATO, aimed at achieving a diplomatic negotiating result. At the same time, the Russian leader added, the proposals were not voiced in order to “blackout something and stop something.”

The Russian-American consultations in Geneva are scheduled for January 9-10. Then a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council is to be held in Brussels and consultations in Vienna at the platform of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

It was, but it was not

On January 7, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken denied NATO promises to Russia not to expand eastward. “NATO has never promised not to admit new members. It could not and would not do this: the open door policy was a key provision of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, which resulted in the founding of NATO, ”he said.

In response to this, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova recalled that she had previously published a chronology of the assurances of Western countries in the non-expansion of NATO to the East and duplicated her post dated June 15, 2021, in which she filled in “the gaps in the Western media’s knowledge of themselves” and posted documentary evidence of assurances not to expand NATO eastward.