KUCOVA, Albania, March 4 (Reuters) - NATO member Albania, which has no fighter jets of its own, opened a rebuilt Soviet-era air base to serve NATO aircraft on Monday amid an increased threat from Russia, Prime Minister Edi Rama said.
NATO has spent over 50 million euros ($54.26 million) on the Kucova Air Base to bolster its presence in the region. Airspace in the Adriatic country of Albania, which borders Greece to the south and Montenegro to the north, is protected by Italy and Greece.
The great problem with the whole “NATO is encroaching on Russia” is: you’re assuming that the countries are joining because they’re being forced to, just like they were forced into the USSR or Warsaw pact. Now, there was a verbal agreement that NATO wouldn’t expand into the east, and that is what makes it uncool. But not even close to being what Russia makes it out to be
Does it matter if Russia rightly or wrongly thinks countries are being coerced into NATO? If Russia were convinced and genuinely believed countries are willingly joining NATO it wouldn’t change anything.
The issue is that they believe NATO is their antithesis, and that NATO coming closer is an existential threat. The how or why of countries joining NATO is irrelevant to that mindset.
They know that nobody is being coerced into joining. They just categorically ignore that fact because it doesn’t fit into their domestic and international propaganda narratives.
That’s exactly my point. The issue to Russia isn’t how countries join NATO. The issue to Russia is NATO in and of itself, so they create propaganda to justify their actions against NATO and NATO-aligned countries.
If Russia believed that countries freely joined NATO, then they would try to get them alligned with them via “courtship” (aka, not being a jerk to others)
You’re missing my point. I’m not making a comment on what Russia believes the reasons are for countries joining NATO.
It doesn’t matter to Russia how countries end up in NATO. What matters to them is that they view NATO as an existential threat that is coming closer to their borders.
But if they were engaging in “good faith”, they’d try much cheaper, peaceful endeavours to try and court those nations into the CSTO (kinda like what China is trying to achieve with the Belt and Road initiative, except that that is very expensive)
Again, all that matters is Russia believes NATO is an existential threat that is getting closer to their border. Good faith diplomacy has nothing to do with it.
Furthermore, Russia (and the USSR) has always used sticks rather than carrots in diplomacy. It’s not like they immediately went from friendly relations in Ukraine to boots on the ground. It was preceeded by their version of “diplomatic” bullying for years. You can see this now in many other countries.
To be clear, I’m not justifying their actions. I’m just saying you can’t look at their actions through a western diplomatic lens if you want to understand their behavior. They have a completely different modus operandi.
There was an agreement that no non-German NATO troops would be east of Soviet/Russian troops in Germany. And they weren’t. Russians took their good time to withdraw after reunification but they were allowed, as is proper, to do it without Americans between them and the eastern border.
(requiring no NATO troops at all would’ve been unrealistic as the NVA (East German army) got swallowed whole-sale by the Bundeswehr).