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Russian President Putin: In a new strategy paper, Russia becomes a declared enemy of NATO for the first time
Photo: Dmitry Azarov / AP
In view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden have already declared their desire to join NATO.
Turkey has given up its initial resistance to this after concessions have been made by the Scandinavian countries.
The military alliance has now officially started the admissions process.
In a new strategy paper, Russia becomes a declared enemy of NATO for the first time.
The international media agree that being able to form a front against Russia strengthens the cohesion of the military alliance.
What do the Kurds have to fear?
The
»Neue Zürcher Zeitung«
observes that Turkey initially appears to have gotten its way - but has doubts about the consistency with which its demands will be pursued in the future: »Turkey has decided in the dispute over Sweden's NATO accession and Finland initially pushed through with their demands.
The Scandinavians not only assure that they will take decisive action against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and their supporters.
They also pledge not to provide support to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria and the movement led by Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, which blames Ankara for the failed July 2016 coup.
(...)
Much will now depend on how the authorities implement the agreement.
It is hardly to be expected that they will shut down all Kurdish publishing houses, newspapers and associations and hand over masses of PKK sympathizers to Turkey, especially since the law sets narrow limits for them here.
Whether the Scandinavians will deliver arms to Turkey is also at their discretion.
With his veto, Erdoğan has certainly gained respect on the world stage.
It remains to be seen whether the effort will ultimately pay off.«
»It was a win-win deal«
In the summit host country,
»El País«
raves about the new, old cohesion of the NATO partners: »There are achievements that everyone has to fight for again and again, but which are seen as ancestral rights and as free as the air we breathe .
For the citizens of Western Europe, this is the case with the collective security guaranteed by NATO since 1949 and ensured by the disproportionate contribution of the US.
It was a win-win deal.
The larger partner gained hegemony and the resulting effects, primarily economic.
And the smaller ones could use their resources for other purposes.
The result is obvious: peace, stability and prosperity.
Fortunately for Europeans, the White House remains committed to the most successful and effective alliance in history.
The bond between the US and Europe could not be stronger and is now critical even beyond Europe.
Now Beijing is also coming into focus.
Without the strong and democratic Europe that Putin wants to undermine, the US would be at a disadvantage in the strategic confrontation being prepared with rising superpower China.”
»De Standaard«
, a Dutch-language newspaper read in Belgium and the Netherlands, finds that the Russian President's attack on Ukraine has achieved exactly the opposite of what is in his interests: »Putin saw the prospect that Ukraine could one day be included in the military alliance, a threat to the Russian sphere of influence that had to be eliminated by all means.
But less than six months later, Putin's bloody war has achieved just the opposite: he roused NATO from its semi-comatose state, and since then the alliance has been vigorously building a line of defense on its eastern border.
(...)
All of this makes this war even more absurd and painful, especially now that Russia is also bombing civilian targets outside the frontline zone, leaving the Ukrainian population feeling nowhere safe.
Putin gambled and lost.
But that won't stop him from driving the Ukrainians to flee and further destroying the country."
The Swedish daily
»Dagens Nyheter«
believes that Turkey could soon make further demands: »The only clear Swedish-Finnish concession in the agreement is the promise not to support the (Syrian Kurdish militia) YPG.
What is most striking, however, is that several points allow for different interpretations.
The devil is in the details, they say.
Here it is in use.
It is one thing to deal with Turkish extradition requests "quickly and thoroughly" - another to send a political refugee to Ankara.
Nor does the agreement mean that the Turkish parliament will commit itself to approving Sweden's and Finland's NATO proposals.
It can hardly be ruled out that there will be further demands and that ratification will take some time - for maximum domestic political effect.
Sweden is allowed into NATO because it is in the interests of the other countries.
While we wait, we have to stand our ground in case Erdoğan starts complaining about the compliance with the agreement again.”
Who wins more - Turkey or the Scandinavians?
The US newspaper
»Wall Street Journal«
considers the expansion of the armed forces in (Eastern) Europe to be still insufficient: »Russia's invasion of Ukraine makes this week's NATO summit one of the most important in recent years - and so far to a mostly good one.
Turkey has finally given up its opposition to Finland and Sweden joining the alliance, which is also strengthening its military capability against the Russian threat.
(...)
The White House also announced the largest increase in military presence in Europe in decades, particularly in the eastern countries in Russia's immediate vicinity.
(...) The greatest disappointment is the lack of any new deployments of armed forces to NATO's eastern flank by European countries.
A White House memo said these would be forthcoming, and they are important if Europe is to maintain US support for a shared burden.
The world has become a much more dangerous place in the past year and Western countries need to step up their military deterrence accordingly.”
The Dutch newspaper
»de Volkskrant« writes about an agreement in the dispute with Turkey about Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
: »Is the agreement with Sweden and Finland a success for Turkey?
Certainly, at least according to the Turkish government.
Most Turkish media agree.
(...) This shows that the supposed success primarily benefits President Erdoğan.
He may well need it too.
Erdoğan hopes to be re-elected in June next year, but his AKP is doing poorly in the polls.
In view of the ailing economy, Turkish voters are not exactly in a good mood.
With his leading role in Madrid, Erdoğan can present himself as a statesman who is determined to stand up for Turkey's interests and attracts attention on the international stage.
But have all of Turkey's demands actually been met?
No, not at all.
The text of the contract is so skilfully and carefully formulated that those involved still have plenty of room for interpretation.
The Turks can bask in their success, but in concrete terms the result is particularly beneficial for the Swedes and Finns.«
Military alliances need an enemy to work
The Italian newspaper
»La Repubblica«
from Rome wrote on the NATO summit in Madrid on Thursday: »The Russian invasion of Ukraine solved the identity crisis of NATO.
The principle always applies that military alliances need an enemy in order to function: Vladimir Putin has fully assumed this role and enabled NATO to move beyond the terminal crisis Macron spoke of in 2019.
At the Madrid summit, NATO rediscovered its original function: the collective defense of the Euro-Atlantic space against a Russia that, according to the new strategic concept, poses the most significant and direct threat to the security of the Allies.
For years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO wavered between different decisions: expansion to include former members of the Warsaw Pact, intervention in Kosovo in 1999, backing for the United States in Afghanistan after 9/11, and then finally clearing up with Trump Doubts about their usefulness and the catastrophic handling of the withdrawal from Kabul to herald the downward trend.
Today all that seems to be a thing of the past: in the present, Western democracies see the Atlantic Alliance as the most sensible security choice to face a confrontation with Putin's Russia that promises to be long and difficult.”
muk/dpa
