From that – for many reasons historical – NATO summit in Bucharest exactly 14 years have passed. It was early April 2008, when the leaders of the then 26 Alliance member states met in the Romanian capital, with the United States George W. Bush of the youngest to have just a few weeks earlier recognized her Kosovo’s independence and the Vladimir Putin on the other hand to prepare to make the transition from the presidency to the prime minister. In Greece, we remember that meeting for “veto” exercised by government of Costas Karamanliswith Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannisin prospect of then FYROM joining NATO with its temporary name. “Macedonia’s accession to NATO has been postponed due to the stable position of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis at yesterday’s Alliance summit in Bucharest. The Greek Prime Minister, despite the suffocating pressure received from the US and other allied countries in order to consent to the NATO perspective of the neighboring country, remained firm in the “red lines” of Athens and, based on the principle of “consensus” in operation “NATO invitation to Skopje never came,” wrote its envoys. “Daily” in Bucharest, Ath. Ellis and D. Antoniou.
Exactly 14 years laterthe former FYROM has now joined NATO as Republic of Northern Macedonia· As well as Albania, Croatian and Montenegro. Of the issues that were, in other words, in Agenda of the Bucharest Summitmost now they have closed.
What did not close, but on the contrary opened and even wide, in a warlike way, widening the Russian-Russian rifts, is the issue of Ukraine which has also been linked to Bucharest. Specifically, according to point number 23 of the Declaration of Leadership of the member countries of the Alliance that had taken part in that meeting on 3 April 2008: “NATO welcomes the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO. “The accession action plan – MAP is the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their path to accession.” How much this had bothered him Vladimir Putin had actually appeared on the spot, at that moment. From Bucharest, where he was also present to take part in the NATO-Russia Council, see Putin he had then warned that any further NATO expansion to the east would be dealt with by Moscow as “Immediate threat”. But he had also sent other messages from the podium at the time, claiming, for example, that There are areas of Ukraine where only Russians live, that the “complex” state of Ukraine in its current form was established during the Soviet period by taking territories from other countries, and that this state can be on the “edge of its existence” if the situation becomes more complicated due to “NATO problems” etc. “We will do everything we can to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO,” he said at the same time. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
But also from the Western side the front regarding the NATO perspective of Ukraine it was not tight. Countries like France and the Germany had at the time expressed their opposition to the prospect of Ukraine and Georgia joining, but the Bush insistedas noted in a recent article by the author of New York Times Roger Cohen. “We were convinced it would not be a good idea to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO,” recalled Christoph Heisgen, Chancellor Merkel’s top diplomatic adviser from 2005-2017, speaking to Cohen and the New York Times.
However, there were reactions inside the American “camp”, with him then US Ambassador to Moscow and current CIA Director William Burns, to warn the then head State Department, Condoleezza Rice, how the prospect of Ukraine’s membership in NATO is the reddest of the red lines on the Russian side. Many things would follow along the way: Russia’s war in Georgia (2008), η unilateral annexation of Crimea in the Russian Federation in 2014, o years of war in Donbas and now the war in Ukraine. Ukraine, however, has not joined NATO and, judging by the future neutrality regime currently being negotiated between Kyiv and Moscow, it will never join. Many will say that the “irrelevant” of the NATO perspective for Ukraine this had already been seen since 2008, because in its declaration at the time, NATO welcomed the NATO aspirations of the Ukrainians, but at the same time did not provide them with an action plan for membership. What is left after all this? A promise that was never fulfilled, a threat that was invaded and many questions such as “what would happen if”.
kathimerini
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