NATO Foreign Ministers Discussed Alliance Reforms and Relations with Russia

NATO's strategy needs updating, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. The experts proposed a 138 points program of changes. NATO's policy towards Russia was discussed. Foreign ministers of 30 countries of the North Atlantic Alliance discussed possible reforms of the organization. NATO's strategic concept needs updating, said the secretary general of the alliance Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels on Tuesday, December 1, after a foreign ministers’ videoconference. According to him, at the online meeting they discussed the NATO 2030 project and the way to prepare the alliance for future challenges, as well as the topic of Russia and the situation in Afghanistan. "We are adapting NATO's containment policy towards Russia's destabilizing actions. At the same time, we all believe that the dialogue with Russia should be continued," Stoltenberg stressed. He noted that the current NATO Strategic Concept was developed in 2010, when there still were hopes that the time of great disagreements with Russia had passed. However, this was followed by a conflict in Ukraine. The new concept should as well formulate the framework conditions for a possible response to the threat from China and new technologies. 138 proposals of the expert group At the meeting, a 138-point program for a possible NATO renewal was presented, developed by an expert group, which, among others, included ex-head of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, Thomas de Maizière. The proposed reforms aim to improve political interaction within NATO and accelerate decision-making. Among experts' proposals were cited options as: to limit the possibility of blocking the decisions of the alliance by individual members, to develop new norms of interaction, for example, a general discussion of decisions in the field of security made by the members of the alliance, and also to prohibit politically motivated blocking of NATO decisions. Thanks to such a ban, Turkey would not have been able to further block the joint work of the alliance with Austria, and Hungary with Ukraine. Turkey's politics and NATO's relationship with Ankara were one of the main reasons for starting the discussion on reforms. Among the problematic issues were Turkish actions in northern Syria, Ankara's purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems and its position in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Statement by the Foreign Ministers of Germany and France The purpose of the discussions was to "strengthen the political component of the alliance", among other things, to modernize the 2010 strategy and revitalize transatlantic cooperation, according to a joint statement by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and his French counterpart Jean-Yves le Drian, published on the same day. "We Europeans are now not only asking what America can do for us, but what we can do ourselves to strengthen our security and give a more balanced look to the transatlantic partnership," the document said.