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The Russian-U.S. security guarantees negotiations have become the most important international topic today. Moscow’s package of proposals to Washington prioritizes not allowing Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. However, Washington and the NATO leadership reject such a possibility, stressing point blank that the alliance's charter guarantees that every country has the right to join NATO. Moscow, in turn, is saying at various levels that NATO’s founding documents prohibit countries with territorial disputes from entering the alliance.
Alexei Arbatov, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, discusses this issue in an interview with Interfax Special Correspondent Vyacheslav Terekhov.
In 1995, when NATO enlargement was discussed - and that was the first stage [out of eight] - a study within NATO was conducted regarding criteria for states aspiring to join the alliance. It was said in Article 6 that countries willing to join the alliance must resolve their territorial disputes and other conflicts peacefully. However, another article says that nonetheless there are no absolute and fixed criteria and these issues should be resolved at the political level. Importantly, an invitation to a country that applied for membership is based on the full consensus of all alliance's member states in line with Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty. That is all.
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