Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's answer to a media question about the EU-NATO Joint Declaration signed in Brussels
11 January 2023 14:48
20-11-01-2023
Question: How would you comment on the Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation signed in Brussels?
Maria Zakharova: The Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation, which President of the European Council Charles Michel, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg signed in Brussels on January 10, 2023, has reaffirmed the EU's full subordination to the bloc, which is a military instrument being used to ensure US interests. While proclaiming "the importance of the transatlantic bond" and "mutually reinforcing strategic partnership" between the EU and NATO, the declaration is promoting the tasks set out in the NATO Strategic Concept adopted at the bloc's summit in Madrid in June 2022.
Contrary to all their OSCE obligations, they view security in the Euro-Atlantic area through the prism of standing up to Russia, increasing weapons and equipment supplies to the Kiev regime, enhancing military mobility in the European "theatre of war," and continuing NATO's expansion. The declaration's provision on the secondary or, as the bloc's strategists put it, complementary role of European defence to NATO has effectively cancelled out the EU's claim for autonomy in this sphere.
A reference in the document to international law and the principles of the UN Charter is especially hypocritical in light of the bloc's aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the bombing of Libya in 2011.
On the global stage, the EU is taking its partnership with NATO to the next level, which amounts to hence joining its geopolitical competition with China and efforts to ensure the bloc's superiority in protecting critical infrastructures, space, the media and even the security implications of climate change.
The Joint Declaration is the latest accolade to the philosophy of Western superiority. It openly proclaims the intention of the EU and NATO to further mobilise the combined set of instruments at their disposal, be they political, economic or military, to pursue their common objectives to the benefit of their one billion citizens.
Therefore, they view the rest of the world as a hostile medium, which must be reformed with the use of these instruments. This is nothing new. EU High Representative Josep Borrell has already described the EU as a garden and the rest of the world as a jungle that might "invade the garden."
In reality, it is not the jungle that is invading Brussels' "garden," but the EU and NATO that are stepping on the rake of the unipolar world again. The instability, conflicts and tensions on the NATO-EU periphery, which concern them so much, just like the food and energy security crises Brussels is blaming on Russia, are a direct result of NATO's "humanitarian interventions" and the EU's attempts to force countries to pursue the "correct" foreign and economic policies. Commenting on the latest developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina the other day, EU Lead Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Peter Stano openly said that the EU has a toolbox it can use "to make sure that [the EU] policies or standards are being followed." Just like that, plain and simple.
It is clear that NATO's and EU's confrontational approach towards states that pursue independent foreign policies, and their attempts to divide the world into "us and them" will only hinder the peaceful settlement of conflicts and weaken international security against the persisting challenge of terrorism, which has been mentioned in the declaration.
The Americans' motives are crystal clear. They want to pull the EU into the "geostrategic competition," as it is described in the declaration, which Washington has launched so that Europe will play the role of America's vassal, rapidly ceding its political and economic positions and hence becoming increasingly more dependent on the United States.
But does this suit the interests of the EU citizens, who have to pay for this costly competition amid the systemic crises provoked by the West? They can choose to keep their dependent positions in the new world order, sacrificing their national interests to the United States. But the new world order will never be centred on NATO and the EU, however much Washington and Brussels may want it to be.
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