NATO’s invitation to Montenegro to become the alliance’s twenty-ninth member has significance far beyond the Connecticut-size Balkan country. First, despite current European crises, and in the face of Russian opposition, the alliance members held fast to a core element of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, NATO enlargement, thereby signaling other potential candidates like Sweden and Finland that the door remains open for them. Second, Moscow’s aggressive reaction demonstrated the counter-productive clumsiness that has characterized Russia’s European policy under President Vladimir Putin. Leaders of European NATO states, especially France’s President François Hollande after the Paris massacre, did not succumb to the …read more
Source: The Huffington Post
