Материал: Гольцева О.Ю. Международное право в официальных документах. Под ред. И.А. Горшеневой

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taken by Nato, and the first time it had used force against a sovereign state without UN approval. A 16,000-strong Nato peacekeeping force remains in Kosovo.

In 2003 Nato took its operations outside Europe for the first time when it assumed strategic command of the UNmandated peacekeeping force in and immediately around the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Changing relationships

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Nato embarked on a series of steps designed to build new relationships with former Warsaw Pact countries and particularly with Russia, which was profoundly suspicious of the alliance's plans to expand eastwards.

In 1994 Nato offered former Warsaw Pact members limited associations in the form of the Partnership for Peace programme, allowing them to participate in information sharing, joint exercises and peacekeeping operations.

But this simply appeared to confirm Russian fears that Nato posed a creeping threat to its security.

The Nato-Russia Permanent Joint Council was established in May 1997 to give Russia a consultative role in discussion of matters of mutual interest. While Moscow was given a voice, it rarely felt that it was really listened to.

Russia's fears intensified when in 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland became the first former Soviet bloc states to join Nato, bringing the alliance's borders 400 miles closer to the Russian frontier.

Aftermath of 11 September

The 11 September 2001 attacks on targets in the US are widely seen as a pivotal moment for Nato. The US did not involve the alliance in the international military campaign which followed, even though Secretary-General George Robertson quickly invoked Article Five of the Nato constitution declaring an attack on one member to be an attack on all.

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Russia's supportive reaction following the attacks proved to be the catalyst for a thaw in relations with Moscow. The establishment of the Nato-Russia Council was agreed in May 2002. This body gives Russia an equal role with the Nato countries in decision-making on policy to counter terrorism and other security threats.

However, the relationship with Russia continues to be problematical. Russia was unhappy that the Nato expansion of early 2004 – when seven new states were admitted – meant that the alliance had reached its borders.

Relations with Russia took a marked turn for the worse after the brief Russo-Georgian war of August 2008. Nato had deferred discussion of Georgian (and Ukrainian) membership until December, but announced that cooperation with Russia would be suspended until Moscow pulled all its troops out of Georgia.

The relations between the Russian and US leaderships became less confrontational after Barack Obama assumed the US presidency in January 2009, and Nato announced in March 2009 that it would be resuming high-level contacts with Russia.

Nato members are preparing to meet in Portugal for what is being billed as one of the most crucial summits in the alliance's 61-year history.

The 28 member states are hoping to reach a "New Strategic Concept" to shape the way Nato defends itself against threats over the next decade.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will also attend, in a sign of warming ties.

Afghanistan will be top of the agenda, with plans to bring Nato's combat operations to an end by 2014.

Afghan President, who is scheduled to address the summit on Saturday, has said he wants Nato to hand back control of the country by the end of 2014 – a deadline the US has described as realistic but not set in stone.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the deadline had existed for some time as "an aspirational goal"

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but that this did not mean all coalition forces would have to leave by that date.

The Lisbon talks are expected to shape the future of Nato at a time of shrinking budget cuts and expanding challenges, says BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt.

Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the BBC on Friday that a security handover to Afghan forces was realistic by the end of 2014.

Mr Medvedev will meet the leaders on Saturday, becoming the first Russian president to attend a Nato summit since his country's conflict with Georgia in 2008.

The alliance is keen to build bridges with Moscow, and a key issue at the summit will be agreeing plans for a joint study of missile defence.

The efforts have been aided by US President Barack Obama's insistence that the US will ratify a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

Moscow is also promising logistical help for Nato in Afghanistan by easing restrictions on transit routes into the country.

OVER TO YOU

1.What does Nato hope to achieve?

2.Is Nato losing the Afghan war?

3.What are the relations between Nato and UN?

Think these three questions over and write an essay to express your opinion.

Exercise 24. Read this interview with the armed conflicts researcher.

a.-Is armed conflict changing? If so, how?

– I am hesitant to answer “yes,” to this question. Certainly, there are evolving trends in the form and function of war – from things as obvious as the disappearance of the custom of declaring wars to things as subtle as fighting

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wars with dollars not guns, and much in between – new weapons, new tactics (including those which would not traditionally count as “armed conflict”), etc. Still, saying that there is a “new” form of armed conflict/war risks permitting policy-makers to follow the example of G. W. Bush, coming up with a “new” (and more politically convenient) set of analytical tools and ethical guidelines.

b.- What conflicts in particular do you see as representative of new forms of armed conflict?

– The economic sanctions regime against Iraq, 19902003, the “war on terror,” 2001-present,the 1991 Gulf

War, the 1994 Rwandan “civil war,” the Vietnam war ….

c.-How have these changes affected men and women and girls and boys differently?

– Sure. Warfare generally – be it an “old” World War I or a “new” war like the “war on terror” – affects men and women and girls and boys differently, because they are situated differently in the belligerent societies.

Economic warfare affects women differently, because women lose their jobs first in economic hard times, because gender-specific goods (like pre-natal vitamins) are often the first to leave markets, because women are most likely to suffer as a health system declines, because women are most likely to eat last when there is not enough food to go around, because sexual violence and domestic violence increase in times of conflict and deprivation, and suffering law enforcement systems do less to combat them…

The war on terror has gender-differential impacts as well. Women have been used as a casus belli (one of the justifications for the invasion of Afghanistan was protecting women from the Taliban) but are anything but safer in the aftermath of the war on terror. For example, women have been less safe in many respects in “postwar” Iraq. (New) participating private military corporations have a higher level of sexual abuse than traditional