Analyzing the results of yesterday's NATO summit, some observers said that during his tenure in office to the current US president, Donald Trump managed to press his own agenda in the alliance, in the center of which henceforth the fight against terrorism and the increase in defense spending among the member countries of the alliance. "The threat from the east" is supposedly receding into the background.

However, the latter statement is very controversial. On the one hand, Trump called the "threat from the Russian Federation" one of the main for the alliance, along with terrorism and migration. At the same time, according to the Secretary General of the alliance Jens Stoltenberg, the approach to the Russian Federation will not change and will consist in deterrence and dialogue. NATO does not seek confrontation with Russia, "Russia is our biggest neighbor, it will continue to be, and we are striving for better and more constructive relations with Russia," Stoltenberg stressed.. He explains the idea of ??increasing defense spending by a "symmetrical response": they say, all NATO actions are "balanced, defensive in nature and a proportional response to Russia's actions". From what follows: Russia is still considered an enemy, although in places and negotiable.

By and large, to unfold from the "threat" in the person of the Russian Federation to the threat in the form of IG, the alliance is unprofitable: to him, from the point of view of his own existence, such an enemy as Russia is more profitable, says Pavel Salin, director of the Center for Political Studies of the Financial University. "The North Atlantic alliance was already trying to fight terrorism, but it turned out that these attempts at fighting are ineffective. An organization built on a hierarchical principle can not fight an organization built on the principle of a network (and all terrorist organizations are built that way). Therefore, we need to look for an opponent who functions on a hierarchical basis, and Russia is such an opponent, "said the expert" Utru ".

Thus, there are serious doubts that NATO will really retreat to IGIEL - in this case the alliance will simply lose the meaning of its existence, make mistakes and new claims will arise to the bloc. And on the "Russian threat" (although it may be a Korean threat, and any other of the same number of prisoners in a national state), you can "leave" a fairly long time, said the expert.

With money it's still easier: although Americans have long been pushing the idea of ??increasing defense spending among Europeans, the latter will not pay as much as the US wants. Europe can say anything, but it will not affect the costs, the analyst said..

"But Americans are also not ready to pay for NATO, for them it is costly. I think that the US will simply reconsider the concept of the North Atlantic Alliance, in which, by and large, two players - from the western side of the Atlantic, America, and from the East, Europeans, "said Pavel Salin.

By the way, according to Russian commentators, the plans outlined at the summit for the formal accession of NATO to the coalition against the IG are symbolic and do not create any "surplus value" to the current situation. In the opinion of Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, these plans are explained by Washington's desire to involve as many allies in the difficult Middle East junction as possible and talk about some serious confrontation, or, conversely, Brussels's interaction with Russia and its allies on the ground, Most likely, do not have to. In addition, the senator believes, "there is a task to define (and better legitimize) the presence of NATO in the region in which the most important events of the planet take place" otherwise the role of the alliance "will reduce to a very expensive service of relic phobias of Eastern Europeans against Russia". On the whole, it is time for NATO members to end their absurd games of sanctions, which affected the most important anti-terrorist cooperation with Russia, and finally, for real threats, Kosachev summed up.

However, it is also not necessary to talk about any serious steps in the joint fight against terrorism with Russia. The US and NATO are ready for Russia to join the alliance, and Russia insists on an equal union, says Pavel Salin. But this conflict of interests exists not for the first ten years: the West considers itself to be the center of influence to which it is necessary to join on its terms, Russia insists on an equal dialogue. This dissonance is now projected, including, in the military sphere, and specifically in the operation in the Middle East, the analyst summarized.