You said they were “formal partners” in an attempt to no doubt stipulate they must act in concert with NATO. They do not.
“You said they were “formal partners” in an attempt to no doubt stipulate they must act in concert with NATO. They do not.”
That was a rather ridiculous attempt to misrepresent what was said. I said they were “formal partners” because that is precisely what they are: “formal” because the partnership is a formal written agreement and “partner” because the agreements say they are a NATO Partner in the NATO “Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC).” It hardly seems to be possible to be any more literal, accurate, and succinct than that. Your comment was also rather ridiculous given how the NATO Partners are free of a NATO Member’s obligation to act in concert with the consensus decision of the NATO Member councils which Russia has so often demonstrated in practice in the partnership NATO-Russia Council. See:
NATO - Russia relations
Russia claims that NATO has spent years trying to marginalise it internationally.
Since the early 1990s the Alliance has consistently worked to build a cooperative relationship with Russia on areas of mutual interest, and striven towards a strategic partnership.
Before the fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO began reaching out, offering dialogue in place of confrontation, as the London NATO Summit of July 1990 made clear (declaration here). In the following years, the Alliance promoted dialogue and cooperation by creating new fora, the Partnership for Peace (PfP) and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), open to the whole of Europe, including Russia (PfP founding documents here and here).
As a sign of Russia’s unique role in Euro-Atlantic security, in 1997 NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, creating the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council. In 2002 they upgraded that relationship, creating the NATO-Russia Council (NRC). (The Founding Act can be read here, the Rome Declaration which established the NRC here.)
Since the foundation of the NRC, NATO and Russia have worked together on issues ranging from counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism to submarine rescue and civil emergency planning. No other partner has been offered a comparable relationship.
Far from marginalising Russia, NATO has treated it as a privileged partner.
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_109141.htm