NATO: Guardian of peace or bellicose bully? spotlight image

NATO: Guardian of peace or bellicose bully?

Opinion piece (Al Jazeera)
17 April 2015
"We are pretty close to a new Cold War because of Russia's illegal actions in Ukraine," says former Secretary-General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen who led the alliance from 2009 to 2014.

In this episode of Head to Head on Al Jazeera, Mehdi Hasan challenges Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister and former NATO chief, on the West's military alliance's role in Eastern Europe and the so-called War on Terror.

He asks is it the West, or Putin who calls the shots in Ukraine? Has NATO reignited the Cold War? Did it create a bigger problem in Libya? And did it botch its mission in Afghanistan?

Participating in the discussion is:

• Richard Sakwa, Russia and European politics professor and author of Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, from the University of Kent

• Alexander Nekrassov, a political commentator and former adviser to the Kremlin

• Ian Bond, a former British diplomat and director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform