Russia FM Lavrov Calls Into Question NATO’s ‘Raison d’Etre ‘

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been searching for an external enemy to justify its existence, but the bloc’s “raison d’etre” was actually gone with the demise of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday. “They [NATO] have been constantly searching for an external enemy, to a large extent because of the need to preserve NATO’s raison d’etre which – and many Western politicians and analysts acknowledge that – disappeared when the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union ceased to exist,” Lavrov commented on NATO’s policies at a meeting with…