Armenia Not in NATO or EU in Next 10 Years: Opinion

Peaceful solutions to the Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflicts are important conditions for South Caucasus countries to integrate into NATO. But even if this were to happen, I do not expect to see any country of the region in NATO or the European Union in the next 10 years, said Ivan Katchanovski, a visiting Scholar at Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, in an interview with APA news agency’s Washington, DC, correspondent.

“My study of the determinants of the accession of post-communist countries into NATO and the EU shows that the post-Soviet states, with the exception of the Baltic States, face bleak prospects of the European Union and NATO integration even when they would satisfy all official criteria for the EU and NATO memberships. These countries, including the South Caucasus nations, are often regarded in the West as not belonging to Europe,” he said.