In the August 2005 issue of the RUSI Journal, Professor Stephen Blank assessed the way ahead in Eurasia, focusing on the role that Russia needs to play if the region's conflicts are to be 'unfrozen', and noted some of the steps that are already being taken to ensure closer NATO-Russia co-operation. It is worth emphasizing that there is nothing novel about this. The search for NATO-Russia dialogue and later cooperation, which was launched by the London Declaration on 6 July 1990, has now been underway for over fifteen years. Moscow's reluctance to buy into the military programmes of the Partnership for Peace finally began to diminish when in May 1997 Russia achieved the special relationship with the Alliance that it had long sought. As a crisis management forum, however, the Permanent Joint Council proved itself to be unequal to the challenges presented by the Kosovo crisis.
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