The servicemen of the NATO countries' forces will become polyglots. The U.S. Air Force has initiated such a programme. The NATO command now pays its servicemen an extra 500 dollars monthly for the knowledge of Russian and the other languages of the CIS states. Judging by the facts, this should help the NATO servicemen to feel more at ease in dealing with the post-Soviet states.
Carrying out various missions abroad, in many respects, depends on the soldiers' ability to communicate in the language of that very country, where the given operation is underway, according to those in the Pentagon. The more than 100 languages for the knowledge of which additional money will be paid to the U.S. servicemen are divided into 3 categories. The first one, "which ranks as No.1 in importance" includes the Russian and Turkmen languages, on a par with Chinese, French, Arab and Korean, Turkish, Farsi, and also Pushtu. "Languages necessary for crisis cases" include the Georgian, Azeri, Kazakh, and Uzbek languages. And the last category includes the Chechen and the Ukrainian languages, and also all the other languages in the post-Soviet space. Absolutely all servicemen, not only translators and intelligence officers can receive a solid increment for the knowledge of all these languages, Lieutenant -Colonel Paul Valenzuela said. He is responsible for the implementation of the programme for language and country studies training in the NATO air forces.
How can this general thirst for knowledge, strengthened by a material stimulus into the bargain, be explained? Russian military expert - the Vice President of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems - Konstantin Sivkov believes that NATO is coming closer to Russia's borders:
"Additional pay for the U.S. Air Force personnel for studying the Russian language ranks with the growing interest in it in West Point, which is the Academy of the U.S. Ground Forces. It also ranks with the development of the missile-defence system in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and the Czech Republic - meaning Russia's border countries. And all this is happening amid a sharp reduction of the Russian nuclear potential within the framework of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT-3)".
True, there's one more point of view. For example, the deputy director of the Institute for the USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Pavel Zolotaryov believes that to give a material stimulus to language studies in the U.S. army is natural:
"Americans have always paid great attention to studying other languages. In the higher educational establishments in the USA officers have always got a humanitarian education by studying the languages and culture s of other nations. And the fact that today they study Russian and the other languages of the former USSR peoples is a natural process. Such an approach to encouragement in studying the languages should be taken as a guideline by the Russian armed forces too".
Be that as it may, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has long made it clear that it is interested in the post-Soviet space. It would be good to mention here Georgia and its hypothetical membership in NATO. Of course, NATO is interested not only in Georgia. The Rose Roth seminar, organized by NATO, is opening in Yerevan on Thursday. The theme is peaceful enough: Regional Development in the South Caucasus". The Armenian language will be one of the main languages at the seminar. As it appears, NATO's representatives will explain in detail to the southerners what prospects for itself the North Atlantic Alliance sees in their region.
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