ROBERT PSZCZEL

They say that politics is the art of the possible. Indeed, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO-Russia relations were accompanied by long-standing efforts to take advantage of the favourable circumstances. The Allies openly celebrated the end of the Cold War and sought to capitalise on the so-called peace dividend. The situation could not have been different due to the fact that for decades NATO’s attention (and its resources) were mainly focused on neutralising the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact, which ceased to exist relatively quickly and in disgrace.

At the same time, NATO members made every effort to incorporate the Russian Federation (i.e., the USSR’s successor state) into the international security system as much as possible. The shape of the relations between NATO and Russia was (and continues to be) crucial to the stability architecture both in Europe and across the world. Starting from 1990, this process has had several stages.

The first stage, which lasted until 1997 or so, can be referred to as logical romanticism. This romanticism resulted from the hope that the “new Russia” would follow the path of democracy, sever its imperial roots, and proceed to build a modern state that respects its citizens and international law. After all, the tragic experiences of Stalinism, Communist Party dictatorship, the gulags, censorship, and the Brezhnev doctrine were rejected by the elites in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and by the majority of society alike. By signing the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, devised by members of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1992, Russia recognised the full rights of other states to choose their allies and partners and sought to resolve problems in its relations with its neighbours, which were due to the difficult historical legacy.

Concurrently, the Western states attempted to prevent two scenarios from happening. One of these scenarios involved the hardliners in Moscow seizing power once again in order to reconstruct the USSR and pose a threat to the independence of Eastern European states. The second scenario envisaged the breakup of the Russian Federation. In this context, the intention to achieve the peaceful reunification of Germany was amongst the most important motivations. The coup carried out in 1991 was viewed as a warning against the fulfilment of the first scenario. Strong separatist tendencies (e.g., in Chechnya), for their part, created a threat that the authorities in Moscow might lose control of nuclear weapons and that an economic and social disaster might be imminent, with all its unpredictable international consequences.