This is the first comprehensive analysis of the development of relations between Russia and NATO since 1991. Since the re-emergence of Russia as an independent state in December 1991, debates and controversies surrounding its evolving relations with NATO have been a prominent feature of the European security scene. This is the first detailed and comprehensive book-length analysis of Russia-NATO relations, covering the years 1991-2005. This new volume investigates the nature and substance of the ‘partnership’ relations that have developed between Russia and NATO since the end of the Cold War. It looks at the impact that the Kosovo crisis, September 11th, the Iraq War and the creation of the NATO-Russia Council have on this complex relationship. The author concludes that Russia and NATO have, so far, developed a pragmatic partnership, but one that may potentially develop into a more significant strategic partnership. This book will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, European politics and European security.

The importance of Russian thinking about NATO expansion eastward has been badly underestimated in the West. In this first comprehensive English-language assessment of the Russian position, Black seeks to remedy that oversight by a thorough examination of Russian official statements, expert analysis, party platforms, and media commentary, which show the degree to which NATO expansion has brought a rare unity to the otherwise fragmented and volatile Russian political arena. Based entirely on Russian-language sources, this timely study provides invaluable insights into current Russian thinking on NATO expansion and projects the significance of such thinking for the Western Alliance into the future.

Thirty years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, this book reveals how tensions between America, NATO, and Russia transformed geopolitics in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall “The most engaging and carefully documented account of this period in East-West diplomacy currently available.”—Andrew Moravscik, Foreign Affairs Not one inch. With these words, Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical bargain to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall: if you let your part of Germany go, we will move NATO not one inch eastward. Controversy erupted almost immediately over this 1990 exchange—but more important was the decade to come, when the words took on new meaning. Gorbachev let his Germany go, but Washington rethought the bargain, not least after the Soviet Union’s own collapse in December 1991. Washington realized it could not just win big but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off limits to NATO. On the thirtieth anniversary of the Soviet collapse, this book uses new evidence and interviews to show how, in the decade that culminated in Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, the United States and Russia undermined a potentially lasting partnership. Prize-winning historian M. E. Sarotte shows what went wrong.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the development of relations between Russia and NATO since 1991. Since the re-emergence of Russia as an independent state in December 1991, debates and controversies surrounding its evolving relations with NATO have been a prominent feature of the European security scene. This is the first detailed and comprehensive book-length analysis of Russia-NATO relations, covering the years 1991-2005. This new volume investigates the nature and substance of the ‘partnership’ relations that have developed between Russia and NATO since the end of the Cold War. It looks at the impact that the Kosovo crisis, September 11th, the Iraq War and the creation of the NATO-Russia Council have on this complex relationship. The author concludes that Russia and NATO have, so far, developed a pragmatic partnership, but one that may potentially develop into a more significant strategic partnership. This book will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, European politics and European security.

How do once bitter enemies move beyond entrenched rivalry at the diplomatic level? In one of the first attempts to apply practice theory to the study of International Relations, Vincent Pouliot builds on Pierre Bourdieu's sociology to devise a theory of practice of security communities and applies it to post-Cold War security relations between NATO and Russia. Based on dozens of interviews and a thorough analysis of recent history, Pouliot demonstrates that diplomacy has become a normal, though not a self-evident, practice between the two former enemies. He argues that this limited pacification is due to the intense symbolic power struggles that have plagued the relationship ever since NATO began its process of enlargement at the geographical and functional levels. So long as Russia and NATO do not cast each other in the roles that they actually play together, security community development is bound to remain limited.

In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O'Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe's far north to its south: Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and finally Cyprus plus Serbia, as well as possibly several other Balkan states. Discussion on the new framework should begin within NATO, followed by deliberation with the neutral countries themselves, and then formal negotiations with Russia. The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to help uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner; after that, corresponding sanctions on Russia would be lifted. The neutral countries would retain their rights to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past, including even those operations that might be led by NATO. They could think of and describe themselves as Western states (or anything else, for that matter). If the European Union and they so wished in the future, they could join the EU. They would have complete sovereignty and self-determination in every sense of the word. But NATO would decide not to invite them into the alliance as members. Ideally, these nations would endorse and promote this concept themselves as a more practical way to ensure their security than the current situation or any other plausible alternative.

Is America in a new Cold War with Russia? How does a new Cold War affect the safety and security of the United States? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? What should Donald Trump and America’s allies do? America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Topics include: Distorting Russia US Follies and Media Malpractices 2016 The Obama Administration Escalates Military Confrontation With Russia Was Putin’s Syria Withdrawal Really A “Surprise”? Trump vs. Triumphalism Has Washington Gone Rogue? Blaming Brexit on Putin and Voters Washington Warmongers, Moscow Prepares Trump Could End the New Cold War The Real Enemies of US Security Kremlin-Baiting President Trump Neo-McCarthyism Is Now Politically Correct Terrorism and Russiagate Cold-War News Not “Fit to Print” Has NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer? Why Russians Think America Is Attacking Them How Washington Provoked—and Perhaps Lost—a New Nuclear-Arms Race Russia Endorses Putin, The US and UK Condemn Him (Again) Russophobia Sanction Mania Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create. War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?

Russian international relations has undergone profound changes in the last fifteen years that have effected both the Russian view of the world and the outside perspective of the Russian Federation. These changes will undoubtedly play an integral part of Russian foreign relations for years to come. And yet the question remains, how has Russian influence adapted to the post-Soviet world order? In this critical analysis, Andrei Melville sheds light on the complexities of Russian foreign policy from 1991 to 2004. Divided into three parts, the book presents official translated documents in the first section that outline, among other things, the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the military doctrine of the Russian Federation, and the agreement on security and cooperation between NATO and Russia. These documents are an essential first step in understanding the shape and context of Russian foreign policy from the demise of the Soviet Union up to the present. The second section of the book is composed of official statements from Russia leaders who are seeking to define the next generation of Russian international relations. Among the statements is Vladimir Putin's illuminating essay on Russia at the turn of the century. It is here where Putin defines the Russian policy of a strong state, efficient economy, and social solidarity. In addition, former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov provides a statement on the hopes and obstacles for international relations in the 21st century. The authors of the remaining three papers have also served as Prime Ministers or foreign ministers in the Russian government during the past decade. The final section of the book is composed ofanalysis from scholars and Russian foreign policy experts. The analysis addresses a wide range of topics from the crisis in Kosovo to Russian-Chinese relations. Here, the official documents, statements, and policies of the Russian Federation are cast in a different light, bringing to surface the tough questions, the challenges, and the promises that face Russian foreign policy in the future. Putin's "new course" or "foreign policy therapy" is analyzed by specialists who observe their subject at short range.

How and why did NATO, a Cold War military alliance created in 1949 to counter Stalin's USSR, become the cornerstone of new security order for post-Cold War Europe? Why, instead of retreating from Europe after communism's collapse, did the U.S. launch the greatest expansion of the American commitment to the old continent in decades? Written by a high-level insider, Opening NATO's Door provides a definitive account of the ideas, politics, and diplomacy that went into the historic decision to expand NATO to Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on the still-classified archives of the U.S. Department of State, Ronald D. Asmus recounts how and why American policy makers, against formidable odds at home and abroad, expanded NATO as part of a broader strategy to overcome Europe's Cold War divide and to modernize the Alliance for a new era. Asmus was one of the earliest advocates and intellectual architects of NATO enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s and subsequently served as a top aide to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott, responsible for European security issues. He was involved in the key negotiations that led to NATO's decision to extend invitations to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, the signing of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and finally, the U.S. Senate's ratification of enlargement. Asmus documents how the Clinton Administration sought to develop a rationale for a new NATO that would bind the U.S. and Europe together as closely in the post-Cold War era as they had been during the fight against communism. For the Clinton Administration, NATO enlargement became the centerpiece of a broader agenda to modernize the U.S.-European strategic partnership for the future. That strategy reflected an American commitment to the spread of democracy and Western values, the importance attached to modernizing Washington's key alliances for an increasingly globalized world, and the fact that the Clinton Administration looked to Europe as America's natural partner in addressing the challenges of the twenty-first century. As the Alliance weighs its the future following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and prepares for a second round of enlargement, this book is required reading about the first post-Cold War effort to modernize NATO for a new era.

A detailed illustrated study of Putin's shadowy security and paramilitary armed forces. While the size of Russia's regular forces has shrunk recently, its security and paramilitary elements have become increasingly powerful. Under the Putin regime they have proliferated and importantly seem set to remain Russia's most active armed agencies for the immediate future. In parallel, within the murky world where government and private interests intersect, a number of paramilitary 'private armies' operate almost as vigilantes, with government toleration or approval. This book offers a succinct overview of the official, semi-official and unofficial agencies that pursue Russian government and quasi-government objectives by armed means, from the 200,000-strong Interior Troops, through Police and other independent departmental forces, down to private security firms. Featuring rare photographs, and detailed colour plates of uniforms, insignia and equipment, this study by a renowned authority explores the Putin regime's shadowy special-forces apparatus, active in an array of counter-terrorist and counter-mafia wars since 1991.