Russian Foreign Policy towards NATO in 1990s. Ruined partnership

After the collapse of the Soviet Union a lot of new countries were established on the debris of Soviet empire. Those countries represented a sphere of high interest not only for NATO, which were created to rebuke the USSR power, but also for the Russian Federation, which did not want to loose influence in the region.

In this work I am going to analyze the Russian Foreign policy towards NATO in 1990s. In this period Russia as a new sovereign state had a chance to improve its relationship with NATO, a chance to establish democracy and become a partner of most developed countries, such as USA, UK, France, etc. But did Russia manage to do it? Russian sphere of interests was still opposite to the west one. So another question is did Russian officials had an aspiration to follow western countries or they had some other plans? To find out answer we will overview the period from the good beginning to the end of Yeltsin’s Russia, which is much worse.

From the beginning of 1990s it was obviously and widely admitted, that system of international relation based on bipolar word was going to an end. It meant, world began changing in its legal and institutional context. Those institutes and international law, which were the result of global bipolarity, will be adapted to new reality. To keep up to date, Russia should review its position in international relations, taking into consideration that it is not the “great power” any more.

But Russian officials still consider their country to be a “great power” and they make people of Russia believe in it. This is the dominant position on which Russian government is building their foreign policy. They did just one step back, admitted that now they should take into consideration their surrounding. The Post-Soviet Russia was quite weak, but still wants to be on the same level as most developed countries. Nowadays this belief is not as strong as right after the collapse of the Soviet Union.