Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

the ability to conduct huge quantities of international
monetary transactions at the speed of light <strong>and</strong> to
project military power to any part of the earth, the
United States was for a while able to make globalization
equate to Americanization. As Lukyanov says,
“Moscow was ready to assume a subordinate status,”
in this U.S.-dominated international system at least
for the first half of the 1990s. 4
Such a status raised the hackles of Russian policymakers,
particularly Evegeny Primakov, who briefly
became Prime Minister under President Boris Yeltsin
<strong>and</strong> who had a more wary outlook than many others
about U.S. intentions. Indeed, promised economic assistance
to Russia from the United States did not occur,
<strong>and</strong> instead <strong>NATO</strong> started—from the Russian
perspective—to advance toward <strong>and</strong> threaten Russia’s
borders. As Russia continued to suffer economically
<strong>and</strong> to undergo various hyper-capitalistic economic
experiments that at first enriched only a few individuals,
a counter-reaction inevitably occurred in which
traditional Russian fears about a diminished place in
the international system surfaced.
These international <strong>and</strong> domestic conditions took
place in the context not only of a globalized (Americanized)
system based on the soft power of technology,
but also of an assertive <strong>NATO</strong> <strong>and</strong> United States
utilizing the hard power of the military. A sea change
in Russian attitudes occurred in March 1999, when
talks on the status of Kosovo broke down <strong>and</strong> <strong>NATO</strong>
bombed Serbian troops, forcing hundreds of thous<strong>and</strong>s
of refugees to flee the area during 78 days of
fighting. A final settlement occurred after that, eventuating
in Kosovo’s independence by February 2008
with a constitution approved in June. Moscow was
incensed from the beginning of the operation, with a
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