beyondukraine.euandrussiainsearchofanewrelation

32 Beyond Ukraine. EU and Russia in Search of a New Relation
regard to the reorganization of the Eastern European and Southern
Caucasus countries of the post-Soviet space. Since the end of the
USSR, the European Union – in concert with the United States
and NATO – has in fact pursued a policy of political and military
expansion eastward that Moscow has always considered
threatening and unjustified in light of the absence of the
ideological and strategic danger previously constituted by the
Communist system 6 . In fact, since the end of the USSR Western
policy toward Russia has seen at the same time the establishment
of forms of dialogue with the activation of a new containment
strategy. A policy strongly influenced by the perception of the US
strategic need to avoid “the reemergence of a Eurasian empire that
could obstruct the American geostrategic goal” 7 . A decisive
moment in this process was the enlargement in 2004, the largest
single expansion of the European Union, which involved four
countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) that
had been members of the Warsaw Pac, as well as the three Baltic
republics (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia). All these countries (with
Romania and Bulgaria) were already members of NATO, a
military alliance created to deal with the Soviet Union and that
Moscow perceives as a threat for its national security. We should
not forget that the enlargement of the EU is closely linked with the
expansion of NATO. And this not only in the Russian perception.
As written by John Mearsheimer, “The taproot of the trouble is
NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to
move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West.
At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s
backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine – beginning
with the Orange Revolution in 2004 – were critical elements,
too” 8 . Of course Mearsheimer’s stance is not shared by the
6 For the Russian interpretation of this expansion in the first post-Soviet decade see
S. Rogov, M. Nossov, La Russia e l’allargamento della NATO, in M. de Leonardis (ed.),
La nuova NATO: i membri, le strutture, i compiti, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2001, pp. 183-202.
7 Z. Brzeziński, The Grand Chessboard. American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives,
Basic Books, New York 1997, p. 87.
8 J. Mearsheimer (2004).