beyondukraine.euandrussiainsearchofanewrelation

3. After Maidan:
Re-Starting NATO-Russia Relations
Luca Ratti
This chapter discusses NATO-Russia relations in the wider
context of the post-Cold War European security debate. While
evaluating the causes of their progressive deterioration, it also sets
out a few basic suggestions towards an improvement in mutual
understanding. The chapter argues that, while as a result of the
2013 Euromaidan revolution, relations between the alliance and
Moscow reached their post-Cold War nadir, the current dispute is
only the latest chapter of a crisis that began in the early 2000s,
when calls for NATO’s enlargement to former Soviet bloc states
and the ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan
exposed unresolved strategic differences between the West and
Moscow. Nonetheless, its more distant origins have to be found in
the nature of the 1989-1990 East-West settlement that left unclarified
the role of the Soviet Union and of its successor states,
thus generating reciprocal diffidence and conflicting perceptions
of the post-Cold War European security architecture.
The tension between the Atlantic Alliance and Russia that was
triggered by the Maidan demonstrations in Kiev is the latest
outburst of a protracted strategic dispute between the West and
Moscow. The causes of this dispute can be found in the former
Soviet space’s unresolved collocation in the European security
architecture. This issue was not addressed in the settlement that
between 1989 and 1990 brought the Cold War to an end: while
following the demise of the East-West division the alliance called
for the creation of a Europe that is ‘whole and free’ and attempted
to engage Moscow, those efforts were not backed by a