ABSTRACT
The audience, comprising Russian and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military and political experts enthusiastically applauded. In return a NATO spokesman expressed deep satisfaction at such a prospect. NATO’s ability to play any role in prevention or resolution of regional low-intensity conflicts and ethnic frictions which are becoming one of the principal threats in Eurasia since the end of Cold War is thus far from likely to be decisive. The most important conditions should be of a political nature, involving Russia in the very process of decision-making concerning the NATO ‘grand design’ and providing for a relationship between NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe which has ‘more all-European legitimacy’. The whole stream of debates around NATO enlargement would not be understood correctly without taking into consideration growing military-political integration within the Commonwealth of Independent States.
