ABSTRACT
After 8 years of recession following the financial collapse in September 2008, and with no return to pre-crisis conditions in sight, the global political economy now has taken a turn characterized by substantially stronger state interventions, including not just economic but also military actions. The expansion of NATO towards Eastern Europe had started decades ago, but even after the implosion of the Warsaw Pact on 1 July 1991, there still remained a north-south band of nation states providing some distance between NATO forces and Russian troops. Only now, when – after the Eastern Enlargement of the EU in 2004 – more and more Eastern states became NATO members, a more explosive situation emerged.
