ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to make sense of the controversies with a more specific and critical evaluation of the Russian question than that offered hitherto. North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the North Atlantic Co-operation Council, was succeeded by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council in 1997. For many the concept of the balance of power, commonly associated with realist assumptions of world politics, is a moribund and dangerous concept in the post-cold-war era. In balance of power terms perhaps a far more dangerous area that requires more attention by the US as the world's primary political, military and economic power is the Asia-Pacific region. In order to understand better contemporary Russian perceptions on the issue of NATO enlargement it might be useful to engage in a little counterfactual history, and to turn the tables around, re-imagining a different end to the cold war. Imagine for a moment that the United States and the 'West' had lost the cold war.
