ABSTRACT
The Cold War’s end with the 1989–90 peaceful anti-Communist revolts in Eastern Europe, and the collapse of both Communism and the USSR, suddenly released old pent-up ethno-nationalisms in Europe and the ex-USSR, while US leadership of the West and NATO was reconfirmed with its permanent commitment to European security. Russia instead survived only as a semi-democratic “courtesy power” with minimal forces, a collapsing population and massive economic reliance on exports of raw materials and arms. In Russia, the political clash between President Boris Yeltsin’s reformist government and a Communist/Nationalist parliament was repressed during the “Reds and Browns” failed Coup (1993), but opposition to NATO’s expansion toward vulnerable Russian borders remained, pushing Russia into ultra-nationalist anti-Western policies in Yugoslavia and Iraq to retain a figment of its past international influence.
