ABSTRACT
The historically changing understandings of national security by ruling elites and in public opinion are derived from the collective historical experience, political culture, identity, and interpretation of a country’s place and mission in the world. Understandings of national security are also conditioned by international economic and cultural ties, and numerous subjective factors. Increasing global instability and disagreements between the leading actors on the international political scene, combined with European Union sanctions against Russia, have strengthened realist approaches to world politics with regard to the USSR/Russia – the conviction that force and deterrence remain the most crucial factors. Vladimir Putin’s 2007 Munich speech became a harbinger of a new phase in Russian politics. He stressed that cooperation between Russia and the West must be based on equality, and he condemned attempts to create a unipolar world dominated by the United States as the only superpower.
