ABSTRACT
In the case of NATO and Russia, the greatest challenge in the aftermath of the Cold War, was that of putting aside more than 50 years of confrontation and adversarial relations, and embarking on new relations of a cooperative nature. Let’s not forget that NATO’s initial raison d’être was the protection of its members against the expansion of the Soviet Union; and that the grounds for Russia’s supremacy in the Soviet time throughout the Cold War rested largely on its opposition to NATO. Yet, the imperatives of the new international order gave no other choice to the two former enemies but to work together on a new type of relationship. It was simply impossible that, in a world ruled by globalisation, Russia could be excluded from the international scene, and from the different arrangements that bound its Western neighbours together.
