ABSTRACT
How could yesterday’s enemies become tomorrow’s friends? This is, in a nutshell, the challenge that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Russia have been facing since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Indeed, from 1949 until the early 90s, NATO-Russia relations have been built on a conflicting basis only. There is no need to recall that one of the fundamentals of the North Atlantic Alliance was the protection of the West against the emergence of a threat posed by communism, then embodied by the Soviet Union. Almost simultaneously, the newly created Euro-Atlantic organisation found its immediate rival in the emerging bloc of the Warsaw Pact. By the same token, one of the justifications of the Soviet Union’s status as one of the two major powers in the aftermath of Second World War was based on the existence of a threatening military organisation at its borders. In these conditions, for over 50 years, the existence of NATO and of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in their respective capacity had become mutually justifying.
