A strategic continuation, a tactical change Russia’s European security policy. OSW Point of View 76, October 2019

• Main Author: Menkiszak, Marek
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: common foreign & security policy 1993 > European Global Strategy; Russia; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://aei.pitt.edu/102360/; http://aei.pitt.edu/102360/1/PW_76_A_strategic_continuation_net.pdf

The collapse of the Soviet bloc’s structures (the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact) and then of the Soviet Union itself in 1989–1991 was a kind of geopolitical earthquake in Europe. The main political and legal successor of the USSR, the Russian Federation, had to determine its place in the European order that was being formed, including the security sphere. The new Russia, which inherited from the USSR its membership in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) and the newly established North Atlantic Co-operation Council (NACC), declared its attachment to European democratic values, suggesting that it was ready to embark on close co-operation and, at some point in the future, even join the European and Euro- Atlantic security structures (including NATO) that had been formed during the Cold War era in opposition to the USSR.