... two more attempts to “dock” with the West. After 9/11, it pledged support to the United States and sought an alliance with NATO, based on counter-terrorism, even as it proclaimed its “European vocation” and a desire to integrate with the European ... ... dispelled unfulfilled ambitions. Western integration on terms acceptable to Russia, until now a central pillar of Russia’s post-Soviet foreign policy, came crushing down.
Ironically, the alternative to that course, re-integration of former Soviet borderlands ...
... Ukraine, and even as to whether the E.U. should be involved with Ukraine at all.
The US has little intrinsic interest in Ukraine, apart from the interests of its politically-inflluential Ukrainian Diaspora. However, once the decision was made to expand NATO eastwards, it acquired a logic and momentum of its own, eventually putting NATO membership for Ukraine on the agenda. Many experienced, highly-respected specialists, including George Kennan, architect of the doctrine of containment of the Soviet ...
Disappearance of Polarity:
“Polarity” has long served as a useful explanatory framework in the study of international politics. The analogy to physical magnetism represents a system of states pulled or pushed into alliances by forces analogous to magnetic fields. Thinking in terms of polarity can be useful in explaining ...