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Ekaterina Chimiris:
Russia-Ukraine Relations 2020: Equation With Many Variables. A View from Russia
Ukraine first embraced the European path during the 2004 revolution. Institutionally, this path implies the country’s aspiration to join the EU and NATO. Recent amendments to the Ukrainian constitution legitimize this drive.
The European identity is historically a superstructure above the national identity. Ukraine’s main problem is its aim not to follow the traditional procedure and therefore ...
... Consequently, the project has been associated with far-reaching strategic implications. Referring to the opinions expressed by politicians and experts on both sides of the Atlantic, Western media have represented the pipeline construction as infringing on the NATO interests in the region and frustrating the unity of the European nations. The pipeline has also been presented as laying the ground for Russian military offensive into its European neighbourhood. This has created quite an exceptional environment ...
... words show that the Cold War began long before the so-called Truman Doctrine. In fact, one can pre-date the beginning of a Cold War mentality to 1791, when the English Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, lambasted Russia for wishing to dismember Anatolia. This was only some twenty-two years after Catherine the Great’s attempt to free Greece via the Orlov brothers. At any rate, when Greece’s first leader, the pro-Russian Kapodistrias (a former Russian foreign minister), was assassinated in ...
... through joint efforts, to build a new type of relations characterized by partnership instead of confrontation. Indeed, over a short period of time, we succeeded in developing a set of essential documents intended to regulate Russia’s relations with NATO, the European Union, the Council of Europe etc. I believe that all these documents retain their value today.
I could spend a great deal of time talking about this stage in our relations, since I was directly involved in drafting and adopting many ...
... environment and the nature of the Austria-Italy relations. By the time of the South Tyrol deal, both Austria and Italy considered themselves organic parts of a greater European family of nations. This is despite the fact that Austria, even now, is not a NATO member and only joined the EU in 1995, 24 years after the agreement on South Tyrol had been reached.
Neither country had a fundamental identity problem that could feed radical nationalism and block a settlement. Their respective national identities ...
Eurasia is entering the 2020s with a burden of old problems while also facing new dangerous challenges
Confrontation between Russia and the USA/NATO
There is no reason to believe that the worsening relations between Russia and the West, a process that began six years ago following the Ukrainian crisis, will be rectified in the near future. The current conflict is largely due to the fact that,...
... political decisions following the geography and aspirations of most of its citizens to integrate the Euro-Atlantic society. Based on the past and the Nordic-Teutonic identity, the Government of Estonia embraced the idea of joining the European Union, NATO, and later on the Eurozone.
Both Germany and Austria (former parts of Holly Roman Empire) have recognized the Germanic background of the Estonian people when the Nordics - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Greenland and the Faroe Islands ...
... were surprised that France was trying to influence the fate of the INF Treaty, which was (or rather had been, before its demise) a bilateral treaty between Moscow and Washington.
Macron had some explaining to do to his American and European partners, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, journalists and experts, and he assured them that France was not really supporting any kind of moratorium. At the same time, his government is not discarding the idea of shaping a “new security architecture” ...
... political symbols.
When the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was recognised in August 2008, it was the Caucasus that saw the precedent of changed borders between the former Soviet republics.
It was in the Caucasus that Georgia, in its bid for NATO membership, held a referendum on acceding to the alliance and over two-thirds of Georgians voted for accession. Consequently, strategic cooperation with NATO was, in addition to rhetoric,
bolstered
by a popular vote.
The Trans-Caucasus is the only ...
When NATO was created, future peace between Germany and its neighbors was yet far from secured
It is today sadly forgotten, that NATO was created not with one, but with two objectives. The second objective of NATO was to retain inner peace, that is, keep ...
