Russia Has Grand Designs For the International Order

... the outskirts of the former USSR, the wars in the Balkans and NATO’s enlargement to the east, taught Russia’s elites and ... ... Chechnya marked the end of the early benign attitude toward the West, and above all the United States. It dawned on the Kremlin ... ... its “European vocation” and a desire to integrate with the European Union. Toward the end of the decade, it proposed a “common ... ... acceptable to Russia, until now a central pillar of Russia’s post-Soviet foreign policy, came crushing down. Ironically, the alternative ...