Russia Has Grand Designs For the International Order

... But armed conflicts on the outskirts of the former USSR, the wars in the Balkans and NATO’s enlargement to the east, taught Russia’s elites and public some pretty hard... ... crisis and the war in Chechnya marked the end of the early benign attitude toward the West, and above all the United States. It dawned on the Kremlin that, in the final count... ... 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...