Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Abstract

The admission of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March 1999 represented a failure for Russian foreign policy. Opposition to the enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance had been prevalent throughout Russia’s ruling circles from 1993. Russian antagonism to NATO enlargement centred not just around the question of the strategic orientation of the states of east-central Europe (ECE) but arose also from a desire not to be excluded from new security arrangements in Europe. The Russians attempted through a variety of tactics to prevent their former allies joining the western military alliance but also tried to persuade the western powers to consider pan-European security frameworks in preference to a larger NATO.