CaspianReport

Will Russia become a superpower? Part 1/2 (2014x10)

: 07, 2014

Back in the final days of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated an agreement. The Soviets would withdraw from Eastern Europe and dismantle the Warsaw Pact, and in return the Americans would stop the NATO expansion and the encirclement of the Soviet Union. Both sides were to ease the tensions and build up relations. However, what happened next was that the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe triggered a series of nationalist revolts throughout the USSR. The unintended consequence here was the break-up of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of this collapse, NATO quickly moved into the former Warsaw Pact member states and even expanded into the former Soviet states in the Baltics. From the perspective of the new NATO members, joining the alliance made sense, given their past experiences with the Soviet Union. But from Russian perspective this was an utter betrayal.