On The NATO Enlargement And Russia-NATO Relations

NATO was established to fight with the Soviet Union in 1949.As long as the cold war ended , NATO adopted Poland, Czech, Hungary as its member countries in 1999, and other seven countries in2004, which marks that NATO currently consists of 26 member countries.Its defense line between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea became available, and for that matter , its eastern border line has been extended by 1, 000 km..Shared efforts of three parties involved contributed to NATO enlargement: powerful advocacy of the American, active response of its European allies and strong desire to entering into NATO on the part of the mid-east countries.The United States, the leader of NATO, is in charge of almost every vital affairs, such as outlining the enlargement, issuing availability reports of expansion, establishing new institutions or organizations which are oriented toward promoting cooperation relations with applicant countries, choosing candidate countries, controlling the process of expansion Although the United States and its European allies have a dispute in terms of ultimate purpose, they agree that the expansion of NATO is useful to defend against Russia.After the cold war collapsed, mid-east European countries have devoted themselves to regional cooperation, while achieving "return to Europe" by actively making the best of European existing security frameworks at the same time.To these countries, entering into NATO is a vital step, on the assumption that if they become member states, they will not only enjoy security guarantee provided by the United states, also they probably attain certain institutional links between them and the west , and even be further integrated into Europe.No one doubts that the overwhelming purpose of NATO expansion is to contain Russia. Samuel Huntington, the famous advocate of "conflicts of civilizations" and professor at Harvard University, holds that , "NATO acts as a security organization in the post cold war world and it should abide by a core purpose thatNATO must make sure that another would not come back to stage by blocking Russian centralizing political and military authority.Unexpectedly, the enlargement of NATO have infringe on the interest of Russia in terms of Russian security <, However, Russian influence on international affairs is fadingo So, it unwillingly yielded to the west step by stepo Yeltsin, the form president of Russia, who did not take the NATO enlargement seriously for a while, finally realized that the enlargement is harmful to Russia and then become one of stoned-head opponents.But NATO responded to Russian resistance by accelerating the steps of enlargement and appeasing Russia.To minimize the negative effect on itself, Russia came to terms with NATO.Since then , Russia retreated gradually , and NATO expanded increasingly rapidly as well as enormously.Admittedly, we Chinese know little about NATO which undoubtedly exists as a unique and titanic organization in the world? We did not have too much contacts with it in the past, and therefore , have little understanding of its changes after the Soviet Union passed away.For this reason, I have authored this dissertation to devote myself to the further research in this academic field.