A Study Of Cognitive Bias In NATO’s Eastern Expansion Decision During The Post Cold War Period

After the end of the Cold War,the overall peace in Europe has been maintained for nearly three decades,and with the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict,it has completely returned to the era of power politics.NATO is the key to understand the security dynamics in Europe.Peace in Europe is supported by NATO’s powerful military forces.The competition and confrontation between the United States and Europe and Russia are closely related to NATO’s expansion.After the end of the cold war,NATO not only continued to exist,but also expanded in three aspects: membership size,operational space and functional areas.With regard to the existence and expansion of NATO,the existing studies mainly explain it from three perspectives: the institutional attributes of NATO,the shared values of its member countries,and the need for the United States to maintain its hegemony.However,none of them can accurately understand the whole process of NATO expansion in the post-cold war era,especially the lack of explanatory power in the policy choice of Europe to promote the continued eastward expansion of NATO.The continued eastward expansion of NATO has damaged the security situation in Europe and reduced the strategic choice space of European countries.The decisions of European members of NATO on the eastward expansion issue do not conform to the basic assumptions of rational decision-making theory,showing strong decision-making inertia.Similar irrational decisions are not isolated in history.The perceptual analysis framework of the international political psychology school is an explanatory perspective.This paper tries to prove that the cognitive bias of NATO in the process of eastward expansion has convinced the decision-makers of the legitimacy and rationality of the eastward expansion policy,misjudged the policy costs and huge risks of continuing eastward expansion,and thus either ignored the systematic stimulus and policy feedback in the process of eastward expansion,or made a wrong interpretation and understanding in line with the existing cognition,which ultimately led to the rigid and inertial decision-making of the policy.