Making Enemies: NATO Enlargement and the Russian ‘Other’

The relationship between ‘Promoting Stability’ and providing ‘Strategic Response’ is important for my purposes in this paper, but not as alternative explanations for, or even justifications of, NATO enlargement. I am not interested here in how we might explain NATO enlargement, either in general or in the particular process which has emerged. Nor am I interested in explaining why it is that Russia is to be excluded from NATO, or why Russia has been opposed to the enlargement process. Rather, my questions concern the relationship between Russia and a NATO which expands for whatever reasons. In particular, I want to ask questions of the meaning of NATO expansion, about what sort of Europe an expanded NATO will serve to form, and about what place Russia can have in such a Europe. Ultimately, then, I want to ask questions about the identity of Russia which is being made possible by the practice of NATO enlargement. ‘Promote Stability’ and ‘Strategic Response’ are important because they seem to suggest two very different identities for NATO, and therefore for Russia.