Why Russia and the West failed to create a united Europe after the USSR collapsed
“I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and the so-called civilized world, so it’s hard for me to view NATO as an enemy,” Vladimir Putin said in 2000, when announcing his presidential priorities on the international stage. And although this statement had the effect of an exploding bomb, it could hardly be called utterly unexpected. By that point, Russia and NATO had agreed to fully restore contacts and consider each other strategic partners. At the same time, European politicians were talking about a project to create a ‘Greater Europe’ from Lisbon to Vladivostok. However, the expectations of the parties were not destined to materialize. In this article, RT discusses the consequences of NATO’s expansion to the east, which destroyed all dreams of a united Europe.
Big Dreams
Back in the late 1980s, the European establishment came up with the idea of including a post-Perestroika Soviet Union in a single political and economic space stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The author of the most ambitious of these plans was then-French President Francois Mitterrand. Along with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he believed that it was necessary to involve the USSR in integration processes in order to ensure security in Europe – on the one hand, to avoid isolating the Soviet Union, and on the other, to prevent a united Germany from dominating the continent.
Involving the USSR in the pan-European community would make it possible to create a deeper union between the states of western Europe and accelerate their integration. Mitterrand believed that, as a result of such a rapprochement, the core of the community would remain under the political domination of France, since other states, including Germany, would act in concert in the new European organization. In fact, Mitterrand sought to create an alternative to the United States in the sphere of international relations – a pan-European space led by France that would replace the USSR in the bipolar world.