IRMO Brief 11/2022 - Challenges for NATO since 1991: Russian Invasion to Ukraine as a Common Threat

The fall of the Berlin Wall caused tectonic shifts in the European security architecture, while Russia, especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the end of 1991 and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, started to realize it is not one of the two superpowers anymore, and that it could be left out from the great powers influence in the international order. Its new policy consisted of non-intervention and no military control over Eastern Europe.

After ‘losing’ around one third of the former Soviet territory, this country entered a period of economic decline. That affected the size and strength of the Russian military, too, which made West practically losing its enemy. Because of that, at the same time, the future existence of NATO was posed as a question. Representatives of international relations theories - realism and neorealism tried to defend the hypothesis that the main raison d’être of NATO’s existence of balancing Soviet threat is gone, therefore the military alliance should be dissolved.

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