East-West Relations
What impact does NATO’s eastward expansion have on relations with the Russian Federation?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO is a politico-military organization which gathers many western countries. The treaty has been signed on 4 April 1949 after negotiations between the 5 countries that signed the Treaty of Brussels (Belgium, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, United Kingdom), the United States, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Iceland, Norway and Portugal. The main aim of the association was to ensure the security of the West after the Second World War in keeping a watch on Germany and in fighting against the soviet invasion. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, famously stated that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down"1 (Reynolds, 1994, p. 13). Greece and Turkey joined the organization in 1952, but it is the membership of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) that has made Soviet Union react for the first time with the establishment of the Warsaw Treaty on 14 May 1955. Then, we can say that this military alliance, which included most of the states of the eastern bloc, was created as part of the cold war as a counterweight to the NATO Pact. Since the end cold war and the “implosion” of the USSR, NATO has encountered new threats like international terrorism or Weapons of Mass Destruction and its role is not only limited to the defense and stability of Western Europe anymore but it also consists in the establishment of new relations of cooperation through the world (Partnership for Peace, NATO-Russia Council, …). After the entry of Spain in 1982, the number of adhesion has increased faster since 1999 with the entry of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic in 1999 followed by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia in 2004 and Albania and Croatia in 2009.We can notice that many of recent enlargement concern countries which were formerly under the soviet influence … Far