The focus of the proposal is related to the relationship of Russia and the West
after the Cold War, especially concerning the NATO enlargement. It is assumed
that at this moment the relationship of these entities have changed to a whole
new situation. However if the Cold War was about performance of identity
conformation, this proposal claims that this logic still persists In this scenario
Russia is trying to find a new role at the international level, as much as NATO
is trying to do the same. since their main enemy no longer exists, so the Atlantic
Alliance starts a new project of spreading democracy and market economy to
the ex-soviet sphere of influence, on the basis of fear of a renewed cycle of
Russian nationalist expansionism. Thereby, the rationalism of this debate can
be substituted by a new one more inclined to the post-structuralist debate. In
this way the main purpose of this paper is to analyze the delimitation of the
Russian and West’s identities in this space full of “otherness” constituting the
“self”, in this scenario of tension/distension hark back to the Cold War era,
with special emphasis on Russian foreign policy.