Russia – USA relationship: R.I.P. Cold War?
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.