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→Unipolar (1991 - 2017)
==Unipolar (1991 - 2017)==
==Unipolar (1991 - 2017)==
The [[American]] [[diplomat]] [[George Kennan]] based his 1946 proposal for a grand [[strategy]] of "[[containment]]" of the [[Soviet Union]] on his judgment that, if isolated, it would eventually collapse of its own defects. It took more than four decades to prove him right. For a few delirious years immediately after the 1991 implosion of the [[USSR]] and the independence of its constituent [[Baltic]], [[eastern European]], and [[central Asia]]n [[republic]]s, it seemed that, as [[Francis Fukuyama]] declared, history had ended in the triumph of "[[liberal democracy]]". But this was not to be. Unlike economic aid given to defeated [[Nazi Germany]] with the [[Marshall Plan]] after [[World War II]], [[Western alliance|Western]] [[carpetbagger]]s administered a drastic restructuring or "shock therapy" to the [[Soviet]] [[economy]] that immiserated the [[population]] but enriched a new class of [[oligarch]]s. [[Russia]]'s efforts to integrate itself with [[the West]] met with an ambivalent, unwelcoming, and off-putting response.
As early as 1994, Russia began warning the [[United States]] that, if [[NATO enlargement]] extended to the Russian borders, [[Moscow]] would view this as evidence of hostility and mount a [[military]] response. But by 2004, every member state of the former Soviet-dominated [[Warsaw Pact]] had been inducted into NATO. In the Cold War, NATO had been a purely defensive alliance designed to counter Moscow in [[Europe]]. But in 1995, NATO began to take the offensive. It intervened in [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]]. In 1999, it launched a 78-day bombing campaign that wrested [[Kosovo]] from [[Serbia]], a state traditionally associated with Russia. In 2001, NATO joined the United States in its twenty-year war to pacify faraway [[Afghanistan]] outside Europe. And in 2011, it supported a regime change operation that threw [[Libya]] into [[anarchy]], again outside Europe. As NATO expanded toward Russia, Moscow came to see it as an increasingly active [[military]] threat.
In 2007, Russian [[President Vladimir Putin]] issued a strong warning against further NATO enlargement. But in 2008, under U.S. pressure, NATO offered membership to the [[republic of Georgia]] and [[Ukraine]], both former constituent states of the Soviet Union bordering the [[Russian Federation]]. An emboldened Georgia then challenged Russian influence in minority regions on its Russian border. The result was the first [[Europe]]an [[war]] of the 21st century, which ended in the Russian-aided secession of both [[South Ossetia]] and [[Abkhazia]] from Georgia and Russian establishment of suzerainty there.
==References==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:International Relations]]
[[Category:International Relations]]