Russia Has Grand Designs For the International Order

... Union’s former adversaries who became Moscow’s new friends and mentors. It was not immediately clear what this new Russia’s national interests were – and whether or how they differed from those of its American and European friends. But armed conflicts ... ... with NATO, based on counter-terrorism, even as it proclaimed its “European vocation” and a desire to integrate with the European Union. Toward the end of the decade, it proposed a “common defense perimeter” with the U.S. and its allies, built ...