Russia, Europe And The United States Forces Since The Collapse Of The Soviet Union's Eastward Expansion Of The Military Response And Strategy

After the end of cold war and the collapse of the Eastern Europe Communist regimes, Russia lost its sphere of influence at one night. This made a serious effect on the Russia's strategy. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc resulted in the lost of buffering zone of Russia in Eastern Europe. The situation in Central Asia and Transcaucasia was also hugely different from that of the era of Soviet direct control. At the same time, the Western countries started to enlarge their influence in these areas, but Russia felt threatened by such movement. Because Russia had always been a great military power, therefore military responses were the Russian crucial methods to deal with the enlargement of the West.To counter the West, Russia had different military deployments in Russian Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia. These various deployments were for the joining NATO of Eastern Europe countries, the border dispute with pro-western Georgia and the deployment of U.S. military in Central Asia after 911.Beside the deployments, Russia also launched military action to counter the West's eastward enlargement. The first time was the capturing of the airport of the capital of Kosovo after the NATO bombing to Yugoslavia without informing the NATO. The second time was the Russia-Georgia war. The Russian strike to the pro-western Georgia tensed up the relationship between Russia and the West, especially the United States.Russia desperately objected the U.S. planning of deploying missiles defense system in the Eastern Europe. Russia deemed this missiles defense system will threaten the capacity of Russian strategic nuclear strike, and this capacity was the core of Russian global strategy. Russia took many actions to counter the U.S. plan, including deploying missiles in Kaliningrad and threatening Poland it would be struck by nuclear weapons.Russia also changed its military developments to deal with the Western eastward enlargement. Because of the bad economic situation in 1990s, Russia had to concentrate its resources to develop strategic nuclear capacity, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles. In the strategic concept, Russia carried out global strategic retreat to concentrate its power to deal with the West's enlargement. Russia also acknowledged its conventional forces was inferior to NATO, so it changed the principles of using nuclear weapon. Russia lowered the threshold of using nuclear weapons that it could use nuclear weapon to repulse the enemy when its conventional forces failed to do so in a regional war. Russia also valued the regional alliance; it could consolidate Russian influence in the region.In the twenty years history since the establishment of the Federal of Russia, the Russia's relationship with the West has gone up and down. It is because even though Russia tends to cooperate with the West, the Russian perception of its own sphere of influence does not match the reality. This made Russia resented when the West enlarged their influence to the east. When Russian perception of its own sphere of influence matches the reality, the relationship between Russia and the West will become long term cooperative.