The Impact Of NATO’s Strategic Adjustment On Russia After Cold War

The strategic adjustment of NATO derived from the end of Soviet-American hegemony and the termination of Cold War confrontation. Since the early1990s, NATO has begun to play a more positive role in the ever-changing international arena during its20years’development. Since the end of Cold War, NATO has adjusted its external security strategy and functions comprehensively under the auspices of USA. From Rome Summit in1991to Washington Summit in1999, then meeting in Lisbon in2010, three strategic adjustments let NATO expand and increase its influence, then realized its strategic expansion from the Europeanization to globalization gradually. NATO expansion is not just the expansion of defense scope, more importantly, NATO simultaneously promote the democratic values of Western culture to Third World countries using this belief as theoretical support for eastward expansion and military intervention.Russia, the largest successor of the former Soviet, is related to Europe intricately both from the geopolitics and from culture and history, so every action of NATO will affect the sensitive nerve of Russian——the "polar bear ". Such impact is unavoidable, what Russia should do is to adjust itself to eliminate this effect, whether react obediently or positively, the new generation of Russian leader has to deal with all these problems after careful consideration.When the cold war just ended, Russia adopted "leaning to one side" strategy, in the late1990s,it took "tit for tat" as its strategy, now Russia uses "a pragmatic and flexible" strategy with NATO in the new century. After20years entangling with NATO, Russia has learned how to deal with its opponents in a more practical way which can preserve and strengthen itself. Russia and its old foe are doomed to entangle continuously.