NATO-Russia Relations through the Prism of Strategic Culture

This chapter explains the recursive tendency to develop inimical relations between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia by pointing at the incompatibility of their strategic cultures—here understood as broad cognitive frameworks subsuming an actor’s self-perception, worldview, and preferred way to use force. NATO and Russia have defined their roles in world politics, decoded the other’s intentions, and undertaken certain practices on the basis of divergent socio-cognitive assumptions. As a product of socially-embedded dynamics, the two actors think differently and therefore read and react to a same situation in divergent ways.