The Russian ‘pivot’ to Asia-Pacific

Abstract

even membership of the NATO. To its utter disappointment and frustration, it discovered that the West had neither any desire to fulfill its expectations, nor was prepared to give it the status that it felt it deserved. As a result, Russia failed to develop a sustainable cooperative relation with the United States. More importantly, some of Moscow’s recent actions, particularly in Georgia’s civil war have led to a straining of relations between Russia and the NATO and, in turn triggered a proposal of an eastward expansion of the latter to Georgia and Ukraine, a move considered by Russia as a threat to its own national security.