US-RUSSIAN RELATIONS: INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL SECURITY TRAJECTORIES

Year 2005, Volume: 10 Issue: 3, 27 - 56, 01.09.2005

Kostas Ifantıs

Abstract

Nearly four years after Colin Powell heralded the beginning of the “post-post Cold Era”, so as to describe the end of the relative complacency with which the US faced the period following the disintegration of the Soviet Union up to the 9/11 attacks, we are still in demand of accurate epithets with which to characterize the identity of the “New Global Disorder” unleashed in New York that late summer morning. Apart from the perilous straining of the US-Saudi “special relationship”, and the aftermath of the US. invasion in Iraq, the most important parameter of this systemic disorder as pertaining to the northern “tip” of “Greater Middle East” , refers to the US-Russian relationship and its potential geostrategic antagonism over a region that spans from the easternmost tip of the Balkan Peninsular to the Chinese-Central Asian border