between Europe, Russia and the United States, thirty years of chaotic diplomacy – Libération

Historian Georges-Henri Soutou deciphers in depth Western blindness towards Moscow from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the war in Ukraine.

In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall seemed to usher in a bright future; in February 2022, Russian aggression in Ukraine shattered this illusion: yesterday inconceivable, the war in Europe has become a burning reality. The West has thus suddenly gone from euphoria to affliction, which invites us to understand what has happened in these three decades. While avoiding sweeping judgments. Because as Georges-Henri Soutou demonstrates in a stimulating book, the period is characterized by complexity.

Thus, Gorbachev and then Yeltsin showed themselves to be relatively accommodating towards the West at the end of the 20th century. Far from seeking confrontation, they relied on negotiation, a path followed, for a time, by Vladimir Putin, in the Caucasus for example, by letting the new Republics emancipate themselves from Russian supervision. The first rupture occurred in Yugoslavia: Western intervention, then the independence granted to Kosovo, irritated China and Russia, especially since the Chinese embassy in Belgrade had been bombed. Same in Libya: Mosco