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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

Liberty University

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Russia

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Bigger Is Better? Re-Evaluating Nato Enlargement In The Post-Cold War Period, Matthew Mccracken Apr 2023

Bigger Is Better? Re-Evaluating Nato Enlargement In The Post-Cold War Period, Matthew Mccracken

Senior Honors Theses

Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance has grown substantially from its pre-1990 boundary between the two Germanys to encompass 15 new members with its border pressing eastward toward the former Soviet states and up to Russia proper. At the same time, East-West relations have sunk from a high point in the 1990s to a new low unseen since the Cold War culminating in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Top-ranking officials on both sides of the Atlantic cautioned successive U.S. administrations against heedlessly seeking to admit new members into NATO for fear that it …


Crusaders, Sellswords, And Separatists: The Russian State’S Use Of Paramilitaries, Separatists, And Irregular Armies, Bruce Schlesman May 2019

Crusaders, Sellswords, And Separatists: The Russian State’S Use Of Paramilitaries, Separatists, And Irregular Armies, Bruce Schlesman

Masters Theses

Russia currently supports various paramilitaries around the world whether in the guise of separatists, mercenaries, or irregular armies. Using their own military and intelligence operatives and different tactical and religious-ideological means of asserting control over these paramilitaries and the territories they inhabit, Russia seeks to expand the scope of its global dominance and regional influence. Consistent with its long-term goal of weakening NATO and the EU, Russian strategy under Putin has sought to exploit Russian Orthodoxy and the Russian culture as instruments of solidarity binding many of these paramilitaries to Russia in a kind of pan-Slavic religious-nationalist mission. No passive …