NATO's changing threat perception of Russia: Russia's post-2008 military interventions and the impact of the Ukraine

The most fundamental characteristic of the Cold War period was the divergence and threat perceptions between the US-led Western world and the USSR-led Eastern world. In 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, it was considered that a new unipolar world dominated by Western principles would be established, and the process of reconciliation and even unification of former Soviet countries, including Russia, with the West was initiated. In these years, NATO, the defense alliance inherited from the Cold War, based on Western principles, tried to eliminate the possibility of conventional conflicts by defining Russia, the successor of the USSR, as a key partner, and Russia was positioned as an important partner in the fight against global terrorism in the 2000s. From the 1990s, when the threat perceptions were weak, to the post-2004 period of divergent perceptions of political and military threats, two sides have gradually moved from one step to the other. This study aims to analyze how they went from a period of decreasing mutual threat and the establishment of a peaceful Europe to a period of hot conflicts within 30 years, and to identify the developments that led Europe to a new war environment. The study is based on an analysis of the theoretical foundations and selected examples through the sources in the literature and official documents, speeches and documents. In this way, Russia's claims on the promises not to expand NATO to the east and the development of the perception that security was threatened, as well as the goals and decisions of the NATO side were tried to be understood. The first part of the study analyzed the Cold War-era East-West tensions and the rise and fall of mutual threat perceptions, while the second part explored the peace and cooperation in post-Cold War relations. The third section traces the developments that rebuilt threat perceptions, and the fourth section explains the rising antagonisms that led Europe to hot conflicts starting from the 2008 Russia-Georgia War.