NATO's missed opportunity: How US has failed to incorporate Russia into a Pan-Europe system -- expert

CRACK ENLARGEMENT (2006-2013)

After 2006, the deployment of anti-missile system, the eastward expansion of NATO, and the "color revolution," these three cracks not only failed to repair, but continued to expand.

In 2006, the United States formally proposed to deploy anti-missile bases in Eastern Europe, and in January 2007, the United States started negotiations on anti-missile deployment with Poland and the Czech Republic.

One month later, in an address to the Munich Security Conference, Putin fiercely criticized the actions of NATO's eastward expansion and the US deployment of anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe. The speech was seen as a watershed in Russia's relations with the United States and NATO.

After taking office in 2009, then US President Barack Obama proposed to "reset" US-Russia relations, indicating a turn in Russia's relations with the United States and NATO. Since then, Russia and NATO began to working towards improving relations. However, not much progress was made.

At the end of 2009, then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed to set up a new European security architecture to replace organizations including NATO and the OSCE, and end the Cold War once and for all.

Though Russia and NATO resumed military cooperation in the year 2010, the negotiations on the new security architecture between Russia, the United States and the European Union failed to make progress. Meanwhile, the United States and the West continued to instigate "color revolutions" in the Middle East as well as in Russia's close neighbors.