East versus West: When Politics Collide with Economics

The main objective of the present study is to develop a comprehensive analysis on the decision making process within the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Organization (NATO) regarding their foreign and security policies with a special focus on their policies occurring at their Eastern frontier.

The importance of the theme lies in the fact that, although both organizations have stipulated t heir desire to be global actors, their immediate Eastern frontier has been for years an unstable and unsecure region that reminded us about the interplay of the Cold War between the East and the West.
At the same time these negative dynamics reveal a deficient partnership between the EU and NATO on one side and the Russian Federation on the other which in turn affects their international recognized legitimacy and their status (Russia wants to be recognized as a great power and to be part of a multilateral international system, NATO is still redefining itself in terms of threats responses mechanisms and the EU wants to be recognized as a global power). (…)
(Introduction)