Neuer Kalter Krieg? Oder: Warum fürchtet Putin die EU mehr als die NATO?
New Cold War? Why Does Putin Fear the EU More than NATO?

Summary/Abstract: The following text is the written version of a lecture given by Prof. em. Dr. Heinz-Jürgen Axt on 22 February 2015 at the “Europäische Begegnungsstätte am Kloster Kamp e.V.” in Kamp-Lintfort (Germany). Even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the thesis developed in the article remains valid, namely that Russia under President Putin sees the establishment and consolidation of democratic systems in former Soviet republics as a threat to its own autocratic system. Reading Axt’s remarks from seven years ago raises the question to which extent necessary lessons were not learned, or have been insufficiently learned in Germany, Europe and the West in general. If the Russian president had been betting that the West was too weak to resist successfully (which is why he felt encouraged to go to war against Ukraine and its democratically legitimised order), he may have been fundamentally mistaken. Most of the West is more united than ever. As Axt’s analysis offers a plausible interpretation even today and reveals background information, we are reprinting the lecture written seven years ago almost unchanged.

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