Power-status Figurations in the Security Relations between Russia and the West: From Western Domination to Russian Emancipation

On the part of Western politicians, it is frequently put forward that the West has granted Russia too much status in the past 20 years. In Moscow, on the contrary, the dominant view has been and still is that ever since the end of the Cold War the West has not granted Russia the status it actually deserves. If we look at the emotional dispositions of the relationship on both sides, we can identify a situation in which the West tries to dominate the power-status figuration and Russia rejecting these attempts of social domination through anger and resentment, and since most recently through the construction of alternative dominant narratives of pride. This power-status figuration creates and constantly reproduces a divide, an inside-outside arrangement hampering the evolvement of a shared identity and the creation of a security community. The underlying inside-outside arrangement is particularly obvious in post-Cold War NATO-Russia security relations.