NATO’s relations with Russia were ill-starred right from the start. Hastings Ismay, NATO’s first General Secretary, summed up the purpose of the transatlantic military alliance in the 1950s with the words: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. After the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, it appeared at first that NATO had lost its raison d’être. However, appearances altered rapidly, as Poland and the Baltic countries pressed to come under the protective shield of NATO. For a while, there was even talk of Russian NATO membership. For the alliance, the early 1990s were a time of difficult discussions, as NATO sought a way to respond to the desires for membership on the part of East European states and, at the same time, to take Russia’s sensitivities in this regard into account. Ultimately, the line taken by the American president, Bill Clinton, prevailed: the eastward expansion of NATO.