Russia in NATO: Thinking the Unthinkable?

It was a newspaper cartoon that inspired this text, in particular the reflection it carried on the relations between Russia and NATO: what seems unthinkable today was thought yesterday and could be made possible tomorrow. Hence this question: Russia in NATO, thinking the unthinkable. With the dual perspective of a historian, trained in the history of Russia, and a futurist, the author analyzes the ambivalent relationship that Russia and NATO have maintained from 1954 to 1998, a period during which the Kremlin, from Khrushchev to Yeltsin, has, on several occasions, formally requested its membership in the Atlantic Alliance. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, NATO reached out to Russia, but also to the former Warsaw Pact countries, while carefully keeping the door closed to Moscow. The year 1999 was a turning point in relations between Russia and NATO, with the two major events of the military intervention in Kosovo and the enlargement of the Alliance to include Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. In the eyes of observers at the time, the arrival in power of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin the following year appeared in many respects to be a fork in the road. Indeed, at that time, good relations were still possible, which would deteriorate until 2022. By 2050, many metamorphoses are possible, the best and the worst. Can we still think of Russia's entry into NATO, as it was conceivable to some thirty years ago?