Abstract
<jats:p>This article analyzes the role and significance of the NATO-Russia Founding Act, signed in 1997, in bilateral relations between Russia and the United States in the second half of the 1990s. The study draws on a wide range of sources, including recently declassified documents from US administrative archives, periodicals of the time, and memoirs of key players. It demonstrates how the initial optimism and hopes for a new strategic partnership after the end of the bipolar confrontation were overshadowed and gradually replaced by the hard reality of an unresolved geopolitical rift. The main stumbling block around which all the contradictions arose was the sensitive issue for Russia of NATO expansion to the east. The study concludes that the Founding Act did not serve as a tool for resolving this deep-seated conflict of interests, it merely temporarily masked it. The United States and its allies achieved formal legitimization of their right to further expansion, while a weakened Russia, experiencing a profound internal crisis, was forced to make concessions. Thus, this treaty failed to resolve the contradictions in Russia-US relations. It merely delayed their acute manifestation, which predetermined the subsequent, predictable increase in confrontation and systemic tensions in relations between Russia and the United States.</jats:p>