Last week on November 7, NATO concluded its two-week long field military exercise as part of the NATO Trident Juncture, the largest NATO exercise since the Cold War, and has entered the last phase, which will last until November 24. While its Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg claims that NATO is seeking "a constructive dialogue with Russia," the "clear message" is that NATO "will defend our Allies against any threat."

A statement by the Russian foreign ministry describes that the exercise has "a distinct anti-Russian character." Is Russia a possible threat to the NATO Alliance or is NATO just wasting its money? Sergey Karaganov, a famous Russian political scientist, shares his insights with CGTN.

Sergey Karaganov believes Russia is doing Europe a favor. “We had to use very limited force,” says the director of Russia's Council on Foreign and Defence Policy sitting in his Moscow office. “That saved Europe from a big war.”

The former advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin says NATO expansion had to be stopped, and that a larger confrontation would have been inevitable if Moscow had not acted by pushing back. To the Kremlin, the Alliance's growth through eastern Europe was a humiliating encirclement.

To NATO, an Alliance which sees itself as upholding democratic norms, a sovereign country should have the right to make its own choices without interference from Russia or anyone else. Karaganov scoffs at that claim: “There is no such thing as free choice. I'm sorry. Imagine if a NATO country decided to join a Russian military alliance: What would happen? People are for free choice when the wind is blowing in your direction.”

To Karaganov, it is a power game, pure and simple. And, in his view, Russia currently has the upper hand. “People say democracy is in decline. It's not. The West is in decline.” he claims. Karaganov's vision is nothing short of a new Eurasian order led by Russia and China.

That is an unnerving – if still almost unthinkable – prospect to many in the West. Its answer to such a prospect has been economic sanctions and a bolstering of its eastern flank militarily. And yet questions are growing about whether that is working. Far from being isolated, Moscow's diplomatic and military reach has arguably grown since 2014.

NATO appears to see little choice but to continue along the same course: It carried out its largest military exercise in decades, Trident Juncture, where 50,000 soldiers practiced collectively to fight a "hypothetical adversary" that invades Norway.

But what the Alliance calls deterrence, Moscow views as anti-Russian aggression. "NATO needs tension for subsistence. When there is none, they create it. That is their bread and butter,” says Karaganov. He is not the only influential Russian thinker who does not seem too deterred.