Having rebuilt its military, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and has now positioned more than 100,000 troops on its borders, challenging NATO’s supposed encirclement of Russia and its military capabilities in Central Europe. The West has responded with threats of unprecedented sanctions. This crisis stems from the Soviet Union’s collapse and the West’s effort to create a ‘Europe whole and free’ and at peace. The West failed to convince Russia to play a positive role in Europe and to help it do so. NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia, on Russia’s borders, would someday become Alliance members. Nevertheless, the US and NATO are conducting serious diplomacy with Russia. Confidence-building measures, including on conventional forces, are the best alternative to confrontation. A new cold war will benefit no one, Russia least of all.
The current crisis over Ukraine has deep roots and, of course, is not limited to Ukraine. The view prevailing in the United States and most of Western and Central Europe is that Russian President Vladimir Putin has selected Ukraine, on account of its strategic location in Central Europe, to be the leading edge of an attempt to reconstitute the Soviet Union or at least to establish a new sphere of influence in Russia’s near abroad. Russian machinations in the energy, cyber and political realms, with a special focus on the Baltic states, appear to be part of his overall game plan. An alternative view is that Putin is seeking a major role for Russia in European security, given that in the last two decades the United States and most NATO allies have sought to subordinate Russian influence in Europe. Whichever view of Putin’s motives is correct – perhaps both are to some extent – it is important to consider the current Ukraine crisis as a point of departure in long-term relations between Russia and the West. The crisis is crucial to understanding Russia’s effort to revive its great-power status, to shaping Western efforts to channel Russia’s ambitions in non-threatening ways and to avoiding a new cold war.1
Historians, as well as Putin, might argue that the modern Ukraine crisis began with Nikita Khrushchev’s 1954 transfer of Crimea from the Russian Socialist Federal Republic to the Ukrainian Socialist Federal Republic to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Ukrainian–Russian unification.2 Since both republics were within the Soviet Union, this was a symbolic event, until the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, when the location of Crimea in newly independent Ukraine became significant. For contemporary purposes, the starting point was Christmas night in 1991, when the Soviet Union formally ceased to exist. Since then, the key geopolitical challenge in Europe has been to create security for all of its countries and, at the same time, to accommodate Russia to the political evolution of the continent without isolating Moscow or seeing it threaten Europe. The latter objective in particular remains elusive.
For the US and its main NATO allies, a key post-Cold War goal was to prevent a reprise of the First World War’s aftermath, when a defeated Germany was stigmatised in the Treaty of Versailles as the sole cause of the conflict, subjected to reparations and broadly treated as a pariah state. This treatment was a significant factor in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. At the end of the 1980s, Western leaders understood that Russia must not be cast as a defeated state. Both George H.W. Bush and his successor, Bill Clinton, were careful not to do so. Even though Russia was then supine and no longer a major factor in continental politics, economics and security, it was likely that in time it would recover a measure of national power sufficient to threaten European security and stability if it chose to do so.
A critical task for the West was therefore to develop post-Cold War structures, processes, perceptions and activities that preserved each European nation’s legitimate interests and promoted democratic and liberal values – if possible, in Russia as well – without alienating any country or, worse, nurturing or validating Russian revanchism. In the process, the West sought to move beyond classical themes of statecraft in Europe, notably spheres of influence and the balance of power. Success or failure would help determine whether the goal of a ‘Europe whole and free’ and at peace, enunciated by George H.W. Bush in May 1989, could be secured. This was a tall order. Unlike Germany and Japan following the Second World War, Russia was not occupied and, unlike Germany, it did not have a democratic tradition.
The initial focus was on the future of Germany. Notably, in the so-called ‘Two Plus Four Agreement’ – the 1990 treaty signed by East and West Germany and the post-Second World War occupying countries: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States – it was agreed that there should be one Germany that would become part of NATO.3 Moscow’s acquiescence was not entirely self-abnegation: it could recognise that a united Germany embedded in the viable institution of NATO, subject to American oversight, would discourage revived German militarism – a prospect which, however unlikely, also worried other NATO members. Debate continues about whether, in reaching the agreement about a united Germany’s membership, the United States made promises – explicit or implied – not to expand NATO to other countries.4
Under US leadership, NATO developed an architecture of several interlocking and mutually dependent elements: the United States would remain a European power; NATO’s integrated military command structure would be preserved; the German question that first arose in the late 1860s would remain solved; Central Europe would be removed from the geopolitical chessboard; and NATO would try to develop close working relations with the European Communities (which would become the European Union). At no point, however, did the United States and other NATO allies take seriously the declared Russian preference that NATO itself be dissolved as the Warsaw Pact had been, and that Russia would play an equal part in creating a new institution to provide for security across the continent. Here the West’s acquiescence to the palliative notion that Russia did not lose the Cold War hit a hard and virtually unanimous stop.
Various instruments were created at NATO under US leadership. Most significant for promoting European security was undoubtedly the Partnership for Peace (PfP). It has served four purposes: to advance the Western aspirations of most of the member countries; to help promote democracy in former Warsaw Pact states; to foster common military standards and practices, potentially as steps for some of those countries eventually to join NATO; and to forge lasting institutional connections to NATO for countries that would not join it. All members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) were eligible for PfP membership. Notably, after some coaxing, Russia agreed to join both the PfP and the EAPC.
During what in retrospect was a halcyon period, NATO–Russia cooperation became possible. Indeed, at one point, in a bilateral discussion at which I was present, the Russian defence minister told the US secretary of defense that Moscow had no problem with NATO other than its Cold War vintage name. When NATO resolved to use airpower to end the Bosnian war in summer 1995, Russia supported Western diplomacy and, following the Dayton Accords, joined the Implementation Force – notably under formal US rather than NATO command – designed to keep the peace.5 Difficulties began when NATO, led by Washington, moved towards expansion, acceding to the desires of prospective new members to gain protection from possible Russian revanchism as they reformed internally.6 Also operating was a belief that NATO membership would foster development of Western-tilting domestic institutions and engagement, as well as Western economic investment.
Several allies were sceptical about enlargement, basically on two grounds. Firstly, enlargement could dilute the Alliance and its military capabilities. Secondly, the political requirements for triggering collective NATO response to aggression under Article 5 could become too onerous, diminishing the provision’s credibility. Antagonising Russia and thus creating new divisions in Europe was a real though secondary concern for some NATO members.
When the allies agreed on enlargement at the January 1994 NATO summit in Brussels, they did so in a statement whose every word was carefully chosen after intense bargaining: ‘We expect and would welcome NATO expansion that would reach to democratic states to our East, as part of an evolutionary process, taking into account political and security developments in the whole of Europe.’7 The last two clauses were designed to minimise friction with Russia and to avoid rushing some allies into security commitments that they were not then, and might not later be, prepared to make.
Even this conditional statement met with Russian objections, including from the often-compliant Boris Yeltsin, and objections have continued to this day. Nevertheless, while Moscow in principle continued to see NATO enlargement as breaking what it believed to be commitments dating from the unification of Germany, as well as ignoring what it argued were its legitimate political and security prerogatives, Russia tolerated NATO’s admission of the first three invitees: the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. The first two surrounded Germany with NATO and indicated American engagement. Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor, stressed this aspect of the enlargement project, understanding that Germany’s relationships in Central Europe and with Russia would depend on reassurances about Germany’s future behaviour, even though the younger generation of Germans had discarded geopolitical or nationalist ambitions.
Before NATO formally invited the first Central European countries to join the Alliance at the July 1997 NATO summit in Madrid, the US and allies recognised that much more substantial consideration of Russia was required in terms not only of its involvement in European security but also its political role in the future of Europe. The NATO–Russia Founding Act of May 1997 contains a set of broad principles and notes 19 specific areas for cooperation.8 Embedded within the Act were unilateral NATO statements, studiously inserted without negotiation with Russia, declaring limits on deployment of nuclear weapons in Central Europe as well as limits on conventional forces. Institutionally, the Founding Act created a NATO–Russia Permanent Joint Council, which in 2002 became the NATO–Russia Council, with Russia accorded equal status with the allies.
This left one major matter to resolve: what to do about Ukraine. One of the major achievements during the period of relative comity between Russia and NATO was the December 1994 Budapest Memorandum agreed by Russia, the UK and the US (with China and France separately concurring) regarding nuclear weapons that continued to be deployed in three new countries that emerged from the Soviet Union: Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Their nuclear weapons were removed to Russia, while with respect to Ukraine, Russia, the UK and the US committed to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine … to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations … [and] to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.9
There was nothing ambiguous about this commitment. In seizing Crimea in February 2014 and taking other military actions against Ukraine, Russia was clearly in breach of it, as well as the 1975 Helsinki Final Act.As NATO was about to invite the first three Central European countries to join NATO at its 1997 summit, following conclusion of the NATO–Russia Founding Act, Russia deeply opposed any idea that Ukraine might be considered for NATO membership. NATO allies almost unanimously took the point, as did the Kyiv government, which did not seek membership at that time. But given its strategic location and its history as part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine could not just be treated like any other Central European country. These concerns led to the NATO–Ukraine Charter, including creation of a NATO–Ukraine Commission and a robust list of areas for NATO–Ukrainian cooperation. It also called for the development of ‘a crisis consultative mechanism to consult together whenever Ukraine perceives a direct threat to its territorial integrity, political independence, or security’.10 Thus, Ukraine gained a special relationship with the Alliance. But even though the charter did note ‘the inherent right of all states … to be free to choose or change their security arrangements, including treaties of alliance’, the West and Kyiv understood that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO.
Even though the NATO–Russia Founding Act was designed to cushion the impact of the first NATO expansion on Moscow, other developments soon indicated that Russia would not be truly included as part of a ‘Europe whole and free’, assuming that it had any such aspiration. NATO has often not been inclined to consult Moscow even when Russia has believed its interests were involved. Following Russia’s acquiescence to the first NATO expansion, and its positive role in the Implementation Force for Bosnia, the issue came to a head with the US-led NATO decision in 1998 to use airpower against Serbia over Kosovo. To Russia, Serbia’s humanitarian transgressions were not as important as the West’s ignoring Russian concerns about attacks on Serbia in light of the special ethnic and religious relationship between Russia and Serbia, the provocations of the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army and the absence of a UN Security Council resolution. >From Russia’s perspective, stopping aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina, a sovereign state, had been one thing; attacking Serbia over Kosovo, which was part of Serbia, was quite another.
Even before the enlargement question was on the table, NATO also had to consider the future of the three Baltic republics, whose incorporation into the Soviet Union pursuant to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact the United States had never recognised. Especially given their location and small size, those three countries shared a concern about possible Russian aggression, or at least political domination. They all joined PfP expecting that it would lead to NATO membership, which would buttress their internal political developments. Furthermore, several NATO allies near the Baltics, notably Denmark, wanted them in the Alliance. Moscow objected but still recognised that the Baltic states could be special cases even though they abutted Russia. None could pose much of a threat to Russian interests, though their membership did play into the narrative about being disrespected by NATO.
While senior officials in the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations appreciated the historical and geopolitical sensitivities in restructuring European security, the prevailing view in the George W. Bush administration was that, since the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War, the US and NATO could do as they pleased. Increasingly evident revanchist Russian impulses, backed by an emerging capacity to act on them, were ignored. Thus, in November 2002, NATO invited not just the three Baltic states but also Bulgaria and Romania to join, further encircling Russia from its perspective. To make matters worse, in June 2002 the United States withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which it no longer considered relevant in the absence of a US–Soviet nuclear confrontation. That was true enough, but the ABM Treaty had been one of the few indicators that Russia, as the principal legatee of the Soviet Union, was recognised by the United States as still being in the big leagues. Abandoning the treaty freed the US to deploy anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2007 to defend the US homeland (and in theory Western Europe) against possible missile attacks by North Korea or Iran. Although Washington noted correctly that these defences would be too limited to degrade the Russian nuclear deterrent, Russia was still insulted at being strategically dismissed and threatened to deploy new offensive missiles. In July 2007, Russia suspended its observance of the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, citing NATO’s expansion and its plan for missile defences in Central Europe.
Substantially because of these developments, the Russian national perception of the post-Cold War era tends to be one of humiliation. Putin himself has hyped the point, stating that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century. At the annual Munich Security Conference in January 2007, his presentation was notable for its candour in a forum that historically has been placid and matter-offact. He singled out the United States for, among other things, the creation of a unipolar world: ‘One single center of power. One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign.’ Among many other purported sins, ‘primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area’. He put special emphasis on NATO expansion:
I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are these guarantees?11
Putin did note some areas in which Russian and Western interests were compatible, including in energy, space, arms control, non-proliferation and economic security. But US leaders and journalists focused on his negative comments.12 In November 2009, Russia proposed a new security treaty for Europe. Its main purpose was clearly to weaken the role of NATO, which was just as clearly unacceptable to the US and NATO. They did not take the proposal seriously, and it is questionable whether Putin ever meant it to be regarded as such. He may have intended merely to send a strong signal of Russia’s presence and dissatisfaction. In any case, the West’s dismissiveness only reinforced Putin’s point that it was refusing to treat Russia as a major power.
The 2008 Bucharest Summit saw a major breakpoint in the evolution of NATO and the West’s relations with Russia. It came about almost accidentally. The Bush administration sought NATO endorsement for a step towards membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Membership Action Plans for these countries gained virtually no support from other allies. Some were concerned about stoking Moscow’s fear of encirclement. Moreover, the allies were not prepared to make security commitments to Ukraine or Georgia, particularly the robust mutual and collective ones contained in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, even though it contains no automatic requirement that any ally go to war or use military force to repulse aggression. But Bush was politically exposed, and the allies judged that he could not be sent home empty-handed. So, instead of ratifying Membership Action Plans for the two countries, they stated generally that ‘we agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO’.13
Despite the statement’s literal meaning, it was in fact intended to defer Ukraine’s and Georgia’s NATO membership indefinitely – that is, forever. But Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, read it as a formal commitment to make Ukraine and Georgia allies. He soon tested the proposition by taking military action to try to regain disputed Georgian territories in South Ossetia from the Russian Federation, ignoring a last-minute telephone plea by a senior US State Department official to desist. Russia crushed the Georgian effort in five days. While the US provided some military support to Georgia, not a single NATO ally was prepared to come to its defence. The Bucharest formulation, basically a drafting accident, was proven empty. NATO would have been wise to jettison it permanently. Unfortunately, it has been repeated in subsequent NATO summit communiqués and at the November 2021 NATO foreign-ministers meeting.14 The allies have thus appeared to validate Putin’s argument about NATO’s seeking to surround Russia.
In the 1990s, NATO did indicate that any European country emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia could seek to join. But it also made clear that not all applicants would necessarily be accepted as NATO members.15 Overall, this NATO position is more than a little disingenuous, since the chances of membership for most formally eligible countries remain remote. There is one overarching requirement for NATO membership – unanimous approval of existing allies – and it is difficult to attain. NATO has established several subsidiary steps. Undertaking a Membership Action Plan is one, joining the PfP another. These are designed to help countries become Westernised, democratic nations to provide for their own security, even if they do not join NATO. From the beginning, it has been evident that NATO made the freedom-of-choice declaration without any intention of admitting aspirants as a matter of right, but has now been trapped by its own verbiage.
Another development leading to the current crisis derives in major part from internal developments in Ukraine, as it has struggled to fashion a viable political economy as well as a stable strategic position. The period surrounding the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych was crucial. In late 2013, he had been working on an agreement with the EU that would have provided benefits for Ukraine and would, in the process, have drawn it closer to the West. In November 2013, however, he abandoned the agreement, which led to massive street protests. Following bloody confrontation between opposing sides in Kyiv, he fled to Russia in February 2014.16 The United States clearly supported the protesters, whom Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasia Affairs, actively encouraged on a visit to Kyiv. More significantly, she later made a phone call on an open line to Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador in Kyiv, discussing how to facilitate new leadership in Ukraine favourable to the United States.17 The term ‘coup plotting’ may be too strong, but Nuland and Pyatt – whether acting on their own or on instructions from top-level US officials – were clearly seeking to draw Ukraine firmly into the US orbit. In addition to being subject to Moscow’s efforts to influence its politics, Ukraine was now indisputably contested between Russia and the West.
The Russians began the seizure of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine’s Donbas region 16 days after the Nuland–Pyatt phone call was leaked. Given the magnitude and complexity of these military operations, planning for them must have been in the works for some time. Whether the Nuland–Pyatt phone call was a proximate cause of their activation, or just a convenient pretext for Putin, is not clear. It certainly didn’t help. In response to Russian military intervention, NATO has increased its military and other capabilities, including in Central Europe.18 While differences on how to deal with Russia remain in NATO, Putin’s conduct has also fostered a high degree of unity in the West behind defying his efforts to sow division by posturing Russian forces for possible further military aggression against Ukraine. From Putin’s standpoint, this is an unwelcome result – in a word, blowback.19
Within the US policy community, as part of the backdrop to the Ukraine crisis and US–Russia relations more broadly, there is a widespread conviction that the United States must be ‘number one’ and cannot tolerate challenges from a so-called near-peer competitor. US officials and experts also are uncomfortable with ambiguity and tend to divide other countries simplistically into friends and enemies. Towards countries falling into the latter category, suspicion becomes the default position.20 Thus, in the last several years, strategic differences with Russia, exacerbated by its violation of the Budapest Memorandum and Helsinki Final Act regarding Ukraine, have led some American academics and think tanks to proclaim a new cold war.21
Certainly, what Russia did in February 2014 and afterwards in Ukraine – along with other hostile cyber activities, election interference, intrigue in the Baltic states and generally unfriendly language – made normal diplomatic interaction more difficult and bolstered the ‘cold war’ construct. There were even doubts about whether the United States and Russia would agree to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), though in fact at the beginning of the Biden administration it was extended with little fuss or bother. Much else in US–Russian relations was at best put on hold, as Russia gained military capabilities, became more assertive and clamoured to be treated as an equal.22 Thus, aggressive Russian behaviour and the West’s imposition of economic sanctions led to the severing of formal relations between Russia and NATO, which had been channelled through the NATO– Russia Council.23
A critical risk is that the invocation of a cold war premised on a high degree of hostility would structurally dim expectations, which would make engagement even on matters where cooperation is of mutual interest much harder. It would become difficult, if not impossible, to identify such issues. As a cold war, once declared, played out, bureaucratic and political structures and processes would work merely to perpetuate confrontation.24
Direct Russian interference in the 2016 US election has only made matters worse. The extent of that interference continues to be disputed, along with whether it could have been so significant as to guarantee Donald Trump’s victory. The latter seems unlikely, given the social, economic and political character of the states whose electoral votes apparently made the difference in the Electoral College, the partisan divisions in American society, the political deficits of the Democratic candidate and the conduct of her election campaign. Although Hillary Clinton accepted the results of the election, the suspicions of her Democratic supporters and much of the mainstream media that Russia had made the difference persisted.
These suspicions had a major negative impact on US–Russia relations that has continued. In particular, it became hard to consider issues such as the Ukraine crisis and European geopolitics dispassionately. Trump himself intensified the problem at a press conference with Putin at their July 2018 summit in Helsinki.25 Trump seemed to many observers to side with Putin and against US intelligence agencies on the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The two leaders also mentioned areas of potential constructive dialogue, such as strategic stability, non-proliferation, the extension of New START, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, counter-terrorism, cyber security, regional crises, terrorism and transnational crime, environmental risks, Korea, Iran and the nuclear deal, Ukraine and Syria. But pre-existing perceptions of Russian interference, amplified by Trump’s obtuseness, blinded much of the US audience to diplomatic opportunities.
In general, tension between a realist and a values-driven approach is endemic to American society and politics in dealing with other countries. Russian interference in US elections made realism a tougher sell and punishment an easier one, as many Democrats perceived Putin as complicit in Trump’s victory. Russia also clearly tries to destabilise democracies in Europe. In addition, US congressional and public concerns about Putin’s increasing centralisation of power and contempt for civil liberties and human rights have also complicated any American effort to seek more conciliatory means of easing tensions with Russia.
Against this background, a key question is why Putin has chosen this time to intensify his hostility and pressure on Ukraine, NATO and the West in general. The most plausible explanation is that he has bided his time until Russia has recovered from its debilitated post-Soviet condition – though it remains a second-tier economic nation – and reached the point where he believes that Russia can demand that its role as a great power be acknowledged and has developed sufficient power to assert a sphere of influence in its near abroad.
In theory, the crisis might have been averted had the United States continued the policy begun under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton of treating Russia as a potential partner rather than a defeated nation, although it may be that Russia inevitably would have wanted to assert power no matter what the West had done; we can never know. Now, however, the military terms of power have shifted. The most significant development has been the well-advertised Russian deployment of well over 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian frontier, accompanied by Putin’s verbal threats and challenges. Quite appropriately, the West has taken them seriously. But it is open to question whether Putin intends to undertake further direct military aggression in Ukraine or elsewhere in Europe. As he has threatened, he has other instruments at his command to press what he sees to be Russia’s interests, without the overt act of invasion. These include cyber capabilities, energy leverage and democracy destabilisation.
Holding Russia at bay is not a matter of deterrence in the classical sense, involving threatened military or economic punishment.26 Putin must know that any further military aggression would come up against not only a unified NATO military front but also a unified NATO political front, which has in fact coalesced. He would also have to recognise that Russia’s place in the world would be compromised for a long time to come were he to engage in further open military aggression in Ukraine. In effect, he would find himself in a new cold war that would benefit Russia even less than it did the Soviet Union. He must also know that China provides no serious alternative other than that of a junior partnership, which Beijing would exploit.
Russia has now floated two draft treaties, one for US–Russia relations and one for NATO–Russia relations.27 These are only opening bids, and the US and its NATO partners were right to reject them. But the very fact that the Russians promulgated them is diplomatically and strategically significant. The fact that the treaties have been tabled is an invitation to talk, rather than just to prepare for conflict. Their maximalist nature should be read as a prompt to the West to counter with its own requirements. In this vein, the proposed treaties should serve as indicators of Russia’s security concerns and points of reference for more considered negotiations. It is unrealistic to expect that negotiations would produce viable treaties, especially given that a formal treaty would require ratification by the US Senate and the parliaments of other NATO allies. The Russians surely know this. Thus, their demand for enforceable, legal guarantees are for bargaining and propaganda purposes, and do not constitute serious diplomatic proposals.
For his part, President Joe Biden has also signalled a desire to turn confrontation as much as possible into conversation. This effort has included treating Putin personally with measured respect and, more importantly, ruling out using US military force, at least in the near future, to defend Ukraine against further Russian aggression, which would automatically produce a cold-war confrontation – or worse – and constrain diplomatic flexibility. Biden also understands that neither the American people nor the allies want war if it can be avoided. In part because Biden has foreclosed the use of US military force for now, he and his top advisers have been trying to deter Putin and reassure Europeans of US resolve with vigorous talk about imposing severe sanctions. They are doing so even though the record of sanctions elsewhere casts doubt on whether they would be effective if Putin genuinely believes that invading Ukraine is in Russia’s security interests.
A least in the short term, the Biden administration has a more difficult negotiating task than does Russia, because it has to satisfy so many constituencies simultaneously. Domestically, they include Congress, Republican critics and hardliners in abundance who are willing to accept a new cold war.28 Internationally, they include the United States’ 29 NATO allies, each with particular interests, though the group is generally responsive to US leadership and more cohesive than it was during the Trump administration, as concerns that the US might default on Article 5 have eased. The US must also deal with Ukraine, Georgia and other countries with aspirations to join NATO. Thus, the requisite diplomacy involves three main channels: the US and Russia, NATO and the OSCE. Together these include all the players directly relevant to European security, and the United States has the primary responsibility in the West for coordinating them – admittedly, a prodigious political and diplomatic task.
Positive results are unlikely to emerge rapidly, except perhaps in the form of confidence-building measures. These should logically start with the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Ukrainian frontier as a demonstration of Putin’s seriousness, in parallel with some comparable reductions of Western military capability in Ukraine. This could usefully include invoking practices from the Helsinki Final Act, as well as reissuing and updating the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.29 A wide range of additional confidence-building measures is also possible, between both NATO and Russia and the US and Russia. These would be of more practical value than ‘binding guarantees’ that are in fact unenforceable in terms of reducing tensions and turning diplomacy in productive directions.
Putin is clearly seeking to establish Russia as a key player in European security and to create a Russian sphere of influence in Russia’s near abroad. However the crisis plays out, the most important requirement of successful US-led negotiations with Russia is that Moscow demonstrate that it is prepared to be a responsible international actor. From the West’s perspective, that means, among other things, that Russia must stop meddling in internal Western politics and society, both episodically in elections and generically in the democratic process, whether directly or through proxies. Russia, for its part, has been demanding guarantees from the West. But the West should also press for guarantees from Russia. In neither case, however, can guarantees be literally binding. What matters is what is done in practice, in terms of transparency, direct observation and defined criteria – tried-and-true tools of arms-control processes developed during the Cold War. Provided both Russia and the West see agreement as preferable to confrontation, these can be taken off the shelf, dusted off and used again to salutary effect.
* * *
The United States and its NATO partners face a knotty problem of their own making: the putative right of each European country to join NATO and thereby not only increase its security but also improve its economic opportunities and outlook. No such right exists, given that to join, a country must gain a consensus of current members. For non-member European countries, except perhaps one or two small ones left in the Balkans – and perhaps Finland and Sweden, should they ever wish to apply – that possibility is practically zero. That applies to both Ukraine and Georgia, whose leadership the United States and others have misled.30 In terms of overall security in Europe and NATO’s effective functioning as an alliance, the organisation has already taken in more countries than it requires and can easily manage. This is not to say, of course, that a country is barred from choosing a Western political orientation, which the PfP and parallel EU agencies, along with non-governmental organisations and the private sector, can facilitate.
Nor does it mean that Ukraine or Georgia must be consigned to a Russian sphere of influence. But it does mean that, in practice, they will be geopolitically neutral as between Russia and NATO save for NATO’s and the EU’s cooperative arrangements, which are already in place.31 Given the nature of global and European economics and democratic aspirations, over time these two countries’ Western orientation will be assured, absent military intervention from outside. Putin undoubtedly understands this. The fact remains that Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine carries enormous risks for Moscow. At the same time, Ukraine has responsibilities, which include not just developing a more functional political system and massively reducing corruption but also structurally devolving limited powers to different parts of the country.32 It will never regain Crimea and has no need for it. In the Donbas region, both ethnicity and language argue for some form of autonomy. Ukrainian leaders should recognise that Ukraine will have a greater chance of success if it recognises divergent interests within the country as opposed to denying that they exist or just blaming them on Russia.
War cannot be ruled out entirely, and would generate its own momentum and unforeseeable consequences. However, provided the Biden administration can ground its diplomacy on sound strategic calculations, and Putin understands that he has already reached the limit of Russia’s territorial ambitions in Europe, failed to move Russia much beyond a rentier economy and would risk a decline in political influence with further military adventurism, there are possibilities for a reduction of tensions over Ukraine and potentially more broadly. It’s Putin’s choice whether to gain recognition of Russia’s legitimate interests or to pursue a sphere of interest or even reconstruction of the Soviet Union. If the former, Russia can be accommodated; if the latter, the US and its European allies and partners will oppose Russia with whatever means and to the degree necessary.
In the longer term, there is still George H.W. Bush’s goal of a ‘Europe whole and free’ and at peace in the wake of the twentieth century’s two hot wars and one cold one. If Putin will set Russia on a course to be a goodfaith participant in European security and politics rather than a spoiler, an arrangement that meets everyone’s legitimate security needs may in time be possible. He has made all aware that Russia has risen from the ashes of the Soviet Union. Now he must show that he will play a constructive role and not a destructive one that would eventually profit Russia little or nothing.
As is often the case with statecraft, in adjusting power relations between countries with differing interests, the key is to arrive at a viable process for shaping diplomacy. For Russia and the West, it cannot be limited to the three sets of negotiations beginning January 2022 but needs to carry on indefinitely, as the evolving realities of power and politics require. That process has now begun.
1 Of course, Russian ambitions are not limited to Europe but extend far wider. This can be seen in its involvements in the Middle East, the Transcaucasus, the Arctic and Central Asia, most recently Kazakhstan, as well as in its cyber activities and efforts to destabilise Western democracies. This article focuses on the Ukraine crisis due to its immediate practical and symbolic importance.
2 See ‘How Nikita Khrushchev Gave Crimea to Ukraine’, Russian Culture, 7 March 2014, https://allrus.me/nikita-khrushchev-gave-crimea-ukraine/#:~:text=How%20Nikita%20Khrushchev%20gave%20Crimea%20to%20Ukraine.%20February,was%2C%20in%20fact%2C%20presented%20to%20Ukraine%20by%20Khrushchev.
3 ‘Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, September 12, 1990’, available at US Diplomatic Mission to Germany, https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/2plusfour8994e.htm.
4 See, for instance, M.E. Sarotte, Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021).
5 The key administrative arrangement, devised by General George Joulwan, who was both the NATO and the US commander in Europe, was to have Russian troops report to him only in his latter capacity, thus allowing Russia to claim that it was not under NATO command but rather under the command of the ‘equal’ power.
6 Similarly, providing US security guarantees to reinforce confidence within Western European countries had been a major factor in the formulation of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty and the creation of NATO following the Marshall Plan.
7 NATO, ‘Declaration of the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council Held at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, on 10–11 January 1994’, https://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1994/p94-003.htm.
8 See NATO, ‘Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation’, 27 May 1997, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm. The Founding Act was essentially drafted in Washington and agreed by the other allies prior to negotiations with Moscow.
9 ‘Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’, Budapest, 5 December 1994, available at PIR Center, http://www.pircenter.org/media/content/files/12/13943175580.pdf.
10 See NATO, ‘Charter on a Distinctive Partnership between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine’, 9 July 1997, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25457.htm. The author conducted the final negotiation of this charter, on behalf of both the United States and NATO, with the Ukrainian representative to PfP/EAPC, Ambassador Boris Tarasyuk.
11 President of Russia, ‘Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy’, 10 February 2007, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034. On rereading Putin’s speech and remarks, I wonder how many other major leaders would be as capable of that level of strategic analysis – of course largely but not entirely self-serving – as Putin was on this occasion. From the inception of the Munich Security Conference in the mid-1960s until the end of the Cold War, it served as the main opportunity for US officials – almost always the secretary of defense along with a congressional delegation – to lay out US preferences, or ‘marching orders’, for NATO and other aspects of European security for the following year. Allies paid close attention. Since the end of the Cold War, the conference has become more wide-ranging, extending to issues far beyond Europe. I have participated in about 20 such conferences, and they have almost always been civil. Indeed, Putin also remarked, in counter-point to his criticisms, that ‘in spite of all our disagreements I consider the President of the United States my friend. He is a decent person and I know that today the wolves can blame the United States for everything that is being done on the international arena and internally. But I know that he is a decent person and it is possible to talk and reach agreements with him. And when I talked to him he said: “I proceed from the fact that Russia and the USA will never be opponents and enemies again.” I agree with him. But I repeat once again that there are symmetries and asymmetries here, there is nothing personal. It is simply a calculation.’
12 See, for instance, Thom Shanker and Mark Landler, ‘Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability’, New York Times, 11 February 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/europe/11munich.html; and Rob Watson, ‘Putin’s Speech: Back to Cold War?’, BBC News, 10 February 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6350847.stm.
13 NATO, ‘Bucharest Summit Declaration Issued by the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest on 3 April 2008’, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm.
14 Most recently, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: ‘We stand by the decisions we have made, also on Ukraine and membership. I was present at the NATO Summit in Bucharest where we first made the decision. And we support Ukraine on this path towards membership, Euro-Atlantic integration, by supporting reforms, fighting corruption and modernizing the security and defence institutions of Ukraine. To become a member of NATO, you have to meet NATO standards, and there has to be a decision by 30 Allies. We need consensus in the Alliance to enlarge and to invite a new country to join our Alliance. The political message is that Russia does have no right whatsoever to interfere in that process. Ukraine is a sovereign, independent nation. And every sovereign, independent nation has the right to choose its own path, including what kind of security arrangements it wants to be part of. So it is up to Ukraine and 30 Allies to decide when Ukraine is ready to join the Alliance. [Russia] has no veto, no right to interfere in that process.’ NATO, ‘Press Conference by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Riga’, 20 November 2021, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_189146.htm. But Stoltenberg was careful to distinguish between countries that belong to NATO and those that don’t: ‘I think it is important to distinguish between NATO Allies and partner Ukraine. NATO Allies, there we provide [Article 5] guarantees, collective defence guarantees, and we will defend and protect all Allies. Ukraine is a partner, a highly valued partner. We provide support, political, practical support. Allies provide training, capacity building, equipment and I am absolutely certain that Allies will recommit and reconfirm their strong support to Ukraine also during the meeting today. But as I said there’s a difference between a partner Ukraine and an Ally like for instance Latvia.’ NATO, ‘Doorstep Statement by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Riga’, 30 November 2021, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_188767.htm.
15 See, for example, NATO, ‘Doorstep Statement by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’.
16 See ‘Profile: Ukraine’s Ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’, BBC News, 28 February 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25182830. The Russian role in Yanukovych’s decisions regarding the agreement with the EU is unclear, but the fact of his fleeing to Russia is material to the continuing crisis. There is also the argument – which I made in the late 1990s – that, viewed objectively from Putin’s perspective of seeking to dominate Russia’s near abroad and intensify his political control in Russia, he should be more concerned with the European Union than with NATO enlargement due to the appeal to the Russian population of greater EU prosperity. The salient historical analogue is Mikhail Gorbachev’s experiment with glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s.
17 A recording of the intercepted phone call was published on the internet, presumably by Russia, on 4 February. For a BBC annotation of the phonecall transcript, see Jonathan Marcus, ‘Ukraine Crisis: Transcript of Leaked Nuland–Pyatt Call’, BBC News, 7 February 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957?piano-modal. Reaction in the West to the leaked phone call focused on an epithet used by Nuland to describe the EU. Notably, she cited Biden, then vice president, who had major responsibilities for Ukraine in the Obama administration, as the person who would give final approval – an ‘attaboy’. ‘So Biden’s willing’, she told Pyatt.
18 See, for example, NATO, ‘Wales Summit Declaration Issued by the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Wales’, 5 September 2014, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_112964.htm.
19 Ukraine’s and Georgia’s circumstances are different. Georgia’s geographical location is far less strategically significant than Ukraine’s.
20 Even with allies there can be difficulties. The United States has frequently been at odds with France on foreignpolicy issues, as when Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command structure in 1966 and France opposed the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
21 One definition of a cold war is a situation in which it is not possible to discriminate between issues on which agreement is possible and impossible, with confrontation becoming the rule. That is clearly not the case now – at least not yet – with respect to US and NATO relations with Russia.
22 One notable exception, excluded from the general US government policy of limiting agreements and cooperation with Russia, has been the Arctic Council, where common interests between the two countries, along with the other members of the council, allowed considerable cooperation, even though some US military commentators began warning of confrontation in that region. I was a member of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board, which in September 2016 adopted a report on the Arctic endorsing continued cooperation, though with a weather eye out for possible changes in Russian behaviour. The US Coast Guard, among other agencies, supported this approach. See US Department of State, ‘International Security Advisory Board: Report on Arctic Policy’, 21 September 2016, https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/isab/262342.htm.
23 It has long been understood that the most valuable aspect of US–Soviet strategic-arms-control talks during the Cold War was to promote positive change, over time, in political relations. Similarly, the concept of ‘parity’ in nuclear systems had mainly political, as opposed to operational, significance.
24 The most important military requirement for ending the Cold War, mutual assured destruction, was achieved by the mid-1960s and effectively ratified by the 1972 ABM Treaty, but it still took until 1989 for the Cold War to come to an end.
25 See ‘Transcript: Trump and Putin’s Joint Press Conference’, NPR, 16 July 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629462401/transcript-president-trump-and-russian-president-putins-joint-press-conference.
26 Economic sanctions, to be effective, must be agreed by virtually all countries that provide goods and services to the affected country, impervious to any internal offsetting measures or seen by the target country’s leadership and populace as deleterious to national security. Sanctions probably played a role in the end of apartheid in South Africa and in Iran’s seriously negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but there are few other obvious examples. Indeed, US maximum economic pressure on Iran following the United States’ 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA has had little visible effect on Iran’s negotiating posture.
27 See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, ‘Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees’, 17 December 2021, https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790818/?lang=en; and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, ‘Agreement on Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’, 17 December 2021, https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790803/?lang=en.
28 The old saw that ‘politics should stop at the water’s edge’ may never have been true in US foreign policy; it is certainly not true today. One of the remarkable achievements in the last half-century or so is that NATO has always been a bipartisan matter, even when there has been political nibbling at the edges, beginning with the original deal cut between Harry Truman and Arthur Vandenberg, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, at NATO’s founding.
29 The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty should also be resuscitated. The United States understandably wants China to be involved, but Washington should not wait until that becomes possible to renew the bilateral commitment with Russia if it is amenable. It may well be receptive, given that a renewed agreement would tend to bolster Russia’s status as a great power.
30 The European Communities/European Union acted similarly towards Turkey, making pledges of membership that were never to be honoured. In response, Turkey has developed a non-European orientation that has had negative consequences for the West.
31 On optimising these, see Nicolò Fasola and Alyssa J. Wood, ‘Reforming Ukraine’s Security Sector’, Survival, vol. 63, no. 2, April– May 2021, pp. 41–54.
32 See Valentyna Romanova and Andreas Umland, ‘Decentralising Ukraine: Geopolitical Implications’, Survival, vol. 61, no. 5, October–November 2019, pp. 99–112.