Introduction
The current crisis in Ukraine, which recently led to the emergence of a hot war in Europe for the first time since 1999, is undoubtedly the single most important issue in international relations today. The magnitude and acute nature of the crisis understandably draw attention to its immediate causes, most notably Vladimir Putin’s sudden decision to recognize the independence of self-proclaimed Russian-sponsored ‘people’s republics’ in the east of Ukraine. However, a proper understanding of the conflict should look beyond the immediately obvious causes and even deeper than the Maidan protests and annexation of Crimea in 2013-2014. It is clear that neither the Russian-backed ‘people’s republics’ nor the NATO-leaning Ukraine are fully independent entities and the current struggle in Eastern Europe fits within the larger picture of tensions between Russia and NATO. With this in mind, one can rightfully inquire whether the actions of the United States have contributed to the crisis that now unfolds. Analysis suggests that the USA bears a part of the responsibility, as the lack of focus combined with liberal interventionism and NATO expansion created a strategic threat for Russia that could have been easily avoided.
1991: The End of the Cold War
The current period of US-Russian diplomatic relations begins with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of the new world order in 1991. The most evident and defining characteristic of this order was the unequivocal dominance of the United States as the only superpower in the world – and won that had just won the Cold War at that. As John Gaddis noted in his analysis of the emerging world order in 1992, it was the time when the US national security arguably reached its highest point in history. As the researcher put it, for the first time in more than fifty years, “no single great power, or coalition of powers, poses a clear and present danger” to American national security (Gaddis 1992, 193). Russia, having lost much of the territory, population, and industrial potential and burdened with the deficiencies of the planned economy inherited from the Soviet Union, was in no way capable of opposing American foreign policy initiatives. In short, Russia could not pose a threat to the United States in any scenario save the unlimited nuclear exchange, and the international political landscape was heavily dominated by America.
At the same time, the victory in the Cold War and the overwhelming dominance of the United States as the only superpower in the world came hand in hand with the lack of clear and focused direction. One of the main points made by Gaddis (1992) in his attempt to find a new direction for American foreign policy a year after the Cold War is that “victories in wars – hot or cold – tend to unfocus the mind” (193). Naturally, the absence of a clearly identified enemy means additional difficulties in finding policy goals. Moreover, Gaddis (1992) makes it explicitly clear that the American political establishment by the end of the Cold War was barely able to plan long-term. He mentions that, at a foreign policy meeting in 1985, nobody discussed the plans beyond 3-4 months, and the idea of the Cold War ending never occurred to anyone either (Gaddis 1998, vii). As a result, the United States entered a new period of its relations with Russia with considerable leeway to do anything virtually due to its status as the only superpower and the absence of a long-term goal.
Moreover, the basic premises guiding American policy-making were also changing and deviating away from traditional patterns, and not necessarily for the better. Alluding to the central place that the idea of checks and balances occupies in American political culture, Gaddis (1992) points out that, throughout most of the nation’s history, the balance of power was the dominating notion in American foreign policy. He notes that, despite the isolationism of the 19th century, the United States watched the balance of power in Europe carefully – and when threats to it materialized in the 20th century, as in both World Wars and the Cold War, stepped in to maintain and restore it. The expansion of American influence in Europe naturally accompanied these interventions. However, as the same author rightfully notes, an attempt to push it too far “would have brought about another form of disequilibrium” and, thus, destroy the very balance the United States claimed to maintain (Gaddis 1992, 194). With no adversary powerful enough to oppose it, the United States lost the checks that were as important for the power balance in Europe as the American willingness to maintain it.
To summarize, the end of the Cold War brought several changes to international relations that are essential for understanding Russian-American relations in the years that followed. First of all, as the single most powerful country in the world, the United States was virtually free to pursue any political agenda facing scarce opposition from other international actors. Secondly, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the largely atrophied ability to plan foreign policy in the long term, there was no clear direction to follow. Finally, the lack of opposition meant that the United States was no longer as dedicated to maintaining the balance of power as it was during most of its history.
1993-2001: The Clinton Doctrine and ‘Enlargement’
As the first American President to enter the White House in the post-Cold War world, Bill Clinton faced an admittedly formidable challenge of overcoming the confusion caused by the unexpectedly swift collapse of the Soviet Union and the sudden obsolescence of the decades-old foreign policy goals. Throughout the first months of his presidency, he acted as a crisis manager in an ad hoc manner, which earned him much criticism for the timid handling of the events in Somalia and former Yugoslavia (Brinkley 1997, 113). As mentioned above, formulating a coherent foreign policy soon after the end of the Cold War was a formidable challenge in its own right, and Clinton’s focus on economic matters over foreign relations did not help it. Even though this elastic approach to foreign policy-making gave Clinton “the freedom to maneuver as the day’s headlines dictated,” the necessity of a coherent approach to international affairs became more acute as the press and Republicans criticized him for indecision (Brinkley 1997, 114). By August 1993, it was clear that the new President had to formulate a vision for the United States’ foreign policy.
With the help of his national security advisor Anthony Lake and a team the latter assembled, Clinton’s administration eventually came up with the catchy slogan of ‘democratic enlargement.’ The idea behind it roughly corresponded to the purpose of supporting liberal democracies all over the world and, in particular, in the former states of the Soviet bloc. Thus, the main points of the ‘enlargement,’ which came to be synonymous with the Clinton doctrine in foreign policy, were the promotion of free-market and democratic participation and counter unspecified threats to both established and emerging democracies (Brinkley 1997, 116). In a way, it was the continuation of the vision of the American world order as a union of liberal democracies under the unquestionable American leadership – the notion created during the Cold War and aptly dubbed by John Ikenberry (2011) as “a liberal hegemonic order” (xi). However, this similarity should not deceive the observer into thinking that the Clinton doctrine was a direct and straightforward continuation of the preceding administrations’ foreign policy.
While technically similar to what the United States pursued in its Cold War strategy of containment, the Clinton doctrine deviated from it in a crucial way. During the Cold War, the American support for democracy and free markets was often declaratory rather than real and by no means unconditional. Gaddis (1992) rightfully notes that the “American commitment to democracy, capitalism, and collective security has never been absolute” despite the fact that, unlike in the post-Cold War world, liberal democracies had a clear-cut threat in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (195). It happened because the proclaimed adherence to the support of free-market economies and democratic political regimes was tempered by political realism at every step. The United States never embarked on “an absolutist crusade to make the world democratic” because it would create too strong a challenge to the Soviet Union and guarantee a severe escalation (Gaddis 1992, 195). In other words, during the Cold War, the United States supported democracy insofar as it allowed maintaining a reasonably favorable balance of power.
The Clinton doctrine departed from this realist vision and embraced a fully liberal approach to international relations. For Clinton, the promotion of democracy and the especially free-market economy was not a means to achieve a stable political equilibrium but a goal in itself. This expansion was undoubtedly more important for Clinton than military matters, such as the expansion of NATO, and Douglas Brinkley (1997) makes perfect sense summarizing it as “spreading democracy through promoting the gospel of geoeconomics” (125). However, military means were by no means excluded from ‘democratic enlargement’ as professed by the Clinton doctrine. On the one hand, the Clinton administration did not shy away from using military force in Europe when it seemed like an appropriate way to support democracy, most notably during the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia. On the other hand, it also began the process of expanding NATO in Eastern Europe, which slowly but surely put it on a collision course with Russia.
1991-1999: Dissolution of Yugoslavia and NATO Intervention
Simultaneously with the fall of the Soviet Union, another former socialist state with a complex ethnic composition followed its fate. By the early 1990s, economic decline, ethnic tensions between the country’s numerous nations, and the growing dissatisfaction with socialism and Serbian nationalism as government policies led to an acute political crisis and the growth of separatism. In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia – the two wealthiest republics of the Yugoslavian commonwealth – formally declared their independence (Bowker 1998, 1246). Military engagements between the separatist forces and the Yugoslavian military soon followed and reached their peak in a bitter three-way war in Bosnia between its Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim (predominantly Albanian) population. While European nations attempted to limit the conflict by imposing an arms embargo, Clinton assumed a more hawkish position in early 1993, suggesting NATO airstrikes to help the Muslim war effort (Bowker 1998, 1250). This, in turn, raised more than one eyebrow in Moscow, especially since the nationalist opposition in the newly independent Russia was eager to blame President Yeltsin for his failures in foreign policy, whether real or perceived.
Until January 1993, the Soviet Union and later Russia generally went along with the Western political initiative regarding the solution to the crisis in former Yugoslavia. For example, Russia enthusiastically supported the Vance-Owen Peace Plan for Bosnia, which was drafted by the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) in January 1993 and proposed the federalization of Bosnia to reflect its complex ethnic composition (Bowker 1998, 1250). However, after the Clinton administration adopted a harsher stance on the matter, Russia began to oppose the Western course and put forward its own initiatives. After bilateral negotiations, Russia reached an agreement with the Bosnian Serbs that they would withdraw the heavy artillery from Sarajevo and allow entry for a Russian peacekeeping force (Bowker 1998, 1252). However, the US-led NATO forces, with little concern for Russian diplomacy, initiated airstrikes against Serb position on the ground in February 1993 (Bowker 1998, 1252). This decision caused outrage in Russia, but the country was far too weak to take any action against it, and the war ended with the NATO operation crippling the Serbian forces in 1995.
The early stages of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and, in particular, the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 proved to be an important stepping stone in US-Russia relations. NATO’s armed involvement in the conflict was seen as unacceptable in Moscow. On the one hand, Russian policymakers perceived it as an escalation of conflict soon after Russia had brokered a peacekeeping arrangement, albeit a limited one. Apart from that, due to the long-standing historical friendship between Russia and Serbia, the airstrikes against Serbia were felt particularly acutely in Russia (Bowker 1998, 1252). Finally – and, to the Russian observers, most importantly – airstrikes in Bosnia were the first time NATO took joint military action since its inception in 1949 (Bowker 1998, 1252). Not only did the NATO forces conduct an offensive military campaign in Europe, but they also did that against a historical Russian ally in the region. To the Russian policymakers, the signal was clear: with the demise of the Soviet Union and the resulting change in the balance of power, NATO would not hesitate to use its military superiority in Europe, regardless of Russian diplomatic efforts.
Another round of tensions between the United States and Russia over Yugoslavia came in 1999, this time because of the region of Kosovo. While historically a Serbian territory, by the end of the 20th century, it was largely populated by Albanian Muslims, contributing to the rampant ethnic tensions. Armed conflicts between ethnic Serbs and Albanians went on since the middle of the 1990s, with the Serbian forces often accused of ethnic cleansing and even genocide (Norris 1999, 146). Diplomatic attempts to solve the problem proved largely useless, and due to the ongoing media coverage of the conflict, Western political leaders faced increased pressure to take decisive action. In 1999, in an attempt to end the hostilities by forcing the Yugoslavian troops to withdraw, NATO began another airstrike campaign that lasted over seventy days. The airstrikes eventually forced the Yugoslavian troops and local Serb militias to clear their positions, and the Yugoslavian government agreed for a peacekeeping force to be sent to Kosovo.
From the American perspective, the NATO intervention in Kosovo was a ‘humanitarian war,’ fully justified by the necessity to stop ethnic cleansing and other atrocities, which, as far as the United States was concerned, were primarily perpetrated by the Serbs. However, Russia had a different view of things, and the NATO involvement in the Kosovo War deepened the rift between the two countries. Russia viewed military action against a country it still considered to be in its sphere of influence as highly undesirable, and the plans to send a peacekeeping force without Russian participation as unacceptable. After the attempts to diplomatically thwart the NATO action failed, Russia launched a military operation to secure the key airbase in Slatina, Kosovo, and ensure it would have a say in the peacekeeping process to follow (Norris 2005, 218-219). This decision put Russian and NATO forces uncomfortably close to a direct military confrontation, but after a round of negotiations, both sides were able to achieve an agreement on a joint peacekeeping mission. Still, the 1999 Kosovo War marked the first time since the Cold War when Russia and NATO were close to confrontation.
In the context of US-Russian relations, the Kosovo War largely reaffirmed the Russian perceptions created during the Bosnian War. First and foremost, it confirmed that NATO was willing and able to launch a unilateral military action in Europe even without the sanction of the UN Security Council, which was never given because Russia, as a permanent member, made it clear it would not support an anti-Serb resolution (Norris 2005, 15). From an American perspective, which, in accordance with Clinton doctrine, viewed the operation as a humanitarian intervention ultimately aimed to promote stability and democracy, there was nothing threatening about it. However, for Russians, who firmly adhered to the realist interpretation of international, military action against a country that, until recently, has been within Moscow’s sphere of influence, was a painful reminder of the changes in the balance of forces in Europe after the Cold War. Moreover, it could also be interpreted as a sign that the United States had designed to expand its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe at the expense of the former socialist states – a fear confirmed by the NATO expansion in the region.
1999-2008: NATO Expansion and Forward-Looking Statements
Throughout the Cold War, NATO had a clear-cut purpose of opposing and countering the military power of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, most notably in the case of an all-out land war in Europe. With the sudden end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, the alliance has suffered as much as the American foreign policy-making. In full accordance with Gaddis’ (1992) aforementioned claims that “victories in wars – hot or cold – tend to unfocus the mind,” the most powerful military alliance in history suddenly found itself with no adversary and, as a consequence, with no justification for its existence (193). Operations in Yugoslavia demonstrated that NATO boasted considerable power, but the direction for the use of this power was no longer clear. Throughout history, military alliances have always been created to either fight or prevent wars – but, as of the 1990s, there was neither a war that required such a massive constellation of armed forces that NATO had, nor a potential adversary strong enough to even think of challenging it.
However, despite the fact that NATO essentially lost its purpose as a military alliance, it not only did not cease to exist but also embarked on a campaign of recruiting new member states. The first round of NATO expansion occurred in 1999, roughly simultaneously with the final events of the Kosovo War. Three former states of the Warsaw Pact, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, were the first to join – and while Russia was annoyed, it understood its relative weakness and acquiesced to the USA, filling the power vacuum that the collapse of the Warsaw Pact left in its wake (Mearsheimer 2014, 2). The second round took place in 2004 and included Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (Mearsheimer 2014, 2). Apart from including a larger number of countries, it also brought NATO right next to Russia’s border with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all of which were formerly a part of the Soviet Union. Moscow acquiesced to it as well, since these three were too small to accommodate military infrastructure able to pose a significant threat to Russia, but watched the expansion wearily.
The United States genuinely did not see any problem with the enlargement of their military alliance in Eastern Europe due to the approach to foreign relations adopted under the auspices of the Clinton doctrine. As mentioned above, it focused on promoting free-market economies and democracy much more than on countering military threats – which, in any case, were nearly nonexistent in the Eastern Europe of the time (Brinkley 1997, 116). Consequently, the United States saw the expansion of NATO not as a military measure but as a way to achieve the aforementioned politico-economic goals. Edward Luttwak (2012) sums it up best by pointing out that, for the United States, the NATO expansion was “the fastest and cheapest way of stabilizing fragile new democracies” (18). Based on that, and true to the liberal vision of international relations no longer constrained by the logic of the Cold War superpower competition, American policymakers refused to view this expansion as a threat to anyone’s security. If anything, the liberal reasoning went expansion of democracy, even under the military auspices of NATO, would only make the region more secure for everyone.
Moscow’s perspective on the matter was drastically different, not in the least because, unlike their American counterparts, Russian policymakers thought and acted in the realist logic of great power competition and spheres of influence. As mentioned above, the use of NATO military potential against a sovereign nation in Europe, even without the sanction of the UN Security Council, raised more than one eyebrow in Russia during the events of the Bosnian and Kosovo Wars. John Mearsheimer (2014) rightfully notes that even President Yeltsin, who was generally much less of a hardliner on foreign policy than his successor, perceived the bombing of Yugoslavia as “the first sign of what could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders” (2). Under Vladimir Putin, Moscow’s stance on the matter became even more uncompromising. Although Russia acquiesced to the NATO presence in the Baltic states, which, due to their negligible strategic depth, were of little military consequence, any expansion of the alliance on the other parts of the Russian land border, whether in Europe or the Caucasus, was a red line.
Ironically, this was exactly the course that NATO pursued in the years following the second round of its expansion. The key point in this regard was the Bucharest summit of the alliance that took place in April 2008. At the summit’s conclusion, the alliance considered admitting both Georgia and Ukraine into NATO – a move that President Bush supported wholeheartedly, and only European opposition in the face of France and Germany prevented NATO from making a decision then and there (Mearsheimer 2014, 2). The resulting compromise between the alliance members was a joint statement that, while NATO would not accept its two new members at the moment, it welcomed the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of both countries and encouraged them to pursue the path toward membership.
The alliance took this decision despite very explicit Russian opposition to the possibility of NATO expansion into either Ukraine or Georgia. Mearsheimer (2014) points out that there was no shortage of verbal warnings, and President Putin even suggested to Bush that, should Ukraine ever apply for NATO membership, it would cease to exist as a functioning state (3). An even clearer warning was the brief in August 2008 between Russia and Georgia. When the latter sought to subjugate two separatist regions of Abkhazia and North Ossetia, the conflict ended within days, with Russia demolishing the Georgian military. Coming mere months after the joint declaration at the Bucharest summit, decisive and uncompromising Russian action evidently signified the seriousness of Moscow’s opposition to any further NATO expansion on its borders. However, despite the repeated signals that Putin sent to his foreign counterparts to draw his red line on NATO enlargement, the alliance, and the United States in particular, never abandoned their proclaimed dedication to making Georgia and Ukraine NATO states, which led directly to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis.
2014-Present: Ukrainian Crisis
If the 2008 Bucharest summit was the event that put Ukraine on top of Russia’s agenda in terms of national security, then the Maidan protests of 2013-2014 and the following events constituted the first major escalation of the crisis. Throughout the 21st century, the United States and its European allies spent considerable money on establishing a pro-American regime in Ukraine and moving it close to the EU and NATO (Mearsheimer 2014, 4). In a country with numerous Russian and Russian-speaking minorities and acute political tensions between regions, the issue of joining either EU or NATO was polarizing, with the West supporting both and the east and South preferring closer ties with Russia. After pro-Russian President Yanukovich was ousted from power after months of protests over his decision to accept the EU association deal, the protest leaders quickly formed a new government. It was entirely anti-Russian, and, as Mearsheimer (2014) points out, it also had at least four neo-fascist members (4). The new government did not hide that its goal was securing membership in the EU and NATO as soon as possible.
For Russia, it meant crossing the red line that its leaders have been insisting on since 2008. Moscow reacted swiftly by taking control of the Crimean peninsula with little resistance to secure the valuable naval base at Sevastopol, fearing it could fall into NATO’s hands (Mearsheimer 2014, 5). When civil war broke out in Ukraine’s easternmost region of Donbas between the pro-Russian and pro-Western forces, Putin immediately lent his support to the rebels by providing them with weapons, ammunition, and, allegedly, direct military support from the Russian army (Mearsheimer 2014, 5). The United States and its European allies, still clinging to the liberal vision of international relations, saw Russian actions as unprovoked and imposed sanctions, which only grew harsher over the years. Until early 2022, the situation remained volatile but relatively stable, with neither Russia nor the United States willing to compromise on Ukraine’s future. Then, on February 23, Russia recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed ‘people’s republics’ in Donbas and, on the following day, launched a full-scale invasion of Ukrainian territory with a proclaimed purpose of its ‘denazification’ and ‘demilitarization.’
Conclusion
Given the fact that it resulted in the first all-out war in Europe since 1999, the Ukrainian crisis is certainly the gravestone that the international community faces today. However, it was neither sudden nor an unexpected one – rather, it is a logical outcome of the American-Russian relations in the decades following the Cold War. American liberal vision of international relations and Russia’s staunch dedication to realism led the countries to the mutually exclusive interpretations of NATO expansion. The United States viewed it as better security for everyone and Russia as an unacceptable strategic threat. While Russia certainly bears full responsibility for the ongoing war, it is also true that the West could have prevented it at any point between 2008 and 2022 by guaranteeing Ukraine’s neutral status – and, in this regard, the United States contributed to the current crisis.
References
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Brinkley, Douglas. “Democratic Enlargement: The Clinton Doctrine.” Foreign Policy, no. 106 (1997): 110-127.
Gaddis, John L. 1992. The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations. New York: Oxford UP.
Ikenberry, John G. 2011. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Luttwak, Edward N. 2012. The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Mearsheimer, John J. 2014. “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin.” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 5: 1-12.
Norris, John. 2005. Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo. Westport: Praeger.