Reasons Ukraine crisis is the Wests fault

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of
Political Science at the University of Chicago.
September/October 2014 77
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is
the Wests Fault
The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin
John J. Mearsheimer
According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine
crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed
Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire,
and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other
countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putins decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.
But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies
share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble
is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move
Ukraine out of Russias orbit and integrate it into the West. At the
same time, the EUs expansion eastward and the Wests backing of the
pro-democracy movement in Ukrainebeginning with the Orange
Revolution in 2004were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s,
Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in
recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while
their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.
For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraines democratically elected
and pro-Russian presidentwhich he rightly labeled a coupwas
the fnal straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared
would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine
until it abandoned its eforts to join the West.
Putins pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West
had been moving into Russias backyard and threatening its core strategic
John J. Mearsheimer
78 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in
the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only
because they subscribe to a fawed view of international politics. They
tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the
twenty-frst century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on
the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.
But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows
that realpolitik remains relevantand states that ignore it do so at
their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting
to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russias border. Now
that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater
mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.
THE WESTERN AFFRONT
As the Cold War came to a close, Soviet leaders preferred that U.S.
forces remain in Europe and NATO stay intact, an arrangement they
thought would keep a reunifed Germany pacifed. But they and their
Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed
that Western diplomats understood their concerns. The Clinton administration evidently thought otherwise, and in the mid-1990s, it began
pushing for NATO to expand.
The frst round of enlargement took place in 1999 and brought in
the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The second occurred in 2004;
it included Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia,
and Slovenia. Moscow complained bitterly from the start. During
NATOs 1995 bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, for example,
Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, This is the frst sign of what
could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federations
borders. . . . The fame of war could burst out across the whole of
Europe. But the Russians were too weak at the time to derail NATOs
eastward movementwhich, at any rate, did not look so threatening,
since none of the new members shared a border with Russia, save for
the tiny Baltic countries.
Then NATO began looking further east. At its April 2008 summit in
Bucharest, the alliance considered admitting Georgia and Ukraine.
The George W. Bush administration supported doing so, but France
and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize
Russia. In the end, NATOs members reached a compromise: the alliance
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the Wests Fault
September/October 2014 79
did not begin the formal process leading to membership, but it issued
a statement endorsing the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine and
boldly declaring, These countries will become members of NATO.
Moscow, however, did not see the outcome as much of a compromise.
Alexander Grushko, then Russias deputy foreign minister, said,
Georgias and Ukraines membership in the alliance is a huge strategic
mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European
security. Putin maintained that admitting those two countries to NATO
would represent a direct threat to Russia. One Russian newspaper
reported that Putin, while speaking with Bush, very transparently
hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist.
Russias invasion of Georgia in August 2008 should have dispelled any
remaining doubts about Putins determination to prevent Georgia and
Ukraine from joining NATO. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili,
who was deeply committed to bringing
his country into NATO, had decided in
the summer of 2008 to reincorporate
two separatist regions, Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. But Putin sought to
keep Georgia weak and dividedand
out of NATO. After fghting broke out
between the Georgian government and
South Ossetian separatists, Russian
forces took control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow had made
its point. Yet despite this clear warning, NATO never publicly abandoned its goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance.
And NATO expansion continued marching forward, with Albania and
Croatia becoming members in 2009.
The EU, too, has been marching eastward. In May 2008, it unveiled
its Eastern Partnership initiative, a program to foster prosperity in
such countries as Ukraine and integrate them into the EU economy.
Not surprisingly, Russian leaders view the plan as hostile to their
countrys interests. This past February, before Yanukovych was
forced from ofce, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused
the EU of trying to create a sphere of infuence in eastern Europe.
In the eyes of Russian leaders, EU expansion is a stalking horse for
NATO expansion.
The Wests fnal tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been
its eforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine
U.S. and European
leaders blundered in
attempting to turn Ukraine
into a Western stronghold
on Russias border.
John J. Mearsheimer
80 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding
pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S.
assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian afairs, estimated
in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than
$5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve the future it deserves.
As part of that efort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National
Endowment for Democracy. The nonproft foundation has funded
more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine,
and the NEDs president, Carl Gershman, has called that country the
biggest prize. After Yanukovych won Ukraines presidential election
in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and
so it stepped up its eforts to support the opposition and strengthen
the countrys democratic institutions.
When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine,
they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly
groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington
Post, Ukraines choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the
ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. He added:
Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may fnd himself on the losing
end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.
CREATING A CRISIS
The Wests triple package of policiesNATO enlargement, EU expansion,
and democracy promotionadded fuel to a fre waiting to ignite. The
spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major
economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to
accept a $15 billion Russian counterofer instead. That decision gave
rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following
three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some
one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly few to Kiev to
resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition
struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new
elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fed
to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western
and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking
members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.
Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to
light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican
Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations,
September/October 2014 81
and Geofrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after
Yanukovychs toppling that it was a day for the history books. As a
leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime
change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to
become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No
wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in
Yanukovychs ouster.
For Putin, the time to act against Ukraine and the West had arrived.
Shortly after February 22, he ordered Russian forces to take Crimea
from Ukraine, and soon after that, he incorporated it into Russia. The
task proved relatively easy, thanks to the thousands of Russian troops
already stationed at a naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
Crimea also made for an easy target since ethnic Russians compose
roughly 60 percent of its population. Most of them wanted out
of Ukraine.
John J. Mearsheimer
82 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Next, Putin put massive pressure on the new government in Kiev
to discourage it from siding with the West against Moscow, making it
clear that he would wreck Ukraine as a functioning state before he
would allow it to become a Western stronghold on Russias doorstep.
Toward that end, he has provided advisers, arms, and diplomatic
support to the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, who are pushing the country toward civil war. He has massed a large army on the
Ukrainian border, threatening to invade if the government cracks
down on the rebels. And he has sharply raised the price of the natural
gas Russia sells to Ukraine and demanded payment for past exports.
Putin is playing hardball.
THE DIAGNOSIS
Putins actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of fat
land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany
all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a bufer state of
enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would
tolerate a military alliance that was Moscows mortal enemy until
recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly
by while the West helped install a government there that was determined
to integrate Ukraine into the West.
Washington may not like Moscows position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are
always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After
all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying
military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on
its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an
impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico
in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into
Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any efort to turn those
countries against Russiaa message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian
war also made crystal clear.
Ofcials from the United States and its European allies contend
that they tried hard to assuage Russian fears and that Moscow should
understand that NATO has no designs on Russia. In addition to continually denying that its expansion was aimed at containing Russia,
the alliance has never permanently deployed military forces in its new
member states. In 2002, it even created a body called the NATO-Russia
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the Wests Fault
September/October 2014 83
Council in an efort to foster cooperation. To further mollify Russia, the
United States announced in 2009 that it would deploy its new missile
defense system on warships in European waters, at least initially, rather
than on Czech or Polish territory. But none of these measures worked;
the Russians remained steadfastly opposed to NATO enlargement,
especially into Georgia and Ukraine. And it is the Russians, not the
West, who ultimately get to decide what counts as a threat to them.
To understand why the West, especially the United States, failed
to understand that its Ukraine policy was laying the groundwork for
a major clash with Russia, one must go
back to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton
administration began advocating NATO
expansion. Pundits advanced a variety
of arguments for and against enlargement, but there was no consensus on
what to do. Most eastern European
migrs in the United States and their
relatives, for example, strongly supported expansion, because they wanted NATO to protect such countries
as Hungary and Poland. A few realists also favored the policy because
they thought Russia still needed to be contained.
But most realists opposed expansion, in the belief that a declining
great power with an aging population and a one-dimensional economy
did not in fact need to be contained. And they feared that enlargement
would only give Moscow an incentive to cause trouble in eastern Europe.
The U.S. diplomat George Kennan articulated this perspective in a 1998
interview, shortly after the U.S. Senate approved the frst round of NATO
expansion. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and
it will afect their policies, he said. I think it is a tragic mistake. There
was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else.
Most liberals, on the other hand, favored enlargement, including
many key members of the Clinton administration. They believed that
the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed international
politics and that a new, postnational order had replaced the realist
logic that used to govern Europe. The United States was not only the
indispensable nation, as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put
it; it was also a benign hegemon and thus unlikely to be viewed as a
threat in Moscow. The aim, in essence, was to make the entire continent
look like western Europe.
Imagine the American
outrage if China built an
impressive military alliance
and tried to include
Canada and Mexico.
John J. Mearsheimer
84 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
And so the United States and its allies sought to promote democracy
in the countries of eastern Europe, increase economic interdependence
among them, and embed them in international institutions. Having
won the debate in the United States, liberals had little difculty
convincing their European allies to support NATO enlargement. After
all, given the EUs past achievements, Europeans were even more wedded
than Americans to the idea that geopolitics no longer mattered and
that an all-inclusive liberal order could maintain peace in Europe.
So thoroughly did liberals come to dominate the discourse about
European security during the frst decade of this century that even
as the alliance adopted an open-door policy of growth, NATO expansion
faced little realist opposition. The liberal worldview is now accepted
dogma among U.S. ofcials. In March, for example, President Barack
Obama delivered a speech about Ukraine in which he talked repeatedly about the ideals that motivate Western policy and how those
ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view
of power. Secretary of State John Kerrys response to the Crimea
crisis refected this same perspective: You just dont in the twentyfrst century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another
country on completely trumped-up pretext.
In essence, the two sides have been operating with diferent playbooks: Putin and his compatriots have been thinking and acting
according to realist dictates, whereas their Western counterparts
have been adhering to liberal ideas about international politics. The
result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked
a major crisis over Ukraine.
BLAME GAME
In that same 1998 interview, Kennan predicted that NATO expansion
would provoke a crisis, after which the proponents of expansion would
say that we always told you that is how the Russians are. As if on
cue, most Western ofcials have portrayed Putin as the real culprit in
the Ukraine predicament. In March, according to The New York Times,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that Putin was irrational,
telling Obama that he was in another world. Although Putin no
doubt has autocratic tendencies, no evidence supports the charge that
he is mentally unbalanced. On the contrary: he is a frst-class strategist
who should be feared and respected by anyone challenging him on
foreign policy.
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the Wests Fault
September/October 2014 85
Other analysts allege, more plausibly, that Putin regrets the demise
of the Soviet Union and is determined to reverse it by expanding
Russias borders. According to this interpretation, Putin, having taken
Crimea, is now testing the waters to see if the time is right to conquer
Ukraine, or at least its eastern part, and he will eventually behave
aggressively toward other countries in Russias neighborhood. For
some in this camp, Putin represents a , and
striking any kind of deal with him would repeat the mistake of Munich.
Thus, NATO must admit Georgia and Ukraine to contain Russia before
it dominates its neighbors and threatens western Europe.
This argument falls apart on close inspection. If Putin were committed to creating a greater Russia, signs of his intentions would
almost certainly have arisen before February 22. But there is virtually
no evidence that he was bent on taking Crimea, much less any other
territory in Ukraine, before that date. Even Western leaders who
supported NATO expansion were not doing so out of a fear that Russia
was about to use military force. Putins actions in Crimea took them
by complete surprise and appear to have been a spontaneous reaction
to Yanukovychs ouster. Right afterward, even Putin said he opposed
Crimean secession, before quickly changing his mind.
Besides, even if it wanted to, Russia lacks the capability to easily
conquer and annex eastern Ukraine, much less the entire country.
Roughly 15 million peopleone-third of Ukraines populationlive
between the Dnieper River, which bisects the country, and the Russian
border. An overwhelming majority of those people want to remain
part of Ukraine and would surely resist a Russian occupation. Furthermore, Russias mediocre army, which shows few signs of turning into
a modern Wehrmacht, would have little chance of pacifying all of
Ukraine. Moscow is also poorly positioned to pay for a costly occupation; its weak economy would sufer even more in the face of the
resulting sanctions.
But even if Russia did boast a powerful military machine and an
impressive economy, it would still probably prove unable to successfully occupy Ukraine. One need only consider the Soviet and U.S.
experiences in Afghanistan, the U.S. experiences in Vietnam and
Iraq, and the Russian experience in Chechnya to be reminded that
military occupations usually end badly. Putin surely understands
that trying to subdue Ukraine would be like swallowing a porcupine.
His response to events there has been defensive, not ofensive.
John J. Mearsheimer
86 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A WAY OUT
Given that most Western leaders continue to deny that Putins behavior
might be motivated by legitimate security concerns, it is unsurprising
that they have tried to modify it by doubling down on their existing
policies and have punished Russia to deter further aggression. Although
Kerry has maintained that all options are on the table, neither the
United States nor its NATO allies are prepared to use force to defend
Ukraine. The West is relying instead on economic sanctions to coerce
Russia into ending its support for the insurrection in eastern
Ukraine. In July, the United States and the EU put in place their third
round of limited sanctions, targeting mainly high-level individuals
closely tied to the Russian government and some high-profle banks,
energy companies, and defense frms. They also threatened to unleash
another, tougher round of sanctions, aimed at whole sectors of the
Russian economy.
Such measures will have little efect. Harsh sanctions are likely of
the table anyway; western European countries, especially Germany,
have resisted imposing them for fear that Russia might retaliate and
cause serious economic damage within the EU. But even if the United
States could convince its allies to enact tough measures, Putin would
probably not alter his decision-making. History shows that countries
will absorb enormous amounts of punishment in order to protect their
core strategic interests. There is no reason to think Russia represents
an exception to this rule.
Western leaders have also clung to the provocative policies that
precipitated the crisis in the frst place. In April, U.S. Vice President
Joseph Biden met with Ukrainian legislators and told them, This is a
second opportunity to make good on the original promise made by
the Orange Revolution. John Brennan, the director of the CIA, did
not help things when, that same month, he visited Kiev on a trip the
White House said was aimed at improving security cooperation with
the Ukrainian government.
The EU, meanwhile, has continued to push its Eastern Partnership.
In March, Jos Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, summarized EU thinking on Ukraine, saying, We have a debt, a
duty of solidarity with that country, and we will work to have them as
close as possible to us. And sure enough, on June 27, the EU and
Ukraine signed the economic agreement that Yanukovych had fatefully
rejected seven months earlier. Also in June, at a meeting of NATO mem-
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the Wests Fault
September/October 2014 87
bers foreign ministers, it was agreed that the alliance would remain
open to new members, although the foreign ministers refrained from
mentioning Ukraine by name. No third country has a veto over NATO
enlargement, announced Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATOs secretarygeneral. The foreign ministers also agreed to support various measures
to improve Ukraines military capabilities in such areas as command
and control, logistics, and cyberdefense. Russian leaders have naturally
recoiled at these actions; the Wests response to the crisis will only
make a bad situation worse.
There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, howeveralthough it
would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally
new way. The United States and its allies
should abandon their plan to westernize
Ukraine and instead aim to make it a
neutral bufer between NATO and Russia,
akin to Austrias position during the
Cold War. Western leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much
to Putin that they cannot support an
anti-Russian regime there. This would
not mean that a future Ukrainian government would have to be proRussian or anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign
Ukraine that falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp.
To achieve this end, the United States and its allies should publicly
rule out NATOs expansion into both Georgia and Ukraine. The West
should also help fashion an economic rescue plan for Ukraine funded
jointly by the EU, the International Monetary Fund, Russia, and the
United Statesa proposal that Moscow should welcome, given its
interest in having a prosperous and stable Ukraine on its western
fank. And the West should considerably limit its social-engineering
eforts inside Ukraine. It is time to put an end to Western support for
another Orange Revolution. Nevertheless, U.S. and European leaders
should encourage Ukraine to respect minority rights, especially the
language rights of its Russian speakers.
Some may argue that changing policy toward Ukraine at this late
date would seriously damage U.S. credibility around the world. There
would undoubtedly be certain costs, but the costs of continuing a misguided strategy would be much greater. Furthermore, other countries
are likely to respect a state that learns from its mistakes and ultimately
The United States and its
allies should abandon their
plan to westernize Ukraine
and instead aim to make it
a neutral bufer.
John J. Mearsheimer
88 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
devises a policy that deals efectively with the problem at hand. That
option is clearly open to the United States.
One also hears the claim that Ukraine has the right to determine
whom it wants to ally with and the Russians have no right to prevent Kiev from joining the West. This is a dangerous way for Ukraine
to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might
often makes right when great-power politics are at play. Abstract
rights such as self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states. Did Cuba have the
right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold
War? The United States certainly did not think so, and the Russians
think the same way about Ukraine joining the West. It is in Ukraines
interest to understand these facts of life and tread carefully when
dealing with its more powerful neighbor.
Even if one rejects this analysis, however, and believes that Ukraine
has the right to petition to join the EU and NATO, the fact remains that
the United States and its European allies have the right to reject these
requests. There is no reason that the West has to accommodate
Ukraine if it is bent on pursuing a wrong-headed foreign policy, especially if its defense is not a vital interest. Indulging the dreams of
some Ukrainians is not worth the animosity and strife it will cause,
especially for the Ukrainian people.
Of course, some analysts might concede that NATO handled relations with Ukraine poorly and yet still maintain that Russia constitutes an enemy that will only grow more formidable over
timeand that the West therefore has no choice but to continue
its present policy. But this viewpoint is badly mistaken. Russia is
a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time. Even if
Russia were a rising power, moreover, it would still make no sense
to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. The reason is simple: the United
States and its European allies do not consider Ukraine to be a core
strategic interest, as their unwillingness to use military force to
come to its aid has proved. It would therefore be the height of
folly to create a new NATO member that the other members have
no intention of defending. NATO has expanded in the past because
liberals assumed the alliance would never have to honor its new
security guarantees, but Russias recent power play shows that
granting Ukraine NATO membership could put Russia and the West
on a collision course.
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the Wests Fault
September/October 2014 89
Sticking with the current policy would also complicate Western
relations with Moscow on other issues. The United States needs
Russias assistance to withdraw U.S. equipment from Afghanistan
through Russian territory, reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, and
stabilize the situation in Syria. In fact, Moscow has helped Washington
on all three of these issues in the past; in the summer of 2013, it was
Putin who pulled Obamas chestnuts out of the fre by forging the
deal under which Syria agreed to relinquish its chemical weapons,
thereby avoiding the U.S. military strike that Obama had threatened.
The United States will also someday need Russias help containing a
rising China. Current U.S. policy, however, is only driving Moscow
and Beijing closer together.
The United States and its European allies now face a choice on
Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate
hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the processa
scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can
switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine,
one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its
relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.