Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia

The converse argument – that the Ukraine crisis resulted primarily from the West’s policies toward the region – has been made by several prominent international-relations scholars of the realist school, as well as some Russia experts. Writing in Foreign Affairs, John Mearsheimer posited that ‘Washington may not like Moscow’s 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.’[7] The threat, he and others have argued, was a Western intent to bring Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and shatter Russia’s position there, a plan that accelerated toward implementation with the Maidan Revolution. The West, says Andrei Tsygankov, ‘made Russia’s conflict with Ukraine possible, even inevitable’, by not recognising ‘Russia’s values and interests in Eurasia’.[8] Yet just as Russian policies were not formulated in a vacuum, neither were Western ones; without examining their dynamic interaction (the ‘game’) we cannot gain full purchase on the Ukraine crisis. Moreover, to decry Western policy as deliberately hostile and portray Russian actions as having a ‘rational and empirical basis’, as Richard Sakwa does, obscures that interaction almost completely.[9]

Other explanations have turned the lens from the international level to the domestic. The events of 2014, accordingly, are said to have flowed from changes inside the perpetrator, Russia, and the Kremlin’s response to them. As Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss write, ‘Russia’s foreign policy, including specifically the annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Eastern Ukraine, did not change in response to [Western policy]. Rather, Russian foreign policy changed in large measure as a result of Putin’s response to new domestic political and economic challenges inside Russia.’[10] Specifically, Putin’s approval ratings slackened following the flawed 2011–12 election cycle, there were street protests in Russian cities in that period, and economic growth slowed, casting doubt on the previous social contract. The Kremlin decided to fashion a new contract based on protecting the Russian people from external threats. ‘To maintain his argument for legitimacy at home, Putin needs perpetual conflict with external enemies.’[11]

To be sure, the Ukraine crisis provided a domestic political windfall for Putin; his approval ratings hit stratospheric highs after the annexation of Crimea, peaking at nearly 90%. But we should be wary of confusing cause and effect. By the time Yanukovych’s government fell, Putin had effectively addressed the challenges of 2011–12. He had squelched organised opposition through targeted repression; opened new release valves for discontent through measures like a return to gubernatorial elections; and reinforced the loyalty of his coterie through a drive for ‘nationalisation of the elite’. In other words, as the Maidan Revolution unfolded in Ukraine, Putin faced no serious threat to his rule in the short to medium term, enjoying prodigious popular support and elite fealty. It seems far-fetched that under these circumstances he would have taken so disruptive and risky a set of actions purely in order to prop himself up politically at home.

Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer, in Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order, rightly point our attention to the regional context. They argue that ‘what has happened is a symptom of a much larger and more complicated problem’, namely that ‘the entire post-Cold War European political and security architecture was built on the foundation of two institutions – the European Union and NATO – which did not include Russia’.[12] The West, they note, gambled that Russia would accept these institutions, which proved to be a bad wager. Instead, more thought should have been given to a new post-Cold War regional order that Russia could have joined.