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Faulty PowersWho Started the Ukraine Crisis?

Moscow's ChoiceMichael McFaulJohn Mearsheimer ("Why the Ukraine

Crisis Is the West's Fault," September/October 2014) is one of the most

consistent and persuasive theorists inthe realist school of international rela-tions, but his explanation of the crisisin Ukraine demonstrates the limits ofrealpolitik. At best, Mearsheimer's brandof realism explains only some aspectsof U.S.-Russian relations over the last30 years. And as a policy prescription,it can be irrational and dangerous-asRussian President Vladimir Putin'sembrace of it demonstrates.

According to Mearsheimer, Russiahas annexed Crimea and intervened ineastern Ukraine in response to NATO

expansion, which he calls "the taprootof the trouble." Russia's state-controlledmedia have indeed pointed to thealliance's enlargement as an explanationfor Putin's actions. But both Russiantelevision coverage and Mearsheimer'sessay fail to explain why Russia kept itstroops out of Ukraine for the decade-plus between NATO's expansion, whichbegan in 1999, and the actual interven-tion in Ukraine in 2014. It's not thatRussia was too weak: it launched twowars in Chechnya that required muchmore military might than the Crimeanannexation did.

Even more difficult for Mearsheimerto explain is the so-called reset of U.S.-Russian relations, an era of cooperationthat lasted from the spring of 2009 toJanuary 2012. Both U.S. President BarackObama and then Russian PresidentDmitry Medvedev agreed to moves thatthey considered in the national interestof their respective countries. The twoleaders signed and ratified the New sTART

treaty, voted to support the UN SecurityCouncil's most comprehensive set ofsanctions against Iran ever, and vastlyexpanded the supply route for U.S.soldiers in Afghanistan that travels inpart through Russia. They worked to-gether to obtain Russian membership inthe World Trade Organization, createda bilateral presidential commission topromote cooperation on everything fromnuclear energy to counterterrorism, andput in place a more liberal visa regime.In 2010, polls showed that over 60 percentof Russians held a positive view of theUnited States.

Russia has pursued both cooperationand confrontation with the United Statessince this century began. Mearsheimer'ssingle variable of NATO expansion can'texplain both outcomes. For the real story,one needs to look past the factor thathas stayed constant and focus on whathas changed: Russian politics.

SOME STRATEGISTAlthough realists prefer to focus on thestate as the unit of analysis, for his expla-nation of the Ukraine crisis, Mearsheimerlooks to individual leaders and theirideologies. He describes Putin as "afirst-class strategist" who is armed withthe correct analytic framework-that is,Mearsheimer's. "Putin and his compatriotshave been thinking and acting according

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Mearsheimer and His Critics

to realist dictates, whereas their Westerncounterparts have been adhering to liberalideas about international politics," hewrites. "The result is that the UnitedStates and its allies unknowingly pro-voked a major crisis over Ukraine."

By introducing leaders and theirideas into his analysis, Mearsheimerallows for the possibility that differentstatesmen guided by different ideologiesmight produce different foreign policies.Mearsheimer presumably believes thatthe United States and the world would bebetter off if U.S. leaders fully embracedhis brand of realpolitik, whereas I thinkboth would be better off if Putin andfuture Russian leaders embraced liberal-ism. But we don't have to dream aboutwhat this counterfactual might look like;we witnessed it during the Medvedev era.

In the first months of his presidency,Medvedev sounded very much like hisrealist mentor, Putin. He supported theRussian military intervention into Geor-gia and coined a strikingly realist term,"sphere of privileged interests," to assertRussia's hegemony in former Sovietterritory. Obama rejected Medvedev'sinterpretation of realism. Meeting withMedvedev in April 2009 in London,Obama countered that the United Statesand Russia had many common interests,even in Russia's neighborhood.

At the time, the Obama administra-tion was fighting desperately to keepopen the U.S. military's Manas Air Basein Kyrgyzstan. Several weeks earlier,Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyevhad traveled to Moscow and received apledge for $2 billion in economic assis-tance, and soon thereafter he announcedhis intention to close the base. WithMedvedev, Obama acknowledged thebalance-of-power politics that the Kremlin

was playing, but then asked if closingthe base was truly in Russia's nationalinterest. After all, the U.S. soldiersflying through it were headed to Afghan-istan to fight terrorists whom both theUnited States and Russia consideredenemies. Keeping the base operating,Obama reasoned, was not a violation ofRussia's "sphere of privileged interests"but a win-win outcome for both Wash-ington and Moscow.

A realist would have rejected Obama'slogic and pressed forward with closingthe base-as Putin eventually did, earlierthis year. In the months after the Obama-Medvedev meeting in 2009, however, theKyrgyz government-with the Kremlin'stacit support-agreed to extend the U.S.government's basing rights. Medvedevgradually embraced Obama's frameworkof mutually beneficial relations. Theprogress made during the reset cameabout partly due to this shift in Russianforeign policy. Medvedev became soconvinced about the utility of cooperationwith the United States and support forinternational institutions that he evenagreed to abstain from voting on (insteadof vetoing) the UN Security Councilresolutions authorizing the use of forceagainst Muammar al-Qaddafi's regime inLibya in 2011-hardly behavior consistentwith realism. After his final meeting withObama in his capacity as Russian presi-dent, in South Korea in March 2012,Medvedev told the press that the resetwas "an extremely useful exercise." "Weprobably enjoyed the best level of relationsbetween the United States and Russiaduring those three years than ever duringthe previous decades," he said.

What he did not mention was NATO

expansion. In fact, in the five years thatI served in the Obama administration, I

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attended almost every meeting Obamaheld with Putin and Medvedev, and forthree of those years, while working atthe White House, I listened in on everyphone conversation, and I cannot re-member NATO expansion ever comingup. Even months before Putin's annexa-tion of Crimea, I cannot recall a singlemajor statement from a senior Russianofficial warning about the dangerousconsequences of NATO expansion. Thereason is simple: for the previous severalyears, NATO was not expanding eastward.

Other realist critics of U.S. policymake a similar mistake when they arguethat the Obama administration showedweakness toward the Kremlin, invit-ing Putin to take advantage of it. LikeMearsheimer's analysis, this argumentis fuzzy on causation. It's not clear, forexample, how refusing to sign the NewSTART treaty or declining to press Russiato vote for sanctions against Iran wouldhave reduced the odds that Russia wouldhave invaded Ukraine. Moreover, after2012, Obama changed course and pur-sued a more confrontational approach inreaction to Putin's behavior. He aban-doned missile defense talks, signed nonew arms control treaties, levied sanc-tions against Russian human rightsoffenders, and canceled the summit withPutin scheduled for September 2013.Going further than what PresidentGeorge W. Bush did after Russia's 2008invasion of Georgia, Obama workedwith U.S. allies to impose sanctions onindividual Russian leaders and compa-nies. He shored up NATO's securitycommitments, provided assistance toUkraine, and framed the West's responseto Russia's aggression as necessary topreserve international norms and defenddemocratic values.

These moves can hardly be describedas weak or unrealistic. Nonetheless, theyfailed to deter Russia's recent aggression,

just as all U.S. presidents since 1956 havefailed to deter Russian interventions ineastern Europe and Afghanistan. Realistswho criticize Obama for failing to standup to Putin must make a persuasive argu-ment about how a different policy couldhave led to a different outcome. There isonly one alternative policy that could haveplausibly given Russia pause: grantingNATO membership to Ukraine manyyears ago. But making that counterfactualconvincing requires revising a lot ofhistory. For the last several years, neitherthe Ukrainian government nor NATO

members wanted Kiev to join the alli-ance anytime soon. Even before ViktorYanukovych's election as president in2010, Ukrainian leaders were not pressingfor membership, and nor were theUkrainian people.

THE REAL STORYRussian foreign policy did not grow moreaggressive in response to U.S. policies;it changed as a result of Russian inter-nal political dynamics. The shift beganwhen Putin and his regime came underattack for the first time ever. After Putinannounced that he would run for a thirdpresidential term, Russia held parlia-mentary elections in December 2011that were just as fraudulent as previouselections. But this time, new technolo-gies and social media-including smart-phones with video cameras, Twitter,Facebook, and the Russian social net-work VKontakte-helped expose thegovernment's wrongdoing and turn outprotests on a scale not seen since the finalmonths of the Soviet Union. Disapprovalof voter fraud quickly morphed into



discontent with Putin's return to theKremlin. Some opposition leaders evencalled for revolutionary change.

Putin despised the protesters for theiringratitude. In his view, he had madethem rich. How could they turn on himnow? But he also feared them, especiallyin the wake of the "color revolutions"in eastern Europe (especially the 2004Orange Revolution in Ukraine) and theArab Spring. In an effort to mobilize hiselectoral base and discredit the opposi-tion, Putin recast the United States asan enemy. Suddenly, state-controlledmedia were portraying the United Statesas fomenting unrest inside Russia. TheRussian press accused me of being anagent sent by Obama to lead anothercolor revolution. U.S. policy towardRussia hardly shifted at all between theparliamentary vote and Putin's reelection.Yet by the time Putin was inaugurated,in May 2012, even a casual observer ofPutin's speeches or Russian televisionwould have thought that the Cold Warwas back on.

Some observers of Russian politicshoped that this onslaught of anti-American propaganda would subsideafter the Russian presidential election wasover. Many-including me-assumedthat the Medvedev-Putin job swapwould produce only minor changes inRussia's foreign policy, since Putinhad remained the paramount decision-maker when Medvedev was president.But over time, it became clear thatPutin conceived of Russia's nationalinterest differently from how Medvedevdid. Unlike Medvedev, Putin tendedto frame competition with the UnitedStates in zero-sum terms. To sustainhis legitimacy at home, Putin contin-ued to need the United States as an

adversary. He also genuinely believedthat the United States represented asinister force in world affairs.

Then came the upheaval in Ukraine.In November 2013, Ukrainians took tothe streets after Yanukovych declinedto sign an association agreement withthe EU. The U.S. government played norole in sparking the protests, but it didprod both Yanukovych and oppositionleaders to agree to a transitional plan,which both sides signed on February 21,2014. Washington also had nothing todo with Yanukovych's surprising decisionto flee Ukraine the next day.

Putin interpreted these events differ-ently, blaming the United States for thedemonstrations, the failure of the Febru-ary 21 agreement, and the subsequentchange of government, which he calleda coup. Putin's ideology compelled himto frame these events as a strugglebetween the United States and Russia.Constrained by this analytic framework,he reacted unilaterally in a way that hebelieved tilted the balance of power in hisfavor, annexing Crimea and supportingarmed mercenaries in eastern Ukraine.He was not reacting to NATo's long-agoexpansion.

PUTIN'S LOSSIt is too early to judge whether Putin'sparticular brand of realism is rationalin terms of Russia's national interest.So far, however, the gains have beenlimited. His allegedly pragmatic andrealist actions in Ukraine have onlyserved to forge a stronger, more unified,and more pro-Western identity amongUkrainians. They have guaranteed thatUkraine will never join his most prizedproject, the planned Eurasian EconomicUnion, and have instead pushed the

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country toward the EU. Meanwhile,Belarus and Kazakhstan have turnedinto nervous, less enthusiastic partnersin the Eurasian Economic Union. Atthe same time, Putin has strengthenedNATO, weakened the Russian economy,and undermined Moscow's internationalreputation as a champion of sovereigntyand noninterference.

This crisis is not about Russia, NATO,

and realism but about Putin and hisunconstrained, erratic adventurism.Whether you label its approach realistor liberal, the challenge for the West ishow to deal with such behavior force-fully enough to block it but prudentlyenough to keep matters from escalatingdramatically.

MICHAEL MCFAUL is Professor of PoliticalScience, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow atthe Hoover Institution, and a Senior Fellow atthe Freeman Spogli Institute for InternationalStudies, all at Stanford University. He served asSpecial Assistant to the President on the NationalSecurity Council from 2009 to 2012 and U.S.Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014.

How the West Has WonStephen Sestanovich

T he United States has handledits relations with Russia so badly,John Mearsheimer argues, that

it, not Vladimir Putin, should be heldresponsible for the crisis in Ukraine.By trying to get Ukraine into NATO,

he writes, Western governments chal-lenged Russia's core security interests.The Kremlin was bound to push back.Meanwhile, silly idealism kept U.S--andEuropean leaders from recognizing thetrouble they were creating.

To see what's wrong with this cri-tique, one can start by comparing itwith Mearsheimer's 1993 Foreign Affairsarticle, "The Case for a Ukrainian NuclearDeterrent." Back then, Mearsheimer wasalready worrying about a war betweenRussia and Ukraine, which he said wouldbe "a disaster." But he did not fingerU.S. policy as the source of the problem."Russia," Mearsheimer wrote, "hasdominated an unwilling and angryUkraine for more than two centuries,and has attempted to crush Ukraine'ssense of self-identity." Given this history,creating a stable relationship betweenthe two countries was bound to be hard."Hypernationalism," Mearsheimer feared,would make the situation even moreunmanageable. In 1993, his assessmentof the situation (if not his policy pre-scriptions) was correct. It should serveas a reminder that today's aggressiveRussian policy was in place long beforethe mistaken Western policies thatMearsheimer says explain it.

The prospect of NATO membershipfor Ukraine may, of course, have madea bad problem much worse. In 2008,Mearsheimer points out, NATO declaredthat Ukraine would at some point jointhe alliance. But he does not acknowl-edge what happened next. For morethan half a decade, nearly all Ukrainianpoliticians-not just pro-Russian onessuch as Viktor Yanukovych-steeredclear of the issue. They recognized thatNATO membership lacked strong domes-tic support and, if mishandled, couldthreaten national unity. NATO itself putthe matter aside. Admitting Ukraineremained a pet project for a few membersof the alliance, but most were opposed,many of them implacably so. The Obamaadministration, for its part, paid no



attention to the subject, and the issuevirtually disappeared.

That changed, Mearsheimer claims,with the fall of Yanukovych. Mearsheimerendorses Putin's label of that event as a"coup": a Western-supported provoca-tion that reignited Moscow's fears and

justified an aggressive policy. But the factsdo not support this interpretation. Fewelected presidents have lost their legiti-macy as quickly and fully as Yanukovychdid. At every step during the "Euro-maidan" protests, he kept the confron-tation going by resorting to force. InFebruary 2014, after police killed scoresof demonstrators in downtown Kiev,the whole country turned against him,effectively ending his political career.Parliament removed him by a unanimousvote, in which every deputy of his ownparty participated. This is not what any-one has ever meant by the word "coup."

Yanukovych's fall was a historicevent, but it did not, despite Russianclaims, revive Ukraine's candidacy forNATO membership. Ukrainian politi-cians and officials said again and againthat this issue was not on the agenda.Nor was the large Russian naval basein Crimea at risk, no matter the fever-ish charges of Russian commentators.That Putin picked up this argument-and accused "fascists" of having takenover Ukraine-had less to do withRussia's national security than his desireto rebound from political humiliation.Moscow had publicly urged Yanukovychto crack down hard on the protesters.When the Ukrainian leader obliged,his presidency collapsed, and with itRussia's entire Ukraine policy. Putin'sseizure of Crimea was first and fore-most an attempt to recover from hisown egregious mistakes.

This sorry record makes it hard tocredit Mearsheimer's description of Putinas "a first-class strategist." Yes, Russianaggression boosted Putin's poll numbers.But success in Crimea was followed bya series of gross miscalculations-aboutthe extent of separatist support in easternUkraine, the capacities of the Ukrainianmilitary, the possibility of keepingRussian interference hidden, the West'sability to agree on sanctions, and thereaction of European leaders who hadonce sympathized with Russia. And all ofthis for what? Putin cultivates a mystiqueof cool, KGB professionalism, and theimage has often served him well. Butthe Ukraine crisis has revealed a differ-ent style of decision-making. Putinmade impulsive decisions that subordi-nated Russia's national interest to hisown personal political motives. He hasnot acted like a sober realist.

CHALLENGE AND RESPONSEEven if Putin is to blame for the currentcrisis, it might still be possible to findfault with U.S. policy of the past twodecades. There is, after all, no doubt thatRussians resented NATO enlargementand their country's diminished interna-tional standing after the Cold War. ForMearsheimer, the West needlessly stokedthis resentment. As he sees it, oncethe Soviet Union collapsed, Russia wassimply too inconsequential to be worthcontaining, since it was "a declining greatpower with an aging population and aone-dimensional economy." Today, hecalls its army "mediocre." EnlargingNATO was a solution to a problem thatdidn't exist.

This would be a compelling casebut for one thing: in the early 1990s,Mearsheimer himself saw the post-

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Cold War world in much more menac-ing terms. Back then, no one knew whatdemons would be let loose by the end ofEast-West competition. Germany, justreunified, might once more go the wayof militarism. Yugoslavia was undergoinga bloody breakup. Unscrupulous politicalleaders had been able to revive easternEurope's many ancient hatreds. Add tothis the risk that Russia itself, once itregained its strength, might threatenthe independence of its neighbors, andit was not hard to imagine a Europe ofsevere turbulence.

Mearsheimer no longer mentionsthese problems, but at the time, he sawthem for what they were. In a much-read 1990 Atlantic Monthly article, hepredicted that we would all soon "missthe Cold War." To preserve the peace, heeven proposed a set of extreme counter-measures, such as letting Moscow keep itslarge army in central Europe and encour-aging Germany and Ukraine to acquirenuclear weapons. Today, these initiativesseem outlandish and otherworldly, to saythe least, but the problems they aimedto solve were not imaginary.

Mearsheimer has long ridiculed theidea that, as he describes in his recentForeign Affairs article, "Europe can bekept whole and free on the basis ofsuch liberal principles as the rule oflaw, economic interdependence, anddemocracy." In his ire, however, hemisses something fundamental. Thegoals of Western policy have been justas visionary and idealistic as he says, butthe means employed to achieve them-at least by U.S. leaders, if not alwaysby their European counterparts-havebeen far more traditional. They havebeen the medicine that a realist doctorwould have prescribed.

The United States has defended itsstake in a stable post-Cold War Europeanorder not through airy appeals to sharedvalues but through the regular and effec-tive use of old-fashioned American power.President George H. W Bush, intendingto limit the independence of Germanforeign policy, demanded a reunificationdeal that kept Germany within NATO.

President Bill Clinton, believing that theBalkan wars of the 1990s were undermin-ing U.S. power and credibility in Europe,twice used military force to stop Serbiaunder President Slobodan Milosevic. ThatPresident George W. Bush continued totake new eastern European democraciesinto NATO did not mean Washingtonbelieved that democracy alone wouldsustain the peace. It meant Washingtonbelieved that an enduring liberal orderneeded the anchor of U.S. commitment.(You might even say it meant U.S. policy-makers did not in fact believe that democ-racy alone assures peace.)

No one, least of all Mearsheimer,should be surprised to discover that powercalculations undergirded U.S. foreignpolicy. In his 2001 book, The Tragedy ofGreat Power Politics, he explained thatpoliticians and policymakers in liberaldemocratic states often justify hard-headed actions in highfalutin language.Now, however, he takes everything thatpolitical leaders say-whether Obama'spieties or Putin's lies-at face value.

The resulting analysis makes it muchharder to see whose policies are work-ing, and what to do next. Mearsheimerseems to take it for granted that Putin'schallenge proves the complete failureof U.S. strategy. But the mere fact thatRussia has a leader bent on conquest is notby itself an indictment of the UnitedStates. Putin is certainly not the first



such Russian leader, and he may notbe the last. Nor are Ukraine's currentagonies, as acute and unnecessary asthey are, the best way to measure whatNATO enlargement has accomplished.Two decades of U.S. policy have bothstabilized Europe and narrowed thescope of the current crisis. Had NATO

not grown to its present size and borders,Russia's conflict with Ukraine would befar more dangerous than what is occur-ring today. Western leaders would be ina state of near panic as they tried to figureout, in the middle of a confrontation,which eastern European countriesdeserved security guarantees and whichdid not. At a moment of sudden ten-sion, they would be obliged to impro-vise. Finding the right middle groundbetween recklessness and acquiescencewould be a matter of guesswork, withunpredictable life-and-death results.

CALMING EUROPEThe addition of so many new NATO

members in recent years does mean thatthe alliance needs to think carefully abouthow to implement the commitments ithas made. But the job of promotingsecurity in eastern Europe has been mademuch easier because a basic strategicframework is already in place. Ironically,even Putin, for all his complaining,benefits. Despite the rude jolt of hisaggression against Ukraine, Westerngovernments are less frightened than theywould be without the comfort of a largerNATO and the relatively stable Europeanorder that U.S. policy has created. Putinfaces less pushback today in part becausethe Uixited States succeeded in solvingthe problems of the 1990s.

In proposing to turn Ukraine into "aneutral buffer between NATO and Russia,"

Mearsheimer offers a solution to thecurrent crisis that ignores its real originsand may even make it worse. He is onsolid enough ground when he remindsreaders that Ukraine has no inherent"right" to join NATO. But good strategydoesn't look only at rights and wrongs;it looks at consequences. The best reasonnot to push for Ukraine's entry into NATO

has always been to avoid tearing thecountry apart. By forcing Ukraine torepudiate a mere free-trade agreementwith Europe last fall, Putin brought onthe most extreme turmoil Ukraine hasseen in 20 years of independence. Nowthat the world has seen the results ofthis little experiment, why should anyonethink that declaring Ukraine a permanentgray area of international politics wouldcalm the country down?

Ukraine has not been-and is not-ready for NATO membership. Only Putinhas forced this issue onto the agenda.The immediate goal of prudent states-men should be to figure out a way tohold Ukraine together. If the great powersimpose or foreclose its future, they maydeepen its present turmoil. The best wayto avoid an escalation of radical politicalconfrontation inside Ukraine is not toresolve the big geopolitical questionsbut to defer them.

Mearsheimer's real subject is, of course,not Ukraine but U.S. foreign policy.After the exertions of the past decade,some retrenchment was inevitable. Thatdoes not mean, however, that Washing-ton was wrong to choose an ambitiousand activist policy in Europe after theCold War, or that it should not movetoward a more ambitious and activistone now. In The Tragedy of Great PowerPolitics, Mearsheimer wrote that it was"misguided" for a state to "pass up an

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opportunity to be the hegemon in thesystem because it thought it already hadsufficient power to survive." He may haveforgotten his own advice, but Washing-ton, in its confused and halting way, hasusually followed it. Even today, the Westis better off because it did.

STEPHEN SESTANOVICH is a Senior Fellowat the Council on Foreign Relations and aProfessor at Columbia's School of Internationaland Public Affairs, and he was U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for the Former Soviet Union in 1997-2001. He is the author of Maximalist:America inthe World From Truman to Obama.

Mearsheimer RepliesIt is not surprising that MichaelMcFaul and Stephen Sestanovichdisagree with my account of what

caused the Ukraine crisis. Both thepolicies they helped frame and executewhile in the U.S. government andtheir responses to my article exemplifythe liberal foreign policy consensusthat helped cause the crisis in the firstplace. Accordingly, they challenge myclaims about the West's role, mostly bysuggesting that I regard NATO expansionas the sole cause of the crisis. McFaul,for example, maintains that my "singlevariable of NATO expansion" cannotexplain the ebb and flow of recent U.S.-Russian relations. Both also claim thatthe alliance's growth was a nonissueafter 2008.

But McFaul and Sestanovich mis-represent my core argument. I did callNATO expansion "the central element ofa larger strategy to move Ukraine outof Russia's orbit and integrate it into theWest." Yet I also emphasized that thestrategy had two other "critical elements":

EU expansion and democracy promotion.

My essay makes clear that NATO enlarge-ment did not directly cause the crisis,which began in November 2013 andcontinues to this day. It was EU expansioncoupled with the February 22, 2014, coupthat ignited the fire. Still, what I called"the West's triple package of policies,"which included making Ukraine part ofNATO, provided fuel for it.

The notion that the issue of NATO

membership for Ukraine, as Sestanovichputs it, "virtually disappeared" after2008 is also false. No Western leaderpublicly questioned the alliance's 2008declaration that Georgia and Ukraine "willbecome members of NATO." Sestanovichdownplays that push, writing, "AdmittingUkraine remained a pet project for afew members of the alliance, but mostwere opposed, many of them implaca-bly so." What he does not say, however,is that the United States was one ofthose members backing that pet project,and Washington still wields enormousinfluence within the alliance. And evenif some members were opposed to bring-ing in Ukraine, Moscow could not counton the naysayers to prevail forever.

Furthermore, the association agree-ment that the EU was pushing Ukraineto sign in 2013 was not just "a merefree-trade agreement," as Sestanovichcalls it; it also had an important secu-rity dimension. The document proposedthat all parties "promote gradual conver-gence on foreign and security matterswith the aim of Ukraine's ever-deeperinvolvement in the European securityarea" and called for "taking full andtimely advantage of all diplomatic andmilitary channels between the Parties."This certainly sounds like a backdoorto NATO membership, and no prudent



Russian leader would interpret it anyother way. McFaul and Sestanovich maybelieve that expanding NATO was genu-inely off the table after 2008, but that isnot how Vladimir Putin and his colleaguessaw it.

To argue that Russia's reaction to NATO

expansion was based on "resentment,"as Sestanovich does, is to trivialize thecountry's motives. Fear is at the rootof Russia's opposition to the prospect ofUkraine becoming a Western bastion onits border. Great powers always worryabout the balance of power in theirneighborhoods and push back whenother great powers march up to theirdoorsteps. This is why the United Statesadopted the Monroe Doctrine in the earlynineteenth century and why it has repeat-edly used military force and covert actionto shape political events in the WesternHemisphere. When the Soviet Unionplaced missiles in Cuba in 1962, U.S.President John F. Kennedy, risking anuclear war, insisted that they be removed.Security fears, not resentment, drovehis conduct.

The same logic applies to Russia. Asits leaders have made clear on countlessoccasions, they will not tolerate Ukraine'sentry into NATO. That outcome scaresthem, as it would scare anyone in Russia'sshoes, and fearful great powers oftenpursue aggressive policies. The failureto understand that Russian thinkingabout NATO enlargement was motivatedby fear-a misreading McFaul andSestanovich still embrace-helpedprecipitate the present crisis.

COOPERATION AND CONFLICTMcFaul claims that I cannot explain theperiods of cooperation and confrontationbetween Russia and the West whereas

he has a compelling explanation for both.This criticism follows from his claimthat I have a monocausal argument basedon NATO expansion and that this singlefactor "can't explain both outcomes."But I never argued that NATO expansion,which began in the late 1990s, led to a stateof constant crisis. Indeed, I noted thatRussia has cooperated with the West on anumber of important issues-Afghanistan,Iran, Syria-but that Western policieswere making it increasingly difficult tosustain those good relations. The actualcrisis, of course, did not erupt until theFebruary 22, 2014, coup.

Two points are in order regardingthe coup itself. First, Sestanovich is wrongto suggest that Ukrainian PresidentViktor Yanukovych was removed fromoffice legitimately. In a city racked byviolence between protesters and govern-ment forces, on February 21 a deal wasstruck with Yanukovych to hold newelections that would surely have removedhim from power. But many of the pro-testers opposed the agreement, insistingthat Yanukovych step down immediately.On February 22, armed elements ofthe opposition, including some fascists,occupied parliament and the mainpresidential offices. That same day, thelegislature held a vote to oust Yanukovychthat did not satisfy the Ukrainian consti-tution's requirements for impeachment.No wonder he fled the country, fearingfor his life.

Second, McFaul implies that Wash-ington had nothing to do with the coup."The U.S. government played no role insparking the protests," he writes, "but itdid prod both Yanukovych and oppositionleaders to agree to a transitional plan."McFaul fails to mention the considerableevidence I presented showing that the

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United States was encouraging theopposition to Yanukovych before andduring the protests. Such actions includedthe National Endowment for Democ-racy's decision to ramp up support foranti-Yanukovych groups and the activeparticipation of top U.S. officials (suchas Victoria Nuland, the assistant secre-tary of state for European and Eurasianaffairs) in the public protests in Kiev.

These events alarmed Putin, not onlybecause they threatened his relations withUkraine but also because he may wellhave thought that the Obama administra-tion was bent on overthrowing him, too.As I noted in my essay, Carl Gershman,the president of the National Endowmentfor Democracy, said in September 2013that "Ukraine's choice to join Europe"would promote Russian democracy andmight eventually topple Putin frompower. And when McFaul was the U.S.ambassador in Moscow, he openlypromoted democracy in Russia, behaviorthat led the Russian press to accuse himof, in his words, "being an agent sent byObama to lead another color revolution."Such fears may have been exaggerated,but imagine how U.S. leaders would reactif representatives of a powerful foreigncountry were trying to alter the UnitedStates' political order.

McFaul argues that differences be-tween individual leaders explain Russia'salternating policies of cooperation andconfrontation: everything is hunky-dorywhen Dmitry Medvedev is president, buttrouble comes when Putin takes charge.The problem with this argument is thatthese two leaders hardly disagree aboutRussian foreign policy, which is whyPutin is widely regarded as Medvedev's"realist mentor," to use McFaul's words.Medvedev was president when Russia

went to war against Georgia in 2008, andhe has fully supported Putin's actionsover Ukraine this year. In September, hewent so far as to criticize Putin for notresponding more forcefully to Westernsanctions on Russia. And even during the"reset," Medvedev complained bitterlyabout NATO's "endless enlargement," ashe put it in a 2010 interview.

There is a better explanation forRussia's oscillating relations with theWest. When the United States and itsallies take note of Moscow's concerns,as they did during the early years ofthe reset, crises are averted and Russiacooperates on matters of mutual concern.When the West ignores Moscow'sinterests, as it did in the lead-up to theUkraine crisis, confrontation reigns.Putin openly welcomed the reset, tellingObama in July 2009, "With you, we linkall our hopes for the furtherance ofrelations between our two countries."And two months later, when Obamaabandoned plans to put missile defensesystems in the Czech Republic andPoland, Putin praised the decision, saying,"I very much hope that this very rightand brave decision will be followed byothers." It is unsurprising that whenPutin returned to the presidency in May2012, McFaul, then U.S. ambassador toRussia, said that he expected the reset tocontinue. In short, Medvedev's replace-ment by Putin was not the watershedevent McFaul portrays it as-and hadMedvedev remained president, he wouldprobably have reacted to events in Ukrainethe same way Putin has.

Sestanovich claims that "today'saggressive Russian policy was in place" inthe early 1990s and that the U.S. responsewas grounded in "power calculations."But the evidence suggests that NATO



enlargement does not represent a realistpolicy. Russia was in no position to takethe offensive in the 1990s, and althoughits economy and military improvedsomewhat in the next decade, hardlyanyone in the West thought it was seri-ously at risk of invading its neighbors-especially Ukraine-before the February22 coup. Not surprisingly, U.S. leadersrarely invoked the threat of Russian aggres-sion to justify expanding NATo; instead,they emphasized the benefits of expandingthe zone of democratic peace eastward.

Indeed, although Sestanovich nowmaintains that "Russia has a leader benton conquest," there is no evidence thatthis was his view before the current crisis.For example, in an interview about theongoing protests in Ukraine publishedon December 4, 2013-roughly threemonths before Russia took Crimea-hegave no indication that he thought Putinwas set to invade Ukraine (or any othercountry) or that NATO expansion wasnecessary to contain Russia. On thecontrary, when discussing the alliance'smoves eastward with a Voice of Americareporter in 2004, Sestanovich suggestedthat Russian objections were little morethan political posturing. "Russians prob-ably feel that they need to object to thisin order to indicate that they are a seriouscountry that cannot be pushed around,"he said.

Sestanovich's views reflected theliberal consensus at the time, which sawNATO expansion as benign. "Most analystsagree the enlargement of NATO and theEU should not pose a long-term threat toRussian interests," wrote that same Voiceof America reporter, summarizing thepositions of the various experts he hadinterviewed. "They point out that havingstable and secure neighbors may increase

stability and prosperity in Russia, as wellas help overcome old Cold War fearsand encourage former Soviet satellitesto engage Russia in a more positive,cooperative way."

HOW IT ENDSMcFaul and Sestanovich maintain thatPutins behavior over Ukraine has beenwrong-headed and counterproductive.It is too soon to know how this saga willend, but there is good reason to think thatPutin will achieve his primary aim-preventing Ukraine from becoming aWestern bulwark. If so, he wins, althoughthere is no question that Russia willhave paid a steep price in the process.

The real losers, however, will be theUkrainian people. Sestanovich writes that"the best reason not to push for Ukraine'sentry into NATO has always been to avoidtearing the country apart." He is correct.But the policies he and McFaul supporthave done just that.0

178 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

(,1 2 1/,1( - mearsheimer.uchicago.edumearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/Faulty Powers.pdf · Faulty Powers Who Started the Ukraine Crisis? Moscow's Choice Michael John McFaul Mearsheimer

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