FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
CONTEXT
Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the way Moscow has waged it, is rooted in hundreds of years of history and fundamental and persistent misperceptions among Russians and Russian officials about their neighbor. But while these complicated dynamics are critical to understanding the war, in this paper, we focus not on Ukraine specifically, but on the broader European context in which the war takes place, and in which any peace must be grounded. The sources of tension between Russia and NATO member states, too, are multifold, far older than the current crisis, and rooted in fundamentally dissonant views of what security in Europe means.
goals. This perception was based on Russia’s reading of events in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan as well as Ukraine, Georgia, and the countries that experienced the Arab spring.4 To deter NATO, (although not only for that reason), Russia thus not only started and kept war going in Ukraine but built up its own forces and exercise tempo near NATO member states’ borders.5
Moscow may also have felt increasing pressure to act sooner rather than later to establish its position, before it lost even more ground in a changing global order.
Moscow has long seen the US-led, NATOcentered European security order as one that excludes it and ignores its interests, weakening it and rendering it susceptible to coercion or worse. Russia’s hopes in the 1990s and early 2000s of a leading role in Euro-Atlantic security, one befitting how Moscow sees its station as a great power and offering protection from such coercion, were dashed. Instead, Moscow watched NATO expand over the course of thirty years to incorporate the Soviet Union’s old allies and even make inroads into former Soviet republics.2 From this perspective, which ignores the interests and agency of the countries in question, Russia’s wars on Georgia in 2008 and on Ukraine since 2014 are not simple neocolonial aggression, but part of an effort to push back against NATO encroachment ever closer to its own borders.
For most NATO members, meanwhile, a definition of Moscow’s interests and security that requires continuing sway over its neighbors, even if those neighbors would prefer other arrangements, is disingenuous and destabilizing. Moscow’s actions in support of its worldview thus lead NATO members to view it as a resurgent revisionist power looking to destabilize the current world order.6 Moreover, prior to 2022, many NATO states saw a Russia willing to wage war in Ukraine, Georgia, and Syria and were fearful Moscow would at some point be emboldened to use force against one or more of the alliance’s members. Moscow’s use of a variety of political, information, and economic tools to advance its interests in their own countries added fuel to the fire.7 To prevent Russian aggression against their own territories, NATO countries thus sought to strengthen their deterrent by deploying forces and conducting
Moscow may also have felt increasing pressure to act sooner rather than later to establish its position, before it lost even more ground in a changing global order.3 Concerned that NATO countries would continue to seek influence in its neighborhood and in Russia itself, Russian officials and analysts also believed that alliance members would not stop short of forcibly changing others’ governments in pursuit of their
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