Correspondence: Realism, Russia, and Ukraine

Barry Posen argues that Russia's full-scale invasion is “consistent with the logic of preventive war.”1 He writes, “Historians will debate whether it was Putin's strategic calculus or his commitment to a nationalist or imperialist ideology (or some combination) that best explains the 2022 war” (p. 8). Methodologically, Posen makes clear that he is looking for evidence to confirm the preventive war explanation. But there is already extensive journalistic and academic evidence for Putin's decision to pursue imperialist war.2Ukraine was not on a path to NATO membership in 2021–2022. Also, Putin long sought to establish Russian control over Ukraine. Putin and his closest associates mistakenly believed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was unpopular, that most Ukrainians were pro-Russian, and that the West was divided. He thought his imperialist war would be easy.3Posen fixates on the diplomatic dance between NATO and Ukraine over the years, but he seems uninterested in the levels of Western tanks, ships, and military personnel deployed in Europe. After the end of the Cold War, the United States pursued a massive drawdown in forces, accompanied by significant cuts in European military spending and forces. With this greatly reduced deployment and its own robust nuclear deterrent, Russia had little to fear.4Posen points to George W. Bush's efforts to offer Ukraine a Membership Action Plan (mAp) at the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit that would have put the country on a concrete path to potential membership. The French, Germans, and others believed a MAP for Ukraine was a mistake, however, since it might anger the Russians. They instead helped craft an empty promise that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.”5 No U.S. president after George W. Bush showed any interest in bringing Ukraine into NATO. Posen's list of steps that NATO took with Ukraine over the years were taken instead of providing membership, not as a precursor to membership (table 1, pp. 35–36). German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Putin before the full-scale invasion that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO “in the next thirty years.”6Posen briefly considers but dismisses what he calls “the nationalism-imperialism argument,” stating that the information to assess it “will not be available for many years, if ever” (p. 43). Given this methodological position, it is curious that Posen claims to know what “Putin and his advisers also feared” (pp. 37, 41).On multiple occasions going back decades, Putin has stated (publicly and privately) that he believes that Ukrainians are not a real nation separate from Russians and that much of Ukrainian territory is really Russian historic lands. He famously told George W. Bush in 2008 that Ukraine is “not even a state!” and that a significant part of its territory “was a gift from us.”7 Putin's objective since at least his second term was to establish Russian political control over Ukraine, preferably by political, diplomatic, and economic means. Full-scale war in 2022 was a last resort after Putin concluded that these lesser measures had failed, including his use of military force in Crimea and the Donbas starting in 2014.8Russia's campaign of cultural erasure and forced Russification in the occupied territories is consistent with imperial ideas about Ukraine, as is the illegal deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children.9 None of that is about NATO. Significantly, Putin reportedly rejected peace deals that would have kept Ukraine out of NATO at the beginning of the war and in 2025.10The evidence demonstrates that a nuclear Russia did not view NATO as a military threat and that Ukraine had no foreseeable prospect of joining NATO. Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was motivated by his imperial attitudes and mounting evidence that he was “losing Ukraine” (politically), reinforced by a deficient decisionmaking process that convinced Putin that the conquest of Ukraine would be quick and easy.—James GoldgeierWashington, DC—Brian D. TaylorSyracuse, New YorkIn Man, the State, and War, Kenneth Waltz famously parses theories about the causes of war into three categories or “images.” First-image theories explain war by the attributes of individuals; second-image theories explain war by the attributes of states; the third image explains war by the constraints and incentives presented to all states by the anarchical nature of the international system.1 Waltz's subsequent career reflected his lifelong concern that third-image theories, also known as realism, were underappreciated. We see this problem echoed in efforts to understand the origins of the Russia-Ukraine War.Ever since Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western governments, the foreign policy analysis community, and the mainstream media have offered first- and second-image explanations of the Russian invasion almost exclusively. Putin is a cruel dictator, committed to a nationalist and imperialist ideology, presiding over a society that itself is both nationalistic and pliant. James Goldgeier and Brian Taylor repeat these now-familiar arguments: Putin has said many nasty things, and these statements tell us all we need to know. The notion that Putin and the Russian elite might have been motivated by national security concerns is seldom advanced, and when it is, it is not only dismissed; it must be suppressed. Simple stories with villains and heroes are believed to be more conducive to alliance cohesion.If Russia's current nature explains everything, then Ukraine, NATO, and the United States bear no responsibility for the catastrophe that has befallen them. It follows that there is no point in negotiating with Putin other than to accept his surrender. Indeed, he is so dangerous that many observers recommend war to the knife; Russia must be cut down a peg or three, and if possible Putin must be unhorsed.2 In this view, Ukraine has no choice but to fight on to victory—however Kyiv chooses to define it— and the West has no choice but to mobilize fully behind it.In “Putin's Preventive War,” I advance a realist explanation for the Russian invasion. I mobilize theory, history, expert judgments and warnings, the facts of distance and time and modern weaponry, evidence from NATO's own practices, and yes, even Russian documents and statements. Together a pattern is formed that suggests that Putin's motives were plausibly, and, for me, probably preventive. Putin acted, at least in part, to forestall a dangerous deterioration in Russian security. This does not mean that his motives were solely preventive. Like most wars, this one probably has a stew of causes. All I ask of readers is that they take seriously the preventive war explanation.Goldgeier and Taylor claim that Putin had nothing to worry about, because NATO was militarily weak and had no interest in Ukraine. I provided considerable evidence to the contrary in my original article, but for illustrative purposes, I commend to International Security readers the “Statement on the Occasion of NATO's 70th Anniversary,” in which the assembled ambassadors declared, “Today our Alliance is the strongest in history,” adding that “we are committed to NATO's Open Door policy.”3 Despite then-President Donald Trump's often acerbic remarks about the alliance, this was its public face and stated intention. Readers can amuse themselves by running the phrase “most powerful alliance” through any mainstream news database to find it associated with NATO hundreds of times in speeches, press releases, and news stories. Yet my critics believe that as this powerful alliance moved in Russia's direction, Russia could not conceivably have been genuinely concerned about the effects of NATO's growing involvement in Ukraine on the future balance of power. Regular readers of this journal know that such forbearance is rare in international politics.—Barry R. Posen Cambridge, Massachusetts