Luke Ford

John J. Mearsheimer writes in December of 2014:

…To argue that Russia’s reaction to NATO expansion was based on “resentment,” as Sestanovich does, is to trivialize the country’s motives. Fear is at the root of Russia’s opposition to the prospect of Ukraine becoming a Western bastion on its border. Great powers always worry about the balance of power in their neighborhoods and push back when other great powers march up to their doorsteps. This is why the United States adopted the Monroe Doctrine in the early nineteenth century and why it has repeatedly used military force and covert action to shape political events in the Western Hemisphere. When the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba in 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, risking a nuclear war, insisted that they be removed. Security fears, not resentment, drove his conduct. The same logic applies to Russia. As its leaders have made clear on countless occasions, they will not tolerate Ukraine’s entry into NATO. That outcome scares them, as it would scare anyone in Russia’s shoes, and fearful great powers often pursue aggressive policies. The failure to understand that Russian thinking about NATO enlargement was motivated by fear-a misreading McFaul and Sestanovich still embrace-helped precipitate the present crisis…

…the United States was encouraging the opposition to Yanukovych before and during the protests. Such actions included the National Endowment for Democracy’s decision to ramp up support for
anti-Yanukovych groups and the active participation of top U.S. officials (such as Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs) in the public protests in Kiev.

These events alarmed Putin, not only because they threatened his relations with Ukraine but also because he may well have thought that the Obama administration was bent on overthrowing him, too. As I noted in my essay, Carl Gershman, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy, said in September 2013 that “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe” would promote Russian democracy and might eventually topple Putin from power. And when McFaul was the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, he openly promoted democracy in Russia, behavior that led the Russian press to accuse him of, in his words, “being an agent sent by Obama to lead another color revolution.” Such fears may have been exaggerated, but imagine how U.S. leaders would react if representatives of a powerful foreign country were trying to alter the United States’ political order.

McFaul argues that differences between individual leaders explain Russia’s alternating policies of cooperation and confrontation: everything is hunky-dory when Dmitry Medvedev is president, but trouble comes when Putin takes charge. The problem with this argument is that these two leaders hardly disagree about Russian foreign policy, which is why Putin 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, and he has fully supported Putin’s actions over Ukraine this year. In September, he went so far as to criticize Putin for not responding more forcefully to Western sanctions on Russia. And even during the “reset,” Medvedev complained bitterly about NATO’s “endless enlargement,” as he put it in a 2010 interview.

There is a better explanation for Russia’s oscillating relations with the West. When the United States and its allies take note of Moscow’s concerns, as they did during the early years of
the reset, crises are averted and Russia cooperates on matters of mutual concern. When the West ignores Moscow’s interests, as it did in the lead-up to the Ukraine crisis, confrontation reigns. Putin openly welcomed the reset, telling Obama in July 2009, “With you, we link all our hopes for the furtherance of relations between our two countries.” And two months later, when Obama abandoned plans to put missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, Putin praised the decision, saying, “I very much hope that this very right and brave decision will be followed by others.” It is unsurprising that when Putin returned to the presidency in May 2012, McFaul, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, said that he expected the reset to continue. In short, Medvedev’s replacement by Putin was not the watershed event McFaul portrays it as-and had Medvedev remained president, he would probably have reacted to events in Ukraine the same way Putin has…