This argument has two key flaws. This highlights a second flaw: Since Putin fears democracy and the threat that it poses to his regime, and not expanded NATO membership, taking the latter off the table will not quell his cons. Robert Person is associate professor of international relations at cons U.
Military Academy, director of its international affairs curriculum, and faculty affiliate at its Modern War Institute. His Twitter is RTPerson3. View all work by Robert Person. Michael McFaulformer U. View all work by Michael McFaul. Over the last thirty years, the salience of the issue has risen and fallen not primarily due to waves of NATO expansion, but instead as a result of waves of democratic expansion in Eurasia. He has already blocked NATO expansion for all intents and purposes, thereby revealing that he wants something far more significant in Ukraine today: the end of democracy and the return of subjugation.
On February 24, in an hour-long, meandering rant explaining his decision to invade, he said so directly. This reality highlights the second flaw: Because the primary threat to Putin and his autocratic regime is democracy, not NATO, that perceived threat would not magically disappear with a moratorium on NATO expansion.
Early life
Putin would not stop seeking to undermine democracy and sovereignty in Ukraine, Georgia, or the region as a whole if NATO stopped expanding. As long as citizens in free countries exercise their democratic read article to elect their own leaders and set their own course in domestic and foreign politics, Putin will continue to try to undermine them.
Two decades ago, one pros us coauthored with James Dating a book on U. Since its founding inNATO has kept its door open to new members who meet the criteria for admission.
After the collapse of the USSR inno one should be surprised that countries formerly annexed, subjugated, and invaded by the Soviet Union might seek closer security ties to the West. The United States and other NATO allies have worked hard not to deny the aspirations of those newly free societies while also partnering with Russia on European and other security issues.
They have sometimes had success and sometimes not. At the signing ceremony Yeltsin declared. What is also very important is that we are creating the mechanisms for consultations and cooperation between Russia and the Alliance.
And this will enable us—on a fair, egalitarian basis—to discuss, and when need be, pass joint decisions on major issues relating to security and stabilities, those issues and those areas which touch upon our interests.
Why not? Why not. I do not rule out such a possibility. Russia is a part of European culture, and I do not consider my own country in isolation from Europe. Bush and Putin forged a close, cooperative relationship to fight a common enemy: terrorism. He then followed up this putin support with concrete military assistance for the alliance, including helping the United States to establish military bases in Uzbekistan and Putin. During his November visit to the Vladimir States, Putin struck a realistic but cooperative tone:.
We differ in the ways and means we perceive that are suitable for reaching the same objective. Russia acknowledges the role of NATO in the world of today, Russia is prepared to expand its cooperation with this organization. And if we change the quality of the relationship, if we change the format of the relationship between Russia and NATO, then I think NATO enlargement will cease to be an issue—will no longer be a relevant issue. When NATO announced in its plan for a major and last big wave of expansion that would include three former Soviet republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—Putin barely reacted.
He certainly did not threaten to invade any of the countries to keep them out of NATO. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way. Putin even maintained the same attitude when it was a question of Ukraine someday entering the Atlantic Alliance. I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction and NATO and the Western allies as a whole.
It is a matter for those two partners. The period of distance in our relations and claims against each other is over now. We view the future with optimism and will work on developing relations between Russia and NATO in all areas. Complaints about NATO expansion never arose. After each of them—Serbia inGeorgia inUkraine inthe Arab Spring inRussia in —12, and Ukraine in —14—Putin has pivoted to more hostile policies toward the United States, and then invoked the NATO threat as justification for doing so.
Boris Yeltsin never supported NATO expansion but acquiesced to the first round of expansion in because he believed that his close ties to President Bill Clinton more info the United States were not worth sacrificing over this comparatively smaller matter. The Cons bombing of Serbia to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo severely tested that strategy but survived in part because Clinton gave Yeltsin and Russia a role in the negotiated solution.
Yet the next round of democratic expansion in the post-Soviet world, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, escalated U. Putin blamed the United States directly for assisting this democratic breakthrough and helping to install someone whom he saw as a pro-American puppet, President Mikheil Saakashvili. Immediately after dating Rose Revolution, Putin sought to undermine Georgian democracy, ultimately invading in August and recognizing two Georgian regions—Abkhazia and South Ossetia—as independent states.
A year after the Rose Revolution, the most consequential democratic expansion in the post-Soviet world, the Orange Revolution, erupted in Ukraine sikh sites To Putin, the Orange Revolution undermined a core objective of his grand strategy: to establish a privileged and exclusive sphere of influence across the territory that once comprised the Soviet Union.
Putin also demands exclusivity in his neighborhood: Russia can be the only great power to exercise such privilege or even to develop close ties and these countries. Subservience is now required.
If it could happen in Kyiv, why not in Moscow? Several years later, it almost did occur in Russia when a series of mass protests erupted in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities in the wake pros fraudulent parliamentary elections in December There have been no new chapters of cooperation since. The next democratic mobilization to threaten Putin happened again in Ukraine in — Yanukovych, however, turned out not to be a loyal Kremlin servant, but tried to cultivate ties with both Russia and the West.
But this time, Putin struck back with military force to punish the alleged U. Russian armed forces seized Crimea; Moscow later annexed the Ukrainian peninsula. Putin also pros money, equipment, and soldiers to back separatists in eastern Ukraine, fueling a simmering eight-year war in Donbas that claimed the lives of approximately fourteen-thousand people.
After invading—not before—Putin amped up his criticisms of NATO expansion to justify his belligerent actions. In response to this second Ukrainian democratic revolution, Putin concluded that cooptation through elections and other nonmilitary means had to be augmented with greater coercive pressure, including military intervention.
Just the opposite. InVolodymyr Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidency in a landslide election, winning popular support in every region of the country. In FebruaryPutin embarked on a new strategy for ending Ukrainian democracy: massive military intervention.
Putin claims that vladimir purpose is to stop NATO expansion.
But that is a fiction. The goal is even embedded in the Ukrainian constitution. But while NATO leaders have remained committed to the principle of an open-door policy, they also clearly stated prior to the war that Ukraine was not yet qualified to join.
Some argued that Zelensky should have created a new grand coalition or unity government; others lamented his alleged vladimir preparations and war. And some claimed that Zelensky showed his diplomatic inexperience by arguing with U. But an impatient and angry Putin could not wait anymore. He attacked with the full might of the Russian armed forces.
As this essay goes to print, the war is still raging. Putin may still believe that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian nation, as he has claimed on multiple occasions. New elections held at gunpoint would then deliver Putin his desired puppet government, just as they did in post—World War II Eastern Europe in the shadow of Soviet tanks. It is too early to predict the outcome of this gruesome war. Putin may dislike NATO expansion, but he is not genuinely frightened by it. Russia has the largest army in Europe, engorged by two onlyfans fegalvao of lavish spending.
NATO is a defensive alliance. It has never attacked the Soviet Union or Russia, and it never will. Putin knows that. But Putin is threatened by a flourishing democracy in Ukraine.
Although the chance of a stable ceasefire seems remote today, unprecedented sanctions and growing public dissent within Russia could, in theory, force Putin to the negotiating table. The fog of war is dense.
What Putin Fears Most
But regardless of where the Russian invaders are stopped—be it Luhansk and Donetsk or Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kherson, Odesa, Kyiv, or Lviv—the Kremlin will remain committed to undermining Ukrainian and Georgian, Moldovan, Armenian, and the list goes on democracy and sovereignty for as long as Putin remains in power and maybe longer if Russian autocracy continues.
And the Ukrainian people have already proved their mettle: They will fight for their democracy until the day Russian forces leave Ukraine. Army, Department dating Defense, or U. John J. James M. Issue Date April Page Numbers 18— Search putin search.