Russia, the West, and the Ukraine Crisis

Elias Götz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351706117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the causes and consequences of the Ukraine crisis, with a special focus on Russia's relations with the West. Towards that end, it brings together international relations scholars and area specialists. Issues covered include: the evolution of EU–Russia and US–Russia relations, the role of strategic culture and ontological insecurities in the formation of Russian foreign policy, the role of hybrid warfare in Russian military policy, the geopolitical drivers of Russia's Ukraine policy, and a discussion of the decision-making dynamics that led to Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine. The contributors employ different theoretical approaches and offer partly complementary and partly competing analyses. In so doing, this book seeks to stimulate dialogue between different positions and advance our understanding of a topic that will shape the European security order for many years to come. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

Russia, the West, and the Ukraine crisis: three contending perspectives

Elias Götz

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark

ABSTRACT The purpose of this special issue is to examine the international dimension of the Ukraine crisis. The focus is on Moscow’s actions towards Ukraine, and what they imply for European security and Russia–Western relations more generally. This introductory article takes stock of the current debate. Three major positions are identified, here labelled ‘revisionist Russia’ (Perspective I), ‘victim Russia’ (Perspective II), and ‘troublemaker Russia’ (Perspective III). The first sees Russia as an aggressive, neo-imperialist power that wants to overturn Europe’s post-Cold War order. The second holds that Russia is a status-quo power that defends its geopolitical interests and honour against Western encroachments. The third views Russia as a mischief-maker, whose ruling elite purposefully creates external conflicts, such as the one in Ukraine, to divert attention from internal problems. This article presents the arguments of each perspective. Moreover, it discusses gaps and limitations of the existing positions along with some policy tradeoffs. Finally, it provides an overview of the entire special issue and lays out how the individual contributions that follow address the identified shortcomings.

The Ukraine crisis threw the deeper patterns of Russo-Western interaction into sharp relief. The misperceptions and alternative representations of reality on display will keep scholars busy for decades. (Sakwa, 2015, p. 205)

21 November 2013. At the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych turns down an association agreement with the European Union. Instead, he opts for a major economic deal with Moscow. The decision triggers large-scale street protests in Kiev and, after three months of increasingly violent demonstrations, Yanukovych is driven from power. An interim government, which is made up of various opposition groups, takes over. This, however, is not the end of the story. Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, unrest erupts in Crimea where heavily armed ‘little green men’ appear in the streets. As we now know, Russian military forces played a major role in the upheaval there. In mid-March, the peninsula is formally annexed by Moscow and becomes part of the Russian Federation. In parallel, unrest begins to spread into Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions, where a war between Moscow-backed rebels and the new government in Kiev breaks out. The ensuing conflict turns parts of the area into a wasteland, leaving more than 9000 people dead, tens of thousands wounded, and nearly two million as internally displaced persons and refugees (UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2015).

The crisis has no doubt inflicted a heavy humanitarian toll on Ukraine. Beyond that, it has given rise to questions – and concerns – about Moscow’s international behaviour, especially towards other former Soviet states. Relatedly, the crisis has led to a renewed focus on Russia–Western relations and the European security order. For example, according to a report by Britain’s Chatham House think-tank, ‘The conflict in Ukraine is a defining factor for the future of European security’ (Giles et al., 2015, p. vi). Likewise, Trenin (2014, p. 1) of the Carnegie Moscow Center concludes that ‘the Euro-Atlantic region has entered a different epoch’. Krastev (2014) of the Vienna Institute of Human Sciences holds that ‘Russia’s willingness to violate Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty is the gravest challenge to the European order in over half a century.’ Kramer (2015, p. 9), the former president of Freedom House, concurs: ‘Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine’, he writes, ‘posed the most serious challenge to European security in decades’. And foreign policy expert Sherr (2015, p. 24) notes, ‘However the conflict in Ukraine evolves or ends, its implications will be significant for the West, and not only its immediate protagonists.’ In short, there is broad agreement among international relations scholars, area specialists, and Russia watchers of all stripes that the Ukraine crisis will have profound implications for Europe’s security architecture.

This special issue of Contemporary Politics is an early attempt to understand what lies behind Moscow’s muscular policies and assess the consequences of the Ukraine crisis for Western–Russian relations. In other words, the aim of this collection of articles is to examine some of the most important international aspects and dimensions of the recent events in Ukraine.¹ More specifically, this special issue focuses on three sets of inter-locking questions.

1. What are the central drivers, or causes, of Russia’s Ukraine policy? Is Russia’s policy driven by geopolitical pressures and opportunities, by the worldviews of President Putin, by domestic political calculations of the Kremlin, or by ideational factors such as the country’s strategic culture and national self-understanding?
2. What are the goals and ambitions of Russia? Does Russia want to rebuild an empire in the post-Soviet space and dominate Eastern Europe? Or is Russia best understood as a status-quo power that has little interest in overthrowing the existing order on the European continent?
3. What are the implications of the Ukraine crisis, especially for Russia–Western relations and the European security environment? And how should EU-Europe and the United States deal with Russia? Should the West pursue containment policies, just as it did during the Cold War? Should the West actively push for a regime change in Moscow? Or should the West instead pursue engagement policies and accommodation?

Needless to say, these questions are of utmost relevance, not only for scholars in the ivory tower of academia but also for government officials in Washington, Brussels, Kiev, and elsewhere. Hence, it should come as no surprise that these questions have attracted considerable attention and become the focus of a vibrant debate. At one end of the spectrum, observers argue that Russia pursues aggressive policies in the post-Soviet space, harbours expansionist ambitions, and is the main culprit of the Ukraine crisis. At the other end are those who say that Moscow’s policies are mainly defensive and aim to protect Russia against aggressive encroachments from Western powers, whose reckless actions led to the crisis over Ukraine. Unfortunately, much of the debate has become increasingly polemic and acrimonious. Proponents of the former position (or some variant of it) are often branded as ‘Cold warriors’, ‘liberal imperialists’, or ‘pro-Maidan mouthpieces’, while those embracing the latter are denigrated as ‘Putin apologists’, ‘Kremlin trolls’, or ‘useful idiots’ (for a similar list, see Sakwa, 2015, p. 229). The result is a debate that often generates more heat than light.

This special issue seeks to move beyond this unsatisfactory situation by presenting and comparing a plurality of viewpoints. Explanatory competition is healthy, as it drives the debate forward and pushes scholars to clarify and refine their positions. Hence, no single theoretical framework or approach has been imposed on the contributors. Instead, they have been encouraged to address the questions outlined above from different theoretical and analytical angles. This will, no doubt, lead to disagreements. But the resulting debate will be between alternative explanations based on analytical rigor rather than political agendas or ideological persuasions. In other words, this special issue aims to lay the groundwork for scholarly debate – as well as dialogue – and provide a repository of knowledge for those who want to gain a deeper understanding of the international causes and consequences of the Ukraine crisis.²

This introductory article sets the scene for this endeavour. A closer look at the existing literature shows that one can distinguish between not two, but three major positions. For purposes of simplicity, they are labelled ‘revisionist Russia’ (Perspective I), ‘victim Russia’ (Perspective II), and ‘troublemaker Russia’ (Perspective III). Of course, these three perspectives are by no means exhaustive, but they capture the main positions in the ongoing debate. The next three sections outline their arguments in greater detail. The fourth section explores policy tradeoffs implied by the different perspectives and points to explanatory gaps and challenges. The fifth section provides an overview of the entire special issue and lays out how the various contributions address the identified shortcomings.³

Perspective I: revisionist Russia

Straddling the political and scholarly lines, one group of observers argues that Russia is a revisionist state bent on overturning the post-Cold War order in Europe. Moscow’s main aim is nothing less than to recreate an empire. As Braun (2014, p. 38) puts it, ‘Though Putin has acted incrementally so far, there is little doubt about his ultimate goal of not only economic but also the full political integration of Ukraine into a “Greater Russia.”’ Similarly, Gressel (2015, p. 2) writes, ‘The Kremlin does not seek incremental changes to the current order but aspires to create a totally new one, regarding post-Soviet borders as something to be revised – with military force, if necessary.’ And Socor (2014) points out that ‘Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on the incorporation of Crimea into Russia aimed far beyond Crimea in scope and ambition. […] [It] laid a basis for challenging the post-1991 status quo elsewhere in the former Soviet-ruled area.’ According to this view, the annexation of Crimea was only the first step (or the second, if one takes the 2008 Georgian war into account) in Moscow’s effort to re-establish Russian primacy in the post-Soviet space and extend its influence over smaller neighbours. Indeed, it has been widely speculated that the next targets of Russia’s revisionist agenda might be countries like Kazakhstan, Moldova, or the Baltic republics (see, e.g. Farmer, 2015; Kristof, 2014; Olcott, 2014).

Some observers go one step further and claim that Russia’s bid for regional primacy is part and parcel of its ambition to challenge the prevailing Western-led international order. ‘Russia’, as Gessen (2014) puts it, ‘is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world’. In a similar vein, Spenk (2015) concludes, ‘For Putin, control over Ukraine is a core foreign policy goal because it is central to the vision to establish an alternative international system, one that is based on spheres of domination.’ And Blank (2014) suggests that ‘Moscow wants more than simple territorial expansion. The ultimate strategic prize coveted by Mr. Putin and company is nothing less than the reorganization of European security.’

The reasons for Russia’s revisionism are attributed to three sets of factors. The first centres on the mindset and worldviews of Vladimir Putin. Some scholars maintain that Putin’s Cold War-style thinking and his need for personal aggrandizement lie behind Russia’s expansionist agenda (Bohm, 2014; Walker, 2014). Others hold that Putin’s background in the security services predispose him to employ hard-power tools in international affairs (Champion, 2014). And yet others have speculated that Putin’s mental ailments are the source of Moscow’s assertive behaviour (for an overview, see Nechepurenko, 2015).

A second set of factors centres around Russia’s collective identity. For example, several observers have pointed to the revival of Eurasianist ideology and the rise of an increasingly extreme nationalism within Russia (Hale, 2014; Nechepurenko, 2014). Others emphasize the influence of Russia’s political and strategic culture. According to Russia’s self-understanding, so the argument goes, the country always has been and will be a great power. Hence, many Russians consider it to be Moscow’s prerogative to maintain a sphere of influence in central Eurasia. Indeed, it appears that large parts of the Russian elite have never really accepted the independence of the other former Soviet republics. In the words of Motyl (2015a, p. 78),

Putin’s neo-imperial ideology, his stated determination to make Russia great again […], and his belief that Ukraine is an artificial state with no right to exist appear to be part and parcel of his pursuit of authoritarianism and empire and his adoption of a hegemonic policy toward Russia’s ‘near abroad.’ […] As his high popularity ratings suggest, Putin’s ideology resonates with, and may even be a product of, Russian political culture. (emphasis added)

Simply put, Russia is compelled by its cultural and historical DNA to seek expansion and domination in post-Soviet Eurasia.

A third and related factor is Russia’s authoritarian form of governance. As Gressel (2015, p. 13) writes, ‘Military assertiveness and expansionism are built into the Russian political system and much of its aggressive foreign behavior is caused by the structure of the political system.’ The underlying argument is straightforward. In non-democratic countries, such as Russia, there are no internal checks and balances that prevent the political leadership from going to war. Nor do autocracies have internalized norms of peaceful conflict resolution and compromise. Instead, they have a tendency to use violent means to resolve conflicts with their opponents, both domestically and internationally. It should therefore come as no surprise that Russia has begun to pursue increasingly assertive foreign policies as it drifts away from democracy. In sum, there is a confluence of personal, cultural, and domestic political factors that fuels Russian aggressiveness.

The corollary is clear: the West must take a firm stance and do whatever it can to curb Russia’s imperial ambitions. As the then-Polish President Boronislaw Komorowski told an audience at the United Nations in September 2014, ‘This is an important moment to contain Russia from any dangerous expansion in order to pursue its neo-imperial vision’ (quoted in Sakwa, 2015, p. 229; emphasis added). Several policy prescriptions flow from this. First, it is essential that Western powers and the United States in particular reinforce their military presence along NATO’s eastern flank, above all in the Baltic region (Coffey & Kochis, 2015). Second, the West should supply the government in Kiev with weapons and military hardware. Relatedly, NATO should increase its commitment to Ukraine and consider offering Kiev some form of association with the Alliance to deter further Russian aggression (Motyl, 2015b). Third, EU-Europe and the United States have to assist Ukraine’s economic transition. At the same time, harsher economic and diplomatic sanctions must be imposed on Russia (Braun, 2014; Motyl, 2014). In essence, the West needs to adopt a much more robust app...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Russia, the West, and the Ukraine crisis: three contending perspectives
• 2. Why Putin went to war: ideology, interests and decision-making in the Russian use of force in Crimea and Donbas
• 3. Russia and ‘hybrid warfare’
• 4. Neorealism and Russia’s Ukraine policy, 1991-present
• 5. Russian strategic culture: the role of today’s chekisty
• 6. Kto Vinovat? Why is there a crisis in Russia’s relation with the West?
• 7. Russia’s relations with the West: ontological security through conflict
• 8. From logic to competition to conflict: understanding the dynamics of EU-Russia relations
• Index