Russia's War by Jade McGlynn

Author:Jade McGlynn [McGlynn, Jade]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781509556779
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

This view approximates to my own. Russian insecurity exists for reasons independent of the West but Western actions have triggered and exacerbated it, even radicalised it when combined with obvious hypocrisy and what Marlene Laruelle has termed ‘normative imperialism’.30 Potential NATO candidacy for Ukraine is seen in Russia and by Russians as a symptom of the problem, not the main problem in itself, as it’s not NATO enlargement en se that matters so much as Moscow’s perception that its ‘ownership’ (of Eastern Europe) was being violated.31 In the Kremlin’s view, this was a US-driven effort to push traditionally Soviet or Russia-aligned states into the US sphere of influence, including through artificial regime change. US actions in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and Syria were viewed through this prism (unlike say US intervention in Sierra Leone, not a traditional Russian ally) and led to diplomatic and even military pushback, as determined by the limits of Russian power at the time. This explanation that it’s not about NATO so much as what NATO represents, even civilisationally, explains why Russia meekly accepted Sweden and Finland joining NATO; because even if they were neutral, the Kremlin sees them as Western countries that do not belong to Russia’s sphere of influence. What’s more, if NATO membership was the immediate threat, then Russia behaved entirely counterintuitively, since its occupation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 had put an effective stop to any formal entry of Ukraine into NATO because it would have required the politically unacceptable act of Kyiv giving up its claim to these territories.

In conclusion, any discussion that centres on NATO expansion as a key driver for Russia’s invasion and/or insecurity is simplistic. The question of Ukraine’s civilisational status is much more complex than a basic security buffer zone issue and instead goes to the heart of Russian identity, status-seeking and historical grievance. The NATO expansion question is also over-discussed compared to other Western failures to support not only Russia but other post-communist countries in terms of sociopolitical issues and even just by not facilitating the elites’ corruption. Westerners, especially Americans, should not inflate their own countries’ importance in determining Russian actions but, if they insist, then there is plenty of terrain to explore without having to crowd around the topic of NATO expansion. Moreover, any proper understanding of NATO’s role in aggravating tensions with Russia should not start from the alliance’s engagement with Georgia or Ukraine but rather from the Yugoslav wars, and especially the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 – a war that, if it is remembered at all in London or Washington, is misremembered, despite its clear relevance to the conflict unfolding in Ukraine.

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