Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin had a number of reasons for invading Ukraine in February and starting the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II.  Putin sought to portray the pre-invasion crisis that Moscow created with Ukraine as a NATO-Russia dispute, but that framing does not stand up to serious scrutiny.

Putin tried hard.  In late 2021, he complained of NATO’s “rising” military threat on Russia’s western borders and demanded legal guarantees for Russia, as if the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and largest army in Europe needed such guarantees.  Moscow proposed draft agreements with NATO and the United States that would have ruled out further NATO enlargement and required the Alliance to withdraw all military forces and infrastructure from members that had joined after 1997.

Washington and NATO offered to engage on other elements of the draft agreements regarding arms control and risk reduction measures, which could have made a genuine contribution to Europe’s security, including Russia.  However, U.S. and NATO officials would not foreswear further enlargement.  That became another grievance—along with false claims of neo-Nazis in Kyiv, genocide in Donbas and a Ukrainian pursuit of nuclear arms—that Putin cited in his February 24 explanation of his unjustifiable decision to launch a new invasion of Ukraine.

Some Western analysts continue to accept Putin’s argument that lays blame on NATO.  The history does not support that argument.

In July 1997, NATO invited Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to begin accession negotiations—but only after first laying the basis for a cooperative relationship with Russia.  In May 1997, NATO and Russia concluded the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, which set up a permanent body for consultation and coordination.

Among other things, the Founding Act reiterated that NATO had “no intention, no plan and no reason” to place nuclear weapons on the territory of new member states.  The Act also noted that NATO saw no need for the “permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” on the territory of new members.  These statements reflected the Alliance’s effort to make enlargement for Moscow as non-threatening as possible in military terms.

From 1997 to early 2014, NATO deployed virtually no combat forces on the territory of its new members.  That changed following Russia’s use of military force to seize Crimea and its involvement in the conflict in Donbas in eastern Ukraine in March and April 2014.  Even then, NATO moved to deploy, on a rotating basis, multinational battlegroups numbering 1,000-1,600 troops in each of the three Baltic states and Poland—no more than tripwire forces.

As for advancing the Alliance to Russia’s borders, five current NATO members border on Russia or the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (this does not include Finland, which requested membership only in May 2022).  Of the five current members, the last to join the Alliance, the three Baltic states, did so in 2004.  That was 18 years ago.  Putin did not raise a fuss then.

In fact, in May 2002, Putin met NATO leaders in Rome and agreed to a joint declaration on deepening and giving a new quality to NATO-Russia relations.  In his address at that NATO-Russia summit, Putin expressed no concern about NATO enlargement, even though the Alliance planned a second summit later that year, and the Russian president had to know that NATO then would invite additional countries, quite probably including the Baltic states, to join.

Putin has in recent years played up grievances against NATO enlargement in ways that he did not when NATO was enlarging in Russia’s neighborhood.  The four countries that joined the Alliance after 2004 are all in the Balkans, quite distant from Russia’s borders.  The Russian president reacted calmly to this year’s Finnish and Swedish decisions to apply to join—even though Finland’s addition will more than double the length of Russia’s borders with NATO.

As for Moscow’s concerns about Ukraine entering NATO, Russian diplomats and spies surely understood there is little enthusiasm within the Alliance for putting Ukraine on a membership track.  With Russian troops occupying parts of Ukraine (even before the February attack), membership would invariably raise the question of allies going to war against Russia.

Ironically, Russia had a neutral Ukraine in 2013.  A 2010 Ukrainian law enshrined non-bloc status for the country, and then-Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych showed no desire to join NATO.  He was interested in concluding an association agreement with the European Union, but he came under massive pressure from Moscow not to do so in late 2013.  He succumbed to that pressure, and the announcement that Kyiv would not sign the completed association agreement triggered protests that same evening that began the Maidan Revolution.

Putin’s decision to launch a new attack on Ukraine appears to have several motivations.  One is geopolitical, the Kremlin’s desire to have a Russian sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space and its fear that Ukraine was invariably moving away from Moscow.  This is a broader question than Ukraine’s relationship with NATO.  But nothing has done more than Russian policy and actions since 2014 to push Ukraine away from Russia and toward the West.

Russian domestic politics looks like a second key factor.  For the Kremlin, a democratic, Western-oriented, economically successful Ukraine poses a nightmare, because that Ukraine would cause Russians to question why they cannot have the same political voice and democratic rights that Ukrainians do.  For the Kremlin, regime preservation is job number one.

The third factor is Putin himself.  Reading his July 2021 essay on Ukraine or his February 24 speech on Russia’s recognition of the so-called “people’s republics” in Donbas makes clear that Putin does not accept the legitimacy of a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state.  He regards most of Ukraine as part of historical Russia.

On June 9, the Russian president voiced the quiet part aloud, implicitly comparing himself to Peter the Great on “returning” historic Russian lands to Moscow’s control.  Putin said, “Apparently, it is also our lot to return [what is Russia’s] and reinforce [the country].”  He said not one word about NATO or NATO enlargement.

Case closed. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter account struck an urgent tone the Sunday after the Supreme Court’s historic abortion ruling. She implored her 968,000 followers to have the “fortitude to act” against Department of Defense leaders for refusing to recognize the court’s decision, which eliminates the constitutional right to an abortion.

But DOD leaders never stated they would ignore the court’s ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson case.

Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, repeated a trope that appears to have originated on a now suspended Twitter channel known as BNN Newsroom a day prior. The BNN post erroneously said the Pentagon would not recognize abortion laws implemented in the wake of Dobbs. It was shared more than 26,000 times before being deleted, the Associated Press reported.

While Taylor Greene’s call to her followers said DOD leadership had “wage(d) an insurrection against the Supreme Court,” the anodyne statement from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III was anything but that.

Austin’s statement, made in the hours after the court ruled, noted that the agency was “examining” the Dobbs’ decision and evaluating internal policies to ensure access to reproductive health care for service members and their families “as permitted by federal law.”

This bland statement spawned the BNN story which, in turn, led to the Taylor Greene tweet exclaiming that DOD leadership “must be removed.”

(Taylor Greene’s office did not return an email seeking comment).

Disinformation scholars said this incident exemplifies why the abortion issue, both polarizing and emotional, is a perfect vessel for spreading divisive falsehoods. Herb Lin, a senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at Stanford University, said he worries these qualities will make the mounting abortion wars an easy target for foreign interference. He pointed to how Russian influence operators hoping to provoke violence simultaneously promoted pro- and anti-Muslim rallies held at the same time and place during the run up to the 2016 election.

Read more at Cyberscoop

Dr. Sanne Verschuren has been awarded the 2022 Kenneth Waltz Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Security Section of the American Political Science Association for her dissertation titled "Imagining the Unimaginable: War, Weapons, and Procurement Politics". 

The Kenneth N. Waltz Dissertation Award is awarded to a successfully defended doctoral dissertation employing any approach (historical, quantitative, theoretical, policy analysis, etc.) to any topic in the field of security studies. Manuscripts are judged according to (1) originality in substance and approach; (2) significance for scholarly or policy debate; (3) rigor in approach and analysis; and (4) power of expression.

Dr. Sanne Verschuren received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University and her research focuses on the development of military technology, shifts in military strategy and tactics, and the role of ideas and norms therein. She was a Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow for CISAC during the 2021-2022 academic year. 

APSA Announcement

Congratulations to the 2022 Great Immigrants honorees!

Every Fourth of July, Carnegie Corporation of New York celebrates the exemplary contributions of immigrants to American life. In 2022, the Corporation honors 34 naturalized citizens whose contributions and actions have enriched and strengthened our society and our democracy.

The Class of 2022 is comprised of individuals from 32 countries and a wide range of backgrounds. This year, the Corporation is highlighting the work of immigrants who have been leaders in their local communities through their work in education, the arts, law enforcement, public service, health care, and small business ownership, as well as for their contributions as advocates for education equity, climate change, food security, and the homeless.

Read more at carnegie.org.

The Russian nuclear saber-rattling that has accompanied the invasion of Ukraine represents a level of nuclear risk unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. One wonders how global nuclear politics will adapt to these changing circumstances. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war poses major challenges for several core international institutions and issues, from the upcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference to President Biden’s proposed arms control efforts with Russia and China. Read more at thebulletin.org

Just days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Dmitri Medvedev, the former president and prime minister of Russia, took to social media to post a chilling message. He raged against Western sanctions on his country and suggested darkly that Russia could rip up some of its most important agreements with the West. He mentioned the New START treaty, the nuclear arms reduction agreement signed with the United States over a decade ago, but the threat was broader still: the sundering of all diplomatic ties with Western countries. “It’s time to hang huge padlocks on the embassies,” he wrote.

Read the rest at Foreign Affairs

After months of watching hundreds of new nuclear missile silos being dug in the dirt northwest of Beijing, it is welcome news that President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping seemingly agreed at last week’s summit on the need for strategic stability talks. Strategic stability — the idea that nuclear-armed countries should not be able to gain decisive advantage over one another — has taken on new importance as China expands and modernizes its nuclear arsenal.

China is expected to quadruple its number of warheads in the next decade, and is upgrading its nuclear capabilities with new missiles, submarines and bombers. Over the summer, it reportedly fired a missile from a hypersonic glide vehicle while testing its fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) — a technical advance that, if true, means the Chinese can attack targets from space with nuclear weapons. Although China insists it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons, this claim has less credence than in the past, when the country’s nuclear force was much smaller.

Read the rest at Politico 

The 12th main directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense operates a dozen central storage facilities for nuclear weapons. Known as “Object S” sites and scattered across the Russian Federation, they contain thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs with a wide variety of explosive yields. For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have been ominously threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. Read more at The Atlantic.