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Ukraine and Russia
In this fully revised and updated in-depth analysis of the war in Ukraine,
Paul D’Anieri explores the dynamics within Ukraine, between Ukraine
and Russia, and between Russia and the West that emerged with the
collapse of the Soviet Union and eventually resulted in Russia’s invasion
in 2022. Proceeding chronologically, this book shows how Ukraine’s
separation from Russia in 1991, at the time called a “civilized divorce,”
led to Europe’s most violent conflict since World War II. It argues the
conflict came about because of three underlying factors – the security
dilemma, the impact of democratization on geopolitics, and the incom-
patible goals of a post-Cold War Europe. Rather than a peaceful situa-
tion that was squandered, D’Anieri argues that these were deep-seated,
preexisting disagreements that could not be bridged, with concerning
implications for the prospects of resolution of the Ukraine conflict.
Second Edition
Paul D’Anieri
University of California, Riverside
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009315500
DOI: 10.1017/9781009315555
© Paul D’Anieri 2023
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
First published 2023
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the
Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-009-31550-0 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-009-31554-8 Paperback
Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
List of Mapspage vi
List of Tablesvii
Prefaceix
Acknowledgmentsxi
List of Key Peoplexiii
Bibliography333
Index367
vi
vii
The first edition of this book, published in 2019, aimed to explain Rus-
sia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014.
When Russia massively escalated its invasion in February 2022, readers
turned to the book to understand the background for the conflict. I have
been very gratified by the response. However, that narrative stopped in
early 2015, and the question on everyone’s mind was why did Russia
launch the much larger invasion of 2022. The need for a new edition,
updated to cover the developments leading up to this new invasion, was
self-evident.
Two practical problems arose in writing this revised edition. The first
comes with writing about a war that is still raging. The narrative stops
roughly in August 2022, when a great deal remained to be determined.
While this is not satisfying, the goal of the book is primarily to account for
how Ukraine and Russia came to all-out war, not to predict how it might
end. The new Chapter 8 covers the period from 2015 to 2021, which
sets the stage for the attack of 2022. It asks why Russia decided that
maintaining the status quo was not a better strategy than going to war.
The new Chapter 9 begins in 2021 with the crisis that began when
western intelligence agencies began reporting Russia’s preparations for
war and continues through the first six months of the war. While I cannot
foresee the future, there is plenty to discuss about the decision to launch
the war, the initial course of it, and the reaction in Russia, Ukraine,
the West, and around the world. Why did Putin choose war? Why did
Ukraine prove so resilient?
The new conclusion (Chapter 10) reconsiders themes from the first
edition concerning the long-term sources of the war, while also address-
ing of the implications of the escalation of 2022. While much will be
determined by events on the battlefield, some consequences of the inva-
sion are already clear and in need of analysis.
The second challenge in writing this edition is deciding how the inva-
sions of 2014 and 2022 relate to one another. In many respects, they are
part of the same war, but they represent two distinct invasions. Do they
ix
fit a single historical arc such that a single explanation captures both
events, or do they require distinct explanations? This comes up particu-
larly in Chapter 9, when I consider the argument that the 2022 invasion
was driven primarily by factors at the individual level, in the psychology
of Vladimir Putin, or at the level of his closest advisors. This sort of
explanation did not feature in the first edition.
The question of the locus and the rationality of Russia’s decision to
enlarge the war in 2022 relates to another theme. In contrast to 2014,
where there were identifiable events that triggered Russia’s invasion
(which is not to say that it was justifiable), the war in 2022 was more
clearly a war of choice. There was neither a clear opportunity nor an
impending loss to explain the decision to go to war. That is why it sur-
prised so many observers. Moreover, the scale of the aggression, the bru-
tality of war crimes, and the viciousness of the rhetoric makes it much
easier to attribute the war in 2022 simply to primordial Russian aggres-
sion, in contrast to the multi-causal account the first edition provided
regarding 2014.
This leads to the question of whether one should read the current
assessment of Russia’s aggression backward into the analysis of the pre-
ceding 30 years or read the earlier assessment, which focuses on mul-
tiple sources of the conflict, forward into 2022. I have chosen to do
neither. While I have edited the first seven chapters of the book, largely
for clarity and to make room for added material, I have not rewritten
my analysis of the long-term dynamics of the relationship. Nor have
I avoided attributing the war of 2022 to a clear decision by Russia to
attack Ukraine with the goal of subjugating it. That means that the
invasion of 2022 is explained slightly differently than that of 2014. Both
were the results of long-term incompatibilities of goals and norms, exac-
erbated by the nature of international politics. But if Russia’s invasion
of 2014 was based on a mixture of fear and opportunism, that of 2022
seems more based on a straightforward calculation, rational or not, that
Russia could attain its goals by force and only by force. Thanks to the
suggestions of reviewers, I have added a bibliography, while retaining
page-by-page footnotes, which I believe are most useful to the reader.
I have also added a list of major leaders, which should aid the non-
specialist reader with the many names in the book. I am grateful to Ray-
mond Finch III and to Emily Channel-Justice and her students at the
Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, who provided valuable feedback
on the new chapters.
I could not have written this book without the support of generous insti-
tutions, colleagues, and friends.
In the fall of 2017, I was fortunate to hold the Eugene and Daymel
Shklar Research Fellowship in Ukrainian Studies at Harvard Univer-
sity. I am grateful to the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and its
director, Serhii Plokhy, for providing an ideal environment in which to
develop the project. Oleh Kotsyuba and George Grabowicz encouraged
me to concentrate my thoughts in an article for Krytyka.
Early versions of the overall argument were presented at seminars at
Harvard University, Syracuse University, Kyiv Polytechnic Institute,
George Washington University, and at the Forsvarets Forskningsinsti-
tutt, Oslo. The discussions in these meetings were valuable as I refined
my analysis. I thank Kristina Conroy, Audie Klotz, Pavlo Kutuev and
Volodymyr Ishchenko, Peter Rollberg and Henry Hale, and Tor Buk-
kvoll for arranging these visits.
For many years, Taras Kuzio has been generous in sharing his
views and helping me make contacts in Kyiv. Eugene Fishel, Serhiy
Kudelia, Henry Hale, and Volodymyr Ischenko, as well as two anony-
mous reviewers, read drafts of the first edition manuscript and pro-
vided insightful comments. Their detailed suggestions have helped me
sharpen the argument in some places, to add nuance in others, and
to avoid some factual errors. Perhaps unwisely, I have not taken all
of their advice, and I am solely to blame for the shortcomings that
remain.
The University of California, Riverside, provided research funding as
well as a release from administrative and teaching duties.
I am especially grateful to a great group of friends who supported
me through a difficult time. Over many sets of tennis, countless meals,
and adventures in Europe, they have brought me immeasurable joy
and wisdom, and I dedicate this book to them. Grateful Eight, this is
for you!
xi
R
Kyiv
Lviv Kharkiv
U
SLOVAKIA U K R A I N E
S
Luhansk
Dnipro
Y Donetsk
AR
S
G
M
N
OL
HU
Mariupol
DO
I
VA
Odesa
Kherson
A
R O M A N I A Sea of Azov
Kerch
Crimea
SERBIA Sevastopol
B l a c k S e a
xiii
But our idea is that the wolves should be fed and the sheep kept safe.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
1
The term “civilized divorce” was used to describe the dissolution of the Soviet Union even
prior to its collapse, and was used repeatedly throughout the early post-Soviet period.
neighbors, and the West. There is a great deal at stake in how we under-
stand this conflict, but prevailing understandings are deeply at odds with
one another: one school sees the conflict as being caused by Russian
revanchism; another attributes it to Putin’s need to bolster his autocratic
rule; and another blames western expansionism and Ukrainian national-
ism. The first two views point to a western strategy of waiting for Putin
to leave the scene, while containing Russia in the meantime. The third
points to accommodating Russia’s claimed security needs by acquiescing
to its desire to control Ukraine.
This book will show why neither of those strategies is likely to work
in the short term. The roots of the conflict are deeper than is com-
monly understood and therefore will resist a simple change in policy or
leadership. War between Russia and Ukraine, and between Russia and
the West, was the result of deep “tectonic” forces as well as short-term
triggers. Conflict between Ukraine and Russia is based on structural
factors inherent to international politics as well as profound normative
disagreements. While we can blame leaders for many of the decisions
they have made, their mistakes did not cause the underlying conflicts,
which were evident even in the 1990s, when post-Cold War mutual trust
was at its highest.
Therefore, simply waiting for Putin to depart the stage in Russia, or for
a more accommodating policy from the European Union or the United
States, will not bring reconciliation. A return to peace and security
would require agreement on a new architecture for security in Europe.
Such an architecture could not be negotiated even when the Cold War
ended and Russia was democratizing. With an increasingly autocratic
Russia, deep East–West antagonism, and a brutal war over Ukraine, a
new security architecture is even less attainable now than it was a few
years ago. Only profound changes, such as a new democratization in
Russia or an abandonment of the post-Word War II norms of the West,
will improve prospects. The border between Russia and Ukraine, and
by extension between free and unfree Europe, will be determined on the
battlefield. Even when the current war ends, confrontation between Rus-
sia and Ukraine, and between Russia and the West, will remain. Whether
anyone likes it or not, Ukraine and the West are destined to be in conflict
with Russia for many years to come.
This book has two connected goals. The first is to explain how and
why this conflict came about. The second is to provide an account of the
relationship between Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the United States
from the end of the Cold War in 1989 until the war of 2022. The chro-
nology is a goal in its own right, for no such overview of Ukraine–Russia
relations exists. It is also essential for understanding the conflict, since
one of the primary contentions of this book is that the problems that
led to war in 2014 and 2022 emerged at the beginning of the post-Cold
War period and became increasingly salient over time. The decisions to
go to war in 2014 and again in 2022 rested with Vladimir Putin, but the
underlying causes of conflict were much deeper. This book focuses on
the underlying causes, not because they made the war inevitable, but
because they show why Putin and the Russian leadership found that they
could not achieve their goals without war.
2
On conflicts of interest between Russia and the West, see William C. Wohlforth and
Vladislav Zubok, “An Abiding Antagonism: Realism, Idealism, and the Mirage of Western–
Russian Partnership after the Cold War,” International Politics 54, 4 (2017): 405–419.
that supported it. While Russia did not appear to oppose democracy
itself, it felt threatened as new democracies sought to join the principal
institutions of European democracy, NATO and the European Union.
The further this process went, the more resentful Russia became, and
Ukraine was more important to Russia’s perception of its interests, to
its national identity, and to Putin’s regime, than any other state. Fyodor
Lukyanov wrote that “[I]n their [Russians’] view, Russia’s subordinate
position is the illegitimate result of a never-ending U.S. campaign to
keep Russia down and prevent it from regaining its proper status.”3
This merger of democracy and geopolitics was new, but it had an
effect that looked familiar. To the extent that Russia turned away from
liberal democracy while Europe embraced it, it was inevitable that there
would be some border between democratic and nondemocratic Europe.
In an earlier era, this had been called the “iron curtain.” Would a new
dividing line be Russia’s border with Ukraine, Ukraine’s border with
Poland, or somewhere else? Could a zone of neutrals provide a “buffer”
between Europe’s democratic and nondemocratic regions? Perhaps, but
no one wanted to be in that zone, and the idea of it clashed with Euro-
pean norms. A new division of Europe could be avoided only if Russia
consolidated democracy and gave up its great power aspirations. The
first of these failed and the second was rejected. It has been Ukraine’s
bad luck to have the conflict played out on its territory, as has so often
been the case throughout history.
3
Fyodor Lukyanov, “Putin’s Foreign Policy: The Quest to Restore Russia’s Rightful
Place,” Foreign Affairs 95, 3 (May/June 2016): 30–37.
4
The tendency to focus on blame is discussed in Paul D’Anieri, “Ukraine, Russia, and
the West: The Battle over Blame,” The Russian Review 75 (July 2016): 498–503. For
other reviews of the literature, see Peter Rutland, “Geopolitics and the Roots of Putin’s
Foreign Policy,” Russian History 43, 3–4 (2016): 425–436 and Michael E. Aleprete, Jr.,
“Minimizing Loss: Explaining Russian Policy: Choices during the Ukrainian Crisis,”
Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 44 (2017): 53–75. Among those blaming the West and
Ukrainian nationalists are two very prominent scholars of Russian politics, Richard
Sakwa and Stephen Cohen, and two prominent scholars of international security, John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, as well as the scholar of Russian foreign policy Andrei
Tsygankov. See Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (London: I.
B. Tauris, 2014); Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Stephen F. Cohen, “Cold War against
Russia – Without Debate,” The Nation, May 19, 2014; John Mearsheimer, “Why the
Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,”
Foreign Affairs 93, 5 (September/October 2014): 77–89; Stephen M. Walt, “What Would
a Realist World Have Looked Like,” ForeignPolicy.com, January 8, 2016; and Andrei
Tsygankov, “Vladimir Putin’s Last Stand: The Sources of Russia’s Ukraine Policy,” Post-
Soviet Affairs 31, 4 (2015): 279–303. For those who put the blame on Russia, see Andrew
Wilson, Ukraine Crisis: What It Means for the West (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2014); Taras Kuzio, Putin’s War against Ukraine: Revolution, Nationalism, and
Crime (Toronto: Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto); Charles Clover,
Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2016); and Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American
Ambassador in Putin’s Russia (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), especially
chapter 23. For a work that assigns blame more evenly, see Samuel Charap and Timothy
Colton, Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia
(London: Routledge, 2017).
5
Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault,” 1; Wilson, Ukraine Crisis, vii.
6
See Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul, “Who Lost Russia (This Time)? Vladimir
Putin,” The Washington Quarterly 38, 2 (2015): 167–187.
7
Daniel Treisman, The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2018), chapter 11. Treisman finds problems
with all four explanations, and ends up arguing that the primary goal was preventing
the loss of the naval base at Sevastopol. He points out that while the military part of
the operation seemed well prepared and ran very smoothly, the political arrangements,
including who would be in charge in Crimea and whether Crimea would seek autonomy
or to join Russia, seemed chaotic and improvised.
8
This categorization follows loosely that of Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and
Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 51 (October 1998): 144–172.
9
Wilson, Ukraine Crisis, and Stoner and McFaul, “Who Lost Russia,” share this perspec-
tive. A deeper discussion of this perspective is in Chapter 9.
10
Not all the authors who advance these arguments have always been identified with
defensive realism. Mearsheimer’s extensive scholarship generally falls into the school
of “offensive” realism, but his argument that the misguided West provoked the war in
Ukraine is consistent with “defensive” realism.
vacuum. While Russia, Ukraine, and the West can all be criticized for the
policies they chose, there were, I contend, dynamics in post-Cold War
Europe that resisted resolution. While Russia was at fault for resorting
to force, it is important to recognize that it perceived security challenges
that caused considerable concern. One does not need to see Russia’s
desire to control Ukraine as a “legitimate interest,” as some authors do,
to acknowledge that Russia considered the loss of Ukraine to be intoler-
able. Similarly, even if one considers NATO enlargement to have been
a mistake, it was a response to a security problem that did not have
another easy solution.
The focus on international and domestic sources need not be mutu-
ally exclusive. It seems likely that invading Ukraine advanced both inter-
national and domestic goals for Putin and may have been especially
attractive because it did. Therefore, this book seeks to analyze how
international and domestic factors interacted. Among the key themes are
the way that the state of democracy in Ukraine interacted with its inter-
national orientation, and the fact that the Ukrainian state was always
weak, and then nearly collapsed in 2014. The Russian state, after going
through a period of decay in the 1990s, gradually strengthened such that
by 2014 it could deploy a highly effective “hybrid” war in Ukraine and
by 2022 it could launch a massive invasion.
Overall, then, the approach here is consistent with the school of
thought known as “neoclassical realism,” which finds that the secu-
rity dilemma conditions international politics, but that internal factors
influence how states respond to it. This approach differs from prevailing
interpretations by acknowledging that the various leaders saw themselves
as being constrained by both international factors and domestic politics,
such that they had less freedom of maneuver than many analyses have
attributed to them. We should be more cautious in charging aggression
or stupidity. In order to understand these constraints, we need to exam-
ine both the security dilemma that existed in Europe after the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the domestic politics of the various countries
involved, especially Ukraine. In particular, we need to understand the
ways in which democratization became merged with geopolitics, repeat-
edly disrupting the status quo and putting a core value of the West at
odds with Russia’s sense of its security.
help reveal the dynamics and patterns that connect events over more
than thirty years. The book is not, strictly speaking, a work of history, as
it is not based primarily on archival sources. But considerable attention
is given to describing what happened, and to looking at how the actors at
the time explained what they were doing. Their views are gleaned from
the statements they made at the time, as well as later accounts and inter-
views conducted in Ukraine.
The narrative account, which traces the evolution of Ukraine–Russia
and Russia–West relations since 1989, is structured by a set of analytical
themes that identify the underlying dynamics of the conflict, and that
show the connections between this case and broader patterns in world
politics. This approach requires a theoretical eclecticism that brings mul-
tiple theories to bear on the problem rather than insisting on fitting the
complexities of the case into a single perspective.11
Analytical Themes
The conflict that turned violent in 2014 and escalated in 2022 was rooted
in deep disagreements about what the post-Cold War world should look
like. Those differences emerged with the end of the Cold War and have
endured. They constitute each side’s perception of what the status quo
was or should be. Actors were willing to take heightened risks when it
appeared their conception of the status quo was under threat. Three
dynamics explain why those conflicts of interest could not be mitigated
despite the presumably benign environment after the end of the Cold
War. First, the security dilemma, a common phenomenon in interna-
tional politics, meant that actions that each state took to preserve its
security created problems for others and induced fears about actors’
intentions. Second, the spread of democracy complicated matters con-
siderably. Because new democracies sought to join Europe’s democratic
international institutions, the European Union and NATO, democrati-
zation took on geopolitical consequences that the West saw as benign and
that Russia saw as threatening. With Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution
the merger of democratization and geopolitics became nearly complete.
Moreover, the progress – and the backsliding – of democratization in the
region meant that the status quo was repeatedly disrupted, raising new
fears and new conflicts. Third, regardless of the level of democracy in
the various states, domestic politics repeatedly undermined cooperation
11
Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein, “Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics:
Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions,” Perspectives on
Politics 8, 2 (2010): 411–431.
communism and the end of the Cold War, they did not accept the loss
of Ukraine. In 1992, Joseph Brodsky, the Russian émigré poet, Nobel
Prize winner and, at the time, the Poet Laureate of the US, performed
a poem bitterly condemning Ukrainian independence and disparaging
Ukrainians.12 In the 1990s, even one of the leading liberals in Russia,
Boris Nemtsov, advocated regaining Sevastopol by having Russian firms
buy assets there: “Historical justice should be restored through capitalist
methods.”13 In Nemtsov’s view, increasing Russian control of Crimea
would be a restoration, not a new gain for Russia. In 2014, Alexei Navalny,
who became Russia’s leading pro-democracy political prisoner, said “I
don’t see any difference at all between Russians and Ukrainians.”14
Russia’s inability to reconcile itself to the loss of Ukraine is unsur-
prising. The belief that Ukraine is part of Russia is rooted in a Russian
foundation myth which sees the origins of today’s Russia in medieval
Kyiv, in the hundreds of years in which much of Ukraine was part of
the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, and in the important role played
by people from Ukraine – the writers Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Bulga-
kov, the revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky and the Soviet leader Leonid
Brezhnev among many others – in Russian/Soviet culture and politics.
The sense of something important being lost was profound.15 Vladimir
Putin invoked this history to justify the seizure of Crimea in 2014.16
Gerard Toal applies the concept of “thick geopolitics” and Elizabeth
Wood refers to “imagined geography” to show how Russia’s perception
of its geopolitical situation shaped Russian policy in its “near abroad.”17
12
Joseph Brodsky, “Na nezavisimost’ Ukrainy” (1992), www.culture.ru/poems/30468/
na-nezavisimost-ukrainy. For a discussion, see Keith Gessen, “A Note on Brodsky and
Ukraine,” The New Yorker, August 21, 2011.
13
OMRI Daily Digest Part I, February 19, 1997, as cited in Paul D’Anieri, Economic
Interdependence in Ukrainian–Russian Relations (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1999), p. 211.
14
Anna Dolgov, “Navalny Wouldn’t Return Crimea, Considers Immigration Bigger Issue
than Ukraine,” Moscow Times, October 16, 2014. See also Marlene Laruelle, “Alexei
Navalny and Challenges in Reconciling ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Liberalism’,” Post-Soviet
Affairs 30, 4 (2014): 276–297.
15
See Peter J. Potichnyj, Marc Raeff, Jaroslaw Pelenski, and Gleb N. Zekulin., eds.,
Ukraine and Russia in Their Historical Encounter (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies, 1982).
16
“Address by President of the Russian Federation,” March 18, 2014, President of Russia
website.
17
Gerard Toal, Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Toal deliberately takes an “empathetic”
approach to understanding Russia’s perception of its role in the region. Elizabeth A.
Wood, “Introduction,” in Elizabeth A. Wood, William E. Pomeranz, E. Wayne Merry,
and Maxim Trudolyubov, Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine (Washington, DC: Woodrow
Wilson Center Press, 2016), pp. 3–6.
“Status quo bias,” or “loss aversion,” the study of which earned Dan-
iel Kahneman a Nobel Prize, is a phenomenon widely studied in psy-
chology and behavioral economics. As Kahneman and Amos Tversky
put it succinctly, “losses loom larger than gains.”18 Actors are willing to
take disproportionate risks to avoid a perceived loss. Applied to interna-
tional relations, states will try very hard to preserve the status quo or to
restore it when they perceive it has been disrupted for the worse. Henry
Kissinger, relying on history rather than behavioral economics, similarly
argued that whether great powers accepted the status quo was crucial
to the maintenance of stability.19 After 1991, Ukraine, Russia, and the
West had different understandings of the new status quo. Therefore,
each saw itself as defending the status quo, and saw others’ efforts to
overturn it as signs of malicious intent.
It is tempting to see Russia’s determination to control Ukraine as the
only explanation needed for this war. Absent this factor, it is hard to
see how the conflict emerges, let alone results in war. However, such a
view is incomplete, because it fails to account for Ukraine’s resistance to
Russia’s goals, for the West’s increasing interest in supporting Ukraine’s
independence, and for the merger of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine into
a much larger conflict between Russia and the West. It is a truism that
war takes at least two parties: If one side capitulates, there is no need
for war. Focusing only on Russian aggression ignores Ukraine’s agency,
which not only was central in the demise of the Soviet Union but also
meant that Russia’s strategy of peaceful coercion could not work. With-
out Ukraine’s determination to remain separate, Ukraine’s indepen-
dence after 1991 might have been fleeting, as it was after World War I.
Without the West’s willingness to support Ukraine, the conflict between
Russia and Ukraine would likely have turned out very differently.
While Ukraine and the West saw Russia trying to overturn the post-
Cold War status quo, Russia saw the West trying to overturn it by
expanding NATO eastward and by promoting “colored revolutions”
against governments that Russia supported. In 2005, Andrei Zagorsky
lamented that “Russia acts as a status quo power that is no longer
18
Daniel S. Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision
under Risk,” Econometrica 47, 2 (March 1979): 279. On the application of prospect
theory to international politics, see Jack S. Levy, “Prospect Theory and International
Relations: Theoretical Approaches and Analytical Problems,” Political Psychology 13,
2 (1992): 283–310; and Jonathan Mercer, “Prospect Theory and Political Science,”
Annual Review of Political Science 8 (2005): 1–21.
19
Kissinger divided great powers into “status quo” powers, which were satisfied with the
status quo and defended it, and revolutionary powers, which were dissatisfied with the
status quo and sought to overturn it. See Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich,
Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812‒22 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).
20
Andrei Zagorski, “Russia and the Shared Neighborhood,” in Dov Lynch, ed., What
Russia Sees, Chaillot Paper No. 74, Institute for Security Studies, January 2005, p. 69.
21
Kahneman and Tversky, “Prospect Theory,” p. 287. Levy (“Prospect Theory and
International Relations,” p. 286) applies this point to international politics: “A state
which perceives itself to be in a deteriorating situation might be willing to take exces-
sively risky actions in order to maintain the status quo.”
22
Kissinger, A World Restored, p. 2.
23
The theory of loss aversion is applied specifically to the conflicts in Crimea and eastern
Ukraine by Aleprete, “Minimizing Loss.”
24
“Putin’s Foreign Policy Riddle,” BBC News Online, March 28, 2000, http://news.bbc
.co.uk/2/hi/europe/693526.stm.
25
There is an enormous literature on the security dilemma, its consequences, and the
potential to resolve it. For a good short treatment, see Robert Jervis, “Cooperation
under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, 2 (January 1978): 167–214.
26
John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,”
International Security 15, 1 (Summer 1990): 5–56.
27
Robert J. Art, “Creating a Disaster: NATO’s Open Door Policy,” Political Science
Quarterly 113, 3 (1998): 383.
· · · · ·
Upon the bill being reported to the Senate from the Committee of
the Whole Mr. Ingalls again moved to limit the suspension of the
coming of Chinese laborers to ten years.
Mr. Jones, of Nevada, said this limit would hardly have the effect
of allaying agitation on the subject as the discussion would be
resumed in two or three years, and ten years, he feared, would not
even be a long enough period to enable Congress intelligently to base
upon it any future policy.
Mr. Miller, of California, also urged that the shorter period would
not measurably relieve the business interest of the Pacific slope,
inasmuch as the white immigrants, who were so much desired,
would not come there if they believed the Chinese were to be again
admitted in ten years. Being interrupted by Mr. Hoar, he asserted
that that Senator and other republican leaders, as also the last
republican nominee for President, had heretofore given the people of
the Pacific slope good reason to believe that they would secure to
them the relief they sought by the bill.
Mr. Hoar, (Rep.) of Mass., briefly replied.
The amendment was lost—yeas 20, nays 21.
The vote is as follows:
Yeas—Messrs. Aldrich, Allison, Blair, Brown, Conger, Davis of
Illinois, Dawes, Edmunds, Frye, Hale, Hoar, Ingalls, Lapham,
McDill, McMillan, Mahone, Morrill, Plumb, Sawyer and Teller—20.
Nays—Messrs. Bayard, Beck, Call, Cameron of Wisconsin, Coke,
Fair, Farley, Garland, George, Gorman, Jackson, Jonas, Jones of
Nevada, Miller of California, Miller of New York, Morgan, Ransom,
Slater, Yance, Voorhees and Walker—21.
Messrs. Butler, Camden, McPherson, Johnston, Davis of West
Virginia, Pendleton and Ransom were paired with Messrs. Hawley,
Anthony, Sewell, Platt, Van Wyck, Windom and Sherman.
Messrs. Hampton, Pugh, Vest, Rollins and Jones of Florida were
paired with absentees.
Increase Per
1850. 1880. Cent.
Commerce of all
nations $4,280,000,000 $14,405,000,000 240
Railways (miles
open) 44,400 222,600 398
Shipping tonnage 6,905,000 18,720,000 171
Carrying tonnage 8,464,000 34,280,060 304