Amidst the backdrop of Russia’s invasion, the fabric of the world order finds itself being tested. The strategic geography of Europe has shifted, prompting the world to question the preparedness and intent of international alliances. Paul D’Anieri, a leading expert on Eastern European and post-Soviet politics, dissects Russia’s deep-rooted desire for regional dominance and the challenges it presents to Ukraine, NATO, and the world.
Nadiia Chervinska
Probably everyone who is more or less interested in Ukrainian history understands that the root causes of this war go deeper than recent political events. In your recent book, you show that one of the main reasons for it are the fundamentally different visions of the world order after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The West’s vision of a Europe is rooted in democracy and international institutions, while Russia is longing for a return to a great-power politics model from the Cold War times. I think that this ideological divide essentially made the current war almost like a destined reality. Could you elaborate on how it has evolved over time since 1989?
Paul D’Anieri
It is not even the Cold War; it is really the pre-World War I era that Russia seems to be aspiring to. There is a quotation in my book by Radek Sikorski, the Polish diplomat, that what Russia really wants is to return to a world before 1914. Since the Russo-Ukrainian war started, Putin made it clear that he really rejects a lot of what the Soviet Union did—because the Soviet Union set up this federal, multi-ethnic structure, and he feels that was disastrous for Great Russia.
There is this difference, and it started out as a difference about international politics: are we going to live in a 19th-century world in which the great powers dominate and the lesser powers have to suffer what the great powers decide for them, and in which borders are movable and they are movable by force? Or are we going to live in a post-World War II world in which Europe, at least, has a very strict rule that borders will not be changed by force, and that the most powerful countries, not only Russia but also especially Germany, will agree not to use the full extent of their power because they realize how destructive it has been in the past? That was the international dimension of it. What has really been piled on as well as is a rejection of European liberalism, starting with liberal democracy but then moving on to things like women’s rights, gay rights, etc.
Nadiia Chervinska
You criticize the idea of a “grand bargain” between Russia and the West that involves ceding parts of Ukrainian territory or even the entirety of Ukraine to Russian control in exchange for what I would call “imaginary peace” in the region. Given the security dilemma, it seems you’re casting doubt on Russia ever being a status quo power. Do you think that the West’s optimistic assumptions about Russia are wrong? Or to put it differently, are there some specific conditions under which such a deal could become more plausible, or do you see it as entirely unrealistic?
Paul D’Anieri
This is a really important question: to what extent is it possible; when, and under what conditions will Russia become a “normal country”? We know from other European empires that it is very difficult to go from being an empire to being not-an-empire. I am in Paris right now, and all over Paris, you see signs of the French Empire. This morning, I was in London, and in London, everywhere you see the signs of the British Empire. The British Empire started unraveling 200 years ago, but it really unraveled after World War II and it took many decades for the British to come to grips with being a post-imperial power, and in some respects, they are still doing that. Certainly, the same was true for France. You can think about the Vietnam conflict, the Algerian war, and France’s involvement in Africa to this very day. Undoing these things is extremely difficult, and I am only discussing countries that had their empires overseas.
The problem for Russia and the problem for Russia’s neighbors is that we know where France ends, right? And we know where the United Kingdom ends, although there are some issues still in Ireland. But it has never been clear where Russia ends. It is clear on the Pacific coast, but in the West, where does Russia end? Is it the border of 1991? Is it the border of 1954? Is it the border of 1945? Is it the border of 1914? Russia does not know where it ends, and therefore neither does anybody else. Until Russia accepts itself as a territorially limited entity, there will be no peace. This is why Russia’s expansion into Ukraine will not bring peace unless one assumes that once Russia controls Ukraine, Russia knows where its western borders are. And this is the big question, if Russia were to control Ukraine, would Russia then say “Ah, now we are happy. Now we are complete. Now we are a country. Now we can be normal”? I do not see too many signs of that, but that is the optimistic view: “Just give them Ukraine, and Russia will be a normal, status quo power.”
Nadiia Chervinska
It seems to me that, ever since Russia started its war in Ukraine in 2014 and until the full-scale invasion, most of the “collective West,” let’s use this term, believed that Russia had the potential to become a normal country, even though different strategies to promote democracy in Russia used by the West since the dissolution of the Soviet Union have had no effect. I think that the West’s focus on promoting democracy conforms with any bargain that involves freezing the current war or ceding parts of Ukraine. So, the question is, how does the West reconcile its commitment to democracy with the realpolitik of dealing with Russia, which has seen no shame in territorial expansion? Do you think that the Western strategy of promoting democracy in Russia has ever been successful?
Paul D’Anieri
Well, not in Russia, but the Western promotion of democracy has been hugely successful. In Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Baltic States, I would say even in Hungary, although we know Hungary has slid back far away from where it used to be. It is not that the West forced anybody to be democratic. Countries that wanted to be democratic but had obstacles, including obstacles coming from Russia; the West was able to help. In Russia, we had this idea, that characterized our relationship with China as well, that if we engage with them and if we trade with them, then over time liberalism will spread to those countries—liberalism both in the domestic sense and in the international sense. If Russia has a lot of trade with Western Europe, it will not want to have conflict with Western Europe because there is too much money at stake. And that over time, the more people are exposed to the values of Western Europe, the more they are likely to adopt them.
I think one of the casualties of this war has been that belief in the natural spread of democracy, or the idea that trade will bring liberalism with it, which certainly was what justified the United States having very broad trade relations with China. We thought China would become less authoritarian if it had more trade with the West. The Germans have this term “Wandel durch Handel” or change through trade—I think this idea is now dead, this war killed it. Now we have to have a new view in the world about liberalism in foreign policy, and by liberalism, I mean not just domestic liberalism, but free trade.
Nadiia Chervinska
So, the alliance between China and Russia is more transactional than it is based on shared values, or how do you see their alliance? And how does the Russia-China relationship affect the situation in Ukraine?
Paul D’Anieri
I think the Russia-China relationship is not just based on trade, and it is not based on common values as much as on common enemies and the common values that they are opposed to.
Russia and China, in terms of common values, have a belief that the world should be multipolar, not unipolar, and this belief is shared in a lot of other places as well: that democracy promotion constitutes an illegitimate interference in the internal affairs of other countries. If they want to suppress national minorities and dissidents, it’s nobody else’s business; they should be able to trade freely with other countries while they run their domestic politics any way that they like. Both of them also think in terms of the 19th-century view of politics, which is, if China wants to take over Taiwan and has a sphere of influence in the South China Sea, Vietnam, and the Philippines, that is their neighborhood and we have to let them have it. China and Russia have all those things in common but do they have anything beyond that—beyond the fact that they are both now opposed to the Western alliance? And again, I do not think there is that much.
I think China wants Russia not to lose this war, but China does not necessarily want to see this war get to the point where it totally shapes the West’s relations with China. This war, in one respect, has been very bad for China and it has made the West much more alert to these kinds of relationships. Of course, it has been good for China in that it has distracted the United States and made Russia more dependent on China. So it is an alliance of convenience.
In the long run, and I have been saying this for years, the threat to Russia is not from Western Europe. Western Europe is never going to try to invade Russia. Sorry, it is just not going to happen because Western Europe has changed, and I do not think it can ever go back. However, China, in the long run, is a threat for Russia—there are still some real questions about who controls big parts of Siberia. China’s 19th-century politics, when it runs into Russia’s 19th-century politics, is going to get pretty interesting for the Russians. That is down the road somewhere.
Nadiia Chervinska
You see, when we talk about the war, we immediately start mentioning these great powers like the United States, Russia, and China. It is understandable because Ukraine has been caught in the middle of them, but that is also why some people say that Ukraine is just a pawn in a larger geopolitical game, depriving it of any agency. Maybe, this question will be a bit naive, but do you think there is another way for Ukraine that neither of the larger powers has considered? And most importantly, what viable strategies could Ukraine pursue to prove and maintain its sovereignty and integrity?
Paul D’Anieri
I do not do this very often, but let me quote Marx, who said “Men make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing.” Well, Ukraine is making history, but it is not doing it in circumstances of its own choosing. Is Ukraine constrained by the great power politics around it? Absolutely. But Ukraine is not completely at the mercy of those forces. Ukraine has chosen to fight, and not just simply say, “Well, if the Russians want to come in, I guess we have to let them come in.” They have not done, for example, what Czechoslovakia did in 1938 or what France did in 1940. Ukrainians fought, and that is important. Because of that, Ukraine is making its mark on history, and we have to think about its agency.
I was at a conference in London yesterday, where I was arguing that Ukraine’s choices are going to be enormously important in how this war turns out. In particular, I repeatedly stress that Ukraine is a democracy, and Ukrainian people have a voice in how this war is going to turn out. Especially in the United States, but in the West more generally, we think about what Ukraine is going to do; we think about Ukraine as this single monolithic entity—Zelensky in his green sweater. But because Ukraine is a democracy, Zelensky is and will be constrained by how willing the Ukrainian people are to fight, and by how willing they are to make peace. So, absolutely, there is a ton of agency for Ukraine here, and great powers need to take that into account because they are not going to be able to simply dictate to Ukraine what happens.
Nadiia Chervinska
One of the so-called reasons that Russia utilized to justify the invasion of Ukraine was this so-called NATO eastward expansion, which they claim to be a direct challenge to their “sphere of interest.” Do you think that a different NATO stance would have altered the course of Russia-Ukraine relations? And how do you think NATO’s involvement, or to put it differently, the lack of it has been influencing the war?
Paul D’Anieri
This war is not about NATO enlargement; I will say it as clearly as I can. I was talking to somebody yesterday who said, “Well, Russia said so many times that it objects to NATO enlargement, especially into Ukraine.” It is true, they did say that. But it is also true that before they said that, after they said that, and a thousand other times, they said, “Russia must control Ukraine.” They said they may do it peacefully, they may do it not peacefully, or they may do it economically through the CIS—lots of different ways. But it all amounted to the same thing said over and over again before there was ever any serious talk about NATO enlargement—“Russia must control Ukraine.” When Russia talks about Ukraine and NATO, it is not saying, “We object to Ukraine in NATO, so stop it.” It is saying “We object to Ukraine in NATO because that means we can not control Ukraine again.” That is quite clear. And the same thing with the European Union.
In 2007 at the Bucharest summit, NATO made quite clear that they were not going to allow Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. After that, in 2008 Russia went and invaded Georgia anyhow, and later in 2014 invaded Ukraine. The only way that NATO expansion threatened Russia was to the extent that it would keep Russia from taking over Ukraine.
If we want to criticize NATO, I think we can criticize it for what was a normal policy compromise in NATO. The Bush administration wanted to give a membership action plan to Ukraine and Georgia at Bucharest in 2008, but Germany and France were against it, and others were in different places. So, NATO said, “We are not going to let you in but we are going to say that someday we will let you in.” Of course, “someday” was a diplomatic way of saying “never.” I am absolutely convinced that everybody knew this. In fact, in my book, I cite Russians as being quite aware of this. But Russians chose to take that as a threat that justified an invasion. We can blame NATO for this; what they did for Ukraine was the worst of both worlds. By saying “We are going to let you in but not now,” NATO was basically saying to Russia that it has a chance—the opportunity to invade Ukraine at some point between now and an undefined future without invoking the Article 5 security guarantee. In that way, one can claim that NATO set a time bomb under Ukraine. I do not really agree with that claim because I believe that Russia was determined to take over Ukraine one way or another. Nonetheless, had NATO in 2008 given Ukraine a membership action plan, none of this might have happened because I do not think Russia was ready to invade Ukraine in 2008.
Nadiia Chervinska
But is NATO prepared if the war escalates further and spreads beyond Ukraine? This is especially important to consider after it accepted Finland as its new member. The previous NATO-Russia border included Estonia, Latvia, and Poland. Finland’s membership in the Western military alliance has increased NATO’s borders with Russia by 830 miles. Besides, quite recently we saw that several Russian drones were shot down near the Romanian border. Do you think that NATO is ready and capable of protecting its new borders?
Paul D’Anieri
Yes and no. Let’s start with Romania. Russia goes to hit Ukrainian ports that are on the border with Romania and, accidentally, some drones or debris from some drones land in Romania. What was the first thing the Romanian government said? They said that nothing happened. Of course, it was dishonest and they were forced to retract their initial statement later, but the reason they did that is that the Romanians, along with NATO, are very hesitant to have anything happen that would invoke Article 5 because nobody wants to go to war with Russia.
I always point out that there is nothing about Article 5 that is magic. Article 5 does not make anything happen; countries still have to decide to do it. Right now, if Russia were to roll the tanks into Lavia, Lithuania, and Estonia, protecting them would be very difficult and that was true from the moment NATO decided to make them members. I know people in the US and the NATO military communities that were extremely worried that we were writing a check that we could not cash, or in other words, making a commitment that we could not back up. If the Russians had simply invaded those countries, we did not have the forces on the ground to take them back. Now, over time we could have, as we did in World War II, eventually brought NATO forces to Europe to go to war with Russia. There would have been just a question, “Do we do it or do we simply not?” And that is the issue with Finland right now. If Russia were to roll tanks into Finland, do we have enough NATO tanks on the Finland border? No. On the other hand, the Russians probably do not have enough tanks on the Finland border to invade.
What has actually happened is that because all of the Russian military hardware is in Ukraine, and the troops are in Ukraine, Russia could not invade the Baltics or Finland right now if they wanted to. In the medium to long term, it will take an enormous investment to make that very long border defensible. You are absolutely right about that.
Nadiia Chervinska
We could see how NATO debated whether or not to accept Finland as a new member. NATO also has had to manage a range of opinions among its member states regarding the Russian war in Ukraine. Some members, especially those who feel threatened by Russia, advocate for a more aggressive stance towards Russia, while others, like Hungary or Turkey, want to avoid escalating tensions. How should NATO engage with its own member states that have differing views on the war in order to maintain a unified front when dealing with such complex and divisive issues?
Paul D’Anieri
NATO is a big alliance and it works by consensus. The big countries, especially the United States, obviously have a lot of influence. But Hungary could have vetoed expansion, and Turkey is holding up expansion related to Sweden. But I would actually turn it around—even given the diversity of opinion and the range of conflicts within NATO, especially between Turkey and Greece, and even despite a very interesting position that the Turkish government has right now and the fact that Hungary currently has a government that basically supports Putin, Finnish membership was approved unanimously. I think it says a lot about the extent to which Russia is deep down seen as a threat- that what Russia has done in Ukraine was seen as a threat in the geopolitical sense and was also outrageous in a normative sense. It shows that there is a fair amount of unity within NATO about this, even given all the diversity.
The discussion over admitting Finland and Sweden to NATO was very political and intense, but it happened within a year, while normally it takes a decade. And it was not even on the agenda—until February of 2022, nobody was talking about Finnish or Swedish membership in NATO.
Nadiia Chervinska
You mentioned that, in France and Britain, you still can see a lot of signs of their former empires. I’m in Austria right now, and in Vienna I can also notice these signs, although all these countries were able to overcome their imperialist past in one way or another. We also know the example of Germany which has been able to integrate into the European framework after World War II by limiting its military power and incorporating itself into EU institutions. But if we consider Russia’s historical pride and belief that it’s destined to be the dominant force in the region, in its so-called “near abroad,” do you believe there is any possibility of Russia taking a similar path, or is that wishful thinking on the part of the West?
Paul D’Anieri
Let’s talk about Austria, since you mentioned it. If you walk around Vienna, the signs of the former empire are everywhere. But the idea of Austria as an empire has been dead for decades. In Britain, not quite so much; they still have this thing they call the Commonwealth, and you would say the same thing for the French Empire. At the same time, both the British and the French have gotten over the idea that they are going to run these other countries all over the world. There is this kind of continuum from the Swedes who dismissed the idea of having an empire a long time ago, the Austrians who got over it some time ago, and up to the Russians who can not even conceptualize their country without it being an empire. Can it get there? I think it can. We know from history that it can. How it gets from where it is now to that place is very difficult to see.
In the case of Germany, and to some extent, Japan, it took an absolutely catastrophic defeat in World War II for both of them. And the fact that they were occupied by American forces after the war probably did not hurt. Germany as a result of its aggression was divided for 45 years. It came out of that and said, “We realize that we are threatening to our neighbors, so we have to commit ourselves to being a different kind of country.” That was linked to the strengthening of the European Union institutions, which bound Germany within.
What would it take for Russia to get to that point? I do not know. I think, in the medium term, by which I mean 5, 10, 20 years, I do not think Russia can be changed— it can only be contained. It would take a very far-reaching turn of events because Russia will have to rethink its whole idea of itself. That is a hard thing for a country to do. I come from a country that has a pretty difficult idea of coming to grips with its history and also thinking about itself as a normal country. The United States struggles to think of itself as just another country without a special role in the world.
Nadiia Chervinska
I think that this containing strategy comes from a lack of other options. What would this containment strategy look like in this modern context? Maybe there are lessons from other periods that are relevant, like the Cold War containment.
Paul D’Anieri
For right now, I think the best we can do with Russia is to create a situation where if Russia tries to expand militarily, it will incur a cost that it cannot sustain. To a large extent, this is what was done in the Cold War era. In that era, I think that containment became this broader strategy of containing the spread of communism to other countries, and that led to some difficult problems.
There is some uncertainty about how militarily containing Russia from expanding by attacking its neighbors connects with preventing the rise of pro-Russian governments in other countries. We have a situation now where Hungary has a kind of pro-Russian government, but nobody in the West has really tried to overthrow the Hungarian government. That is smart.
I do not think we can change Russia from the outside. The only thing we can do is keep it from invading us. It may be 20 years, it may be 50 years like the Cold War was, or it may be 150 years.
Nadiia Chervinska
Do you think that this containment strategy will bring stability to the region, or is it a temporary measure? What, in general, is your vision for the region to find some form of peace?
Paul D’Anieri
Well, there is peace and then there is peace. There is a form of peace that means ‘we are not fighting right now.’ The kind of peace that exists between North and South Korea. The kind of peace that, maybe, exists right now within certain parts of the former Yugoslavia. That is what we would call a thin peace. They are not actually fighting, but the relationship is very conflictual, and the outbreak of war is always a possibility. That is the kind of peace we had from 1919 to 1940 between France and Germany before Germany invaded. After 1945, France and Germany have developed a very different kind of peace. I would call it a thick piece; war is inconceivable, the border is completely open, people move back and forth, they use the same currency, etc. I think that in the near future, we are going to have a thin peace between Russia and the West. One hopes, over a long enough period of time, that peace will thicken.
Over time, the Soviet Union got used to the idea that peace in Europe was in its interest. There was still this deep conflict between them, but the Soviet Union had no interest in going to war. It stopped creating crises over Berlin, for example, after 1961. Maybe somewhere down the road, we can get to the point where we say that it is ten years since there has been actual killing across the Russian-Ukrainian border. Maybe we can begin to count on that. I think that is the best we are going to get for the foreseeable future.
Nadiia Chervinska
You’ve been studying and writing about Ukrainian and Russian politics for years, long before the start of the ongoing war. How have you seen the academic discourse evolve since Russia’s more overt interventions in Ukraine?
Paul D’Anieri
The biggest thing that has happened since the full-scale invasion is that everybody is now writing about Ukraine. In many respects, this is a good thing. We want there to be interest in Ukraine. Of course, the problem is that there are now very influential people who are writing about Ukraine and do not know much about Ukraine. What they do know about Ukraine, they probably know via Russia. They have probably been to Russia, but probably have not been to Ukraine.
I have spent a lot of time trying to push back against ideas that this was all about NATO expansion, or that this problem started in 2013 or 2014. The other thing is that back in the early 1990s, there was this belief that Russia, for all of its difficulties, was going to become democratic. And what you have seen over time is that people are becoming less optimistic about that. Amongst those of us who have been doing it for 30 years, I think one thing that separates us from each other is the answer to the question, “When did we realize that Russia was not going to become democratic?” For me, that was very early on—when Yeltsin had the tanks shell the Russian parliament in 1993. You can not call that a democracy anymore. But many people in the West said that was a glitch and they had to do that to get rid of this old, recalcitrant Soviet parliament so that now Yeltsin could build democracy in Russia.
The same debate happened again when Putin came to power and first invaded Chechnya; he then started putting the screws on the Russian independent media. This is authoritarianism, but a lot of people said that he is strengthening the Russian state. Now, finally, everybody agrees. Now, the debate is whether Russia is fascist or not, but nobody disputes that this is now a consolidated authoritarian regime. One of the interesting debates is that there is a minority of people who think that Russia itself may fragment. I think that is wishful thinking. But of course, I did not predict that the Soviet Union would fragment, so who knows?