Pearls and Irritations

In a recent Pearls and Irritations article Jon Richardson has sought to make the argument that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO played no part in Russia’s 2022 invasion but that this was a product of Russian imperialism. Why supporters of this line of argument seek to attribute the invasion to only one factor – Russian imperialism – is a mystery.

No other historical event has been the result of only one cause, so why should this be any different? The imperialism argument alone is unable to explain the 2022 invasion.

Part of the problem seems to be that proponents of this view see imperialism as being manifested only in terms of armed intervention. But while invasion might be propelled by imperialistic sentiments, military conquest is not the only way an imperial hangover may be satisfied; economic dependence, political dependence, or a strongly pro-imperialist power government are other ways such an imperialist outlook could be met.

There has clearly been a Russian imperial hangover since the fall of the Soviet Union, and because of the long-established sense of ethnic, cultural and historical association (accepted in an extreme form by Vladimir Putin), Ukraine has been a major focus of this.

The desire in Moscow since 1991 has been to have a government in Kyiv that was, if not completely subject to its will, at least always sensitive to its interests. This was consistent with Putin’s acceptance of a separate Ukrainian state in his comments in the early 2000s (but not in his 2021 essay cited by Richardson) and in the conditions that Putin has more recently laid down for peace talks to end the current conflict.

In other words, an imperial worldview does not inevitably result in invasion but is consistent with the exercise of other forms of power. Such a world view alone also cannot explain the timing of an invasion; the imperial hangover has existed since 1991 so why was an invasion not mounted in 2004, 2006, 2008 or 2010 or some other year? So even accepting the existence of an imperial hangover, there must be another factor that triggered the invasion.

For the first 23 years of Ukrainian independence, the government oscillated between administrations that were sensitive to Russian concerns and those that were less so. The key distinguishing feature here was, crudely put, was the government in Kyiv seeking closer relations with the West or with Russia? From 2008 when the prospect of Ukrainian entry into NATO was formally adopted by that body, NATO membership has been part of the equation.

The first Russian military incursion into Ukraine occurred in 2014 in response to the Maidan rising and the overthrow of the “pro-Russian” Viktor Yanukovych. This was interpreted in Moscow as being a result of the actions of the West in Ukraine, and while this was clearly an exaggeration – the rising had domestic sources and impetus – it was supported by leading Western powers. More importantly, as Richardson notes, the whole point of the rising was to restore the pro-Western policies that Yanukovych had recently rejected. Notwithstanding the comments by the new Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk cited by Richardson that Ukraine would not seek membership of NATO, this was clearly part of the overall intent of many of those involved in the Maidan rising.

The role of NATO as a triggering factor in the 2022 invasion seems clear despite Richardson’s assertion that Ukrainian membership had been taken off the agenda by 2021. Throughout 2021 there had been significant discussion about Ukrainian membership, and in November the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership criticised Russian “aggression”, committed the US to help Ukraine recover Crimea and the Donbas, endorsed the “interoperability” of Ukrainian and NATO forces, and supported Ukraine’s right to seek entry into NATO. This came after six years of NATO training of the Ukrainian armed forces to make then “interoperable” with (ie able to be integrated into) NATO force structures. NATO was clearly not off the agenda.

Those who deny that the prospect of Ukrainian entry into NATO had any role in explaining Russia’s 2022 invasion need to answer the following questions:

• Why in December 2021 did Putin offer not to invade if NATO ruled out Ukrainian membership, an offer rejected out of hand?
• Why in the negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials in March-April 2022 was Ukrainian neutrality a prominent feature in the draft agreement signed by the negotiators?
• Why has Ukrainian neutrality been a feature of all Russian statements since the war began regarding the conditions for peace?
• Why did the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg boast to European legislators in September 2023 that Putin went to war to prevent NATO expansion into Ukraine but instead he got a strengthening and expansion of the alliance (Sweden and Finland)?
• Why at almost every opportunity when jointly discussing the conflict, do President Zelensky and NATO leaders affirm that Ukraine will become a member of NATO?
• Why would NATO expansion not be seen as important when Russia had objected to this since the 1990s

Seen as part of a consistent refusal by the West to give due weight to Russian strategic concerns (as outlined in the book by former director for Russia on the National Security Council under George W. Bush, Thomas Graham, Getting Russia Right), NATO expansion has generally been opposed by Moscow.

Certainly there was no complaint, as Richardson notes, in 2004 when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined, but this was not because of a lack of opposition to NATO expansion, but because at that time in the wake of the war on terror, the Russians unrealistically believed that NATO could be transformed from an anti-Russian body into a general Europe-wide security architecture. And, pace Richardson, Russia did object to the adhesion of Sweden and Finland to NATO in 2023-24.

It is truly mystifying that people can argue that NATO expansion played no role in provoking the invasion when leading figures on both sides have asserted that it did. If NATO expansion had no part to play in provoking the invasion, why has this question been so prominent in discussions by the principals involved in the war?

So in sum, Russian imperial hangover alone cannot explain why, of all the instruments and forms of imperialist action available, invasion was chosen, and why in 2022. The answer clearly lies in geostrategic considerations of the implications of NATO expansion into Ukraine, considerations that can only have been given more force for Moscow by the believed ethnic, cultural and historical links between Ukraine and Russia.

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