Amid heated debates about the factors that led Russia to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, it helps to distinguish between deep, intermediate, and immediate causes. But while each can matter in their own ways, war need not be considered inevitable even when they are all present.
CAMBRIDGE – Russia’s war in Ukraine is the most disruptive conflict that Europe has seen since 1945. While many in the West see a war of choice by Russian President Vladimir Putin, he says that NATO’s 2008 decision in favor of eventual Ukrainian membership brought an existential threat to Russia’s borders, and still others trace the conflict back to the Cold War’s end and the failure of the West to support Russia adequately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. How can we discern the origins of a war that may last for years?
World War I occurred over a century ago, yet historians still write books debating what caused it. Did it start because a Serbian terrorist assassinated an Austrian archduke in 1914, or did it have more to do with ascendant German power challenging Britain, or rising nationalism throughout Europe? The answer is “all of the above, plus more.” But war was not inevitable until it actually broke out in August 1914; and even then, it was not inevitable that four years of carnage had to follow.
To sort things out, it helps to distinguish between deep, intermediate, and immediate causes. Think of building a bonfire: piling up the logs is a deep cause; adding kindling and paper is an intermediate cause; and striking a match is a precipitating cause. But even then, a bonfire is not inevitable. A strong wind may extinguish the match, or a sudden rainstorm may have soaked the wood. As historian Christopher Clark notes in his book about the origins of WWI, The Sleepwalkers, in 1914, “the future was still open – just.” Poor policy choices were a crucial cause of the catastrophe.
In Ukraine, there is no question that Putin lit the match when he ordered Russian troops to invade on February 24. Like the leaders of the great powers in 1914, he probably believed that it would be a short, sharp war with a quick victory, somewhat like the Soviet Union’s takeover of Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968. Airborne troops would capture the airport and advancing tanks would seize Kyiv, removing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and installing a puppet government.
Putin told the Russian people that he was conducting a “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine and prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s borders. But given how seriously he miscalculated, we must ask what he was really thinking. We know from Putin’s own writings, and from various biographers like Philip Short, that the intermediate cause was a refusal to see Ukraine as a legitimate state.
Putin lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union, which he had served as a KGB officer, and, owing to Ukraine and Russia’s close cultural affinities, he considered Ukraine a phony state. Moreover, Ukraine had been ungrateful, offending Russia with its 2014 Maidan uprising, which removed a pro-Russian government, and its deepening of trade relations with the European Union.
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Putin wants to restore what he calls the “Russian world,” and, as he has approached the age of 70, he has been thinking about his legacy. Earlier leaders, like Peter the Great, had expanded Russian power in their own time. Given the weakness of the Western sanctions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Putin seems to have asked himself: Why not go further?
The prospect of NATO enlargement was a lesser intermediate cause. While the West did create a NATO-Russia Council through which Russian military officers could attend some NATO meetings, Russia expected more from the relationship. And while US Secretary of State James Baker had told his Russian counterpart, in the early 1990s, that NATO would not expand, historians like Mary Sarotte have shown that Baker quickly reversed his verbal assurance, which never did have a written agreement behind it.
When US President Bill Clinton discussed the matter with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, there was grudging Russian acceptance of some NATO expansion, but expectations on both sides differed. NATO’s decision at its 2008 summit in Bucharest to include Ukraine (and Georgia) as potential future members simply confirmed Putin’s worst expectations about the West.
Still, while NATO’s decision in 2008 may have been misguided, Putin’s change of attitude predated it. He had helped the United States following the September 11, 2001, attacks, but his 2007 Munich Security Conference speech shows that he had already soured on the West before the Bucharest summit. The possibility of NATO expansion thus was merely one of several intermediate causes – one made less salient soon after the Bucharest summit by France and Germany’s announcements that they would veto Ukraine’s NATO membership.
Behind all this were the remote or deep causes that followed the end of the Cold War. Initially, there was a great deal of optimism, in both Russia and the West, that the Soviet Union’s collapse would allow for the rise of democracy and a market economy in Russia. In the early years, Clinton and Yeltsin made a serious effort to develop good relations. But while the US provided loans and economic assistance to Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar’s government, Russians expected much more.
Moreover, after seven decades of central planning, a sudden transformation into a flourishing market economy was impossible. Efforts to force through such rapid changes could not fail to produce enormous disruptions, corruption, and extreme inequality. While some oligarchs and politicians became wildly rich from the rapid privatization of state-owned assets, most Russians’ standard of living declined.
At Davos in February 1997, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Boris Nemtsov (later assassinated), reported that no one in Russia was paying taxes, and that the government was behind on paying wages. Then, in September of that next year, the liberal parliamentarian Grigory Yavlinsky told a dinner at the Harvard Kennedy School that “Russia is completely corrupt and Yeltsin has no vision.” Unable to cope with the political fallout of deteriorating economic conditions, Yeltsin, then in declining health, turned to Putin, the unknown ex-KGB agent, to help him restore order.
None of this means that the Ukraine war was inevitable. But it did become increasingly probable over time. On February 24, 2022, Putin miscalculated and lit the match that started the conflagration. It is hard to see him putting it out.
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Writing for PS since 2002
237 Commentaries
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is a professor at Harvard University and author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (Oxford University Press, 2019).
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When the dust settles (hopefully not the nuclear kind) it should be clear what caused this war:
The Dictatorship
Following WW2 the community of democratic nations was immersed in what appeared to be an existential struggle between communism and democracy. In reality this was a struggle between democracy and autocracy which can assume a red flavor (communism/state socialism) or brown flavor (fascism). After Ukraine it should become clear that the flavor does not matter. What matters is that both of them create the same outcome, which is a war mongering dictator that becomes particularly dangerous to the world if he commands significant resources. Once the dictator suppresses internal opposition, he turns to war. Invariably and inevitably.
In the post Ukraine world the internal organization of nations must cease to be the choice of the people alone. This sounds bad and undemocratic but I think, just like after WW2, it will be clear to most that this is necessary. This means a coalition of democratic nations that are willing to ostracize countries that stray from democracy and ostracize in meaningful ways. Not through war but through economic and political exclusion. A non-negotiable term limits for national leaders. Ten years and you are out. No matter who you are or how good your leadership was. I do believe there is no alternative in the world of nuclear weapons. Or rather, the alternative is a nuclear war. Sooner or later.
Finally, as we ponder the mess we are in, we should properly acknowledge, as Americans, that we broke the rule based world first by invading Iraq under false pretenses. This is something that the US has not worked through internally yet.
While fantasies can be created about the encroachment of NATO as driving Putin's decision process leading to launching his war the reality is that he started the war because he thought he would win. If he had seen prospects for failure, he would not have started the war.
Putin appears to have made the decision to gain control of Ukraine in 2011. Aleksey Kudrin resigned then as finance minister because Putin made the decision to abandon modernisation of the Russian economy to opt for military buildup to restore Russian power. At that point NATO had no defensive doctrine against Russian aggression in Europe. A Russian invasion of Ukraine would have been viewed as highly implausible. France was ready to sell Russia Mistral assault ships, and Germany and other NATO members were cutting deals with Russia.
Concurrently, Ukrainians were seeking a pathway to Europe. The autonomous Crimean government opened tourism offices in European cities and the pro-Russia Yanukovych government negotiated an Association Agreement with the EU. The parliament of Ukraine had approved the Association agreement 319 votes out of 449 possible in May 2013. Gallup polls in Crimea in May 2013 showed 52% preferred to be an autonomous republic of Ukraine, 22% had a preference for Russia while 20% preferred sovereignty.
Having made the decision to not modernize the economy Putin doubled down on oil, gas and other resources as central to the Russian economy. In effect Putin bet Russia's future on fossil fuels while the international community was readying to sign the Paris Climate agreement aimed at reducing fossil fuel use.
As winter approached Putin pressured Yanukovych to abandon the agreement with the EU and to choose Russia's Eurasian Union. The parliament was not involved in this decision. As Putin no doubt expected massive demonstrations resulted that Yanukovych could not stop without bloodshed. This created conditions for Putin to move on Ukraine. If civil war had broken out, Putin could have responded to restore order. The demonstrators, however resisted the provocations that were launched. When Yanukovych showed willingness to negotiate with the demonstrators, snipers killed nearly 100 people foreclosing sealing Yanukovych's fate. He was no longer useful to Putin and he opposed Russian annexation of Crimea.
Igor Girkin was sent to the Donbas to start a war after the successful annexation of Crimea. Girkin boasted that the people did not want to fight until he, "Strelkov" made war unavoidable. Strelkov was removed a few months later because Putin was not yet ready to fight to control Ukraine. That would take further buildup of the military, the construction of the Kerch bridge and more.
In 2022 Putin's intelligence showed that Russian forces would take Kyiv in days and install Yanukovych as the legitimate president of Ukraine with sufficient Russian forces available to suppress any resistance. The intelligence was highly flawed because the Russian intelligence services were highly corrupt. Money intended to payoff people in Ukraine had been diverted to personal accounts. The planned coup failed and Zelensky chose to stay and fight.
Putin has made terribly serious mistakes. He offers no possibility of stabilizing Eurasia and as a result is no longer useful to China is a danger to Europe and a burden to his own people.
Prof. Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was and is nothing in the world to sugget that history would end in liberalism's victory as there was nothing about two hundred years ago to sugget that history would end in the workers united all over the world.
If the West's policy had been circumspest and wise, based on right understanding of Russian history and culture , Putin would not have invaded Ukraine.
The West's policy toward Russia and that toward the Middle East are not two different thing; they come from the same root; an Egytian said to a Japanese TV, "We had food, jobs, clothes with Mubarak, but we have none of these." Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians and Libyans are suffering. The West cannot expect thanks from them.
There is much difference between Ameriacn liberalism and European liberalism. European liberalism was artificially constructed when people wanted to take on and fight absolutist monarchism.
American liberalism did not have absolutism to fight against, so that Americans take it for granted as a principle comparable to Newton's of universal gravitation. Apples of course fall in the gardens of those who accept the Newton's law, but they also fall in the gardens of those who refuse to accept it. American liberalist political philosophy, strongly history-conditioned and not universally practicable, is not on a par with Newton's law; it is on a par with, or on the same dimention as, the philosophy of the divine rights of the king. They do not exist, objectively in the external worldlike Newton's, out of human minds. American "global democracy movement" has been bringing more mess than democratic order.
An erudite essay. At the present time, the US is seeking a ramp-off that is capable of being satisfactory to both Russia and Ukraine, and globally. To achieve this, we need to firmly focus on the origins of the special operation and other incursions – the Russian speakers, those with affiliations to the country. The basic purpose of this category of intervention is to enable and secure a mutually, all-round fair deal, giving recognition, representation, a high degree of independence, security and peace, all of which is doable and capable of being internationally recognised. Russia is taken very seriously as are their concerns. Beyond the battlefields, lie negotiation and solutions. Let's acknowledge that they are there, waiting.
Ethnic versus Multicultural World Order:
The Schism between American Men and Women, each now vying for political dominance in the US is subversive of American national unity. The anti-liberal politics of Russia and China are now in contention for eventual nationalistic power.
The basic problem is that in a multicultural society (as America is becoming, largely through its immigration policies under our Liberal Democracy) the call of the Men to their Women for unified nationalistic strength (in the face of ethnic-based Cultural Wars) cannot compete socio-economically with Chinese [Han] ethnic nationalistic solidarity or socio-militarily with Russian [Slavic] ethnic nationalistic solidarity in their war against the multicultural West.
It is clear to me that Vladimir Putin recognizes the reason for the fall of the Soviet Empire under Communism as the predominance of the communal solidarity of Western ethnic-based nations against the Soviet concept of Universal Rule over all ethnic minorities by an overarching Communist Rule, so he is now implementing the same strategy he perceives the West used to defeat Sovietism (Nationalistic Ethnic Rule) as the West used to defeat the Soviet Union. The Han-based ethnic rule of Xi Jinping over China in Machiavellian union is in tandem with Putin’s claim to the superiority of the Slavic peoples over the Anglo-Saxon dominance of the West and is the culmination of this Sino-Russian strategy to defeat what they both perceive as Culture Wars that inevitably result in the overthrow multicultural empires (Roman, Ottoman, Soviet Communism, English/American Capitalism) in favor of revanchist return to ethnic-based romanticist ethnic nationalism.
So, the unification of pro-Sino-Russian allied nations against the current post-WWII Western World Order is really the creative conceptual plan of Putin (and probably also Xi) that the alliance of ethnic-based alliances of monocultural nationalistic societies (under unification agreements of the EEU, BRICS, etc.) can also defeat any multicultural concept such as Western New World Order rule (e.g. Global Capitalism).
The above is the current international contest, and we do not yet know its result because it is still “In Process”.
All we do know is that one (the multicultural or the monocultural ) concept of the “Nation State” will cyclically prevail and the other will cyclically fail.
This is nothing new. It is the natural cycle of the “Rise and Fall of Empires” and their natural dissipations back into ethnic-based tribal cultures of the historically astable “Nation State”.
Interesting conjecture and hypothesis! Only the time will tell!
We are the most sadistic genus and species of all the great apes (and now our subspecies are at war with one another:
We are the most sadistic of all the great apes, and the most sadistic among us rule and control all the rest of us. Max Weber’s concept of the “Rational Organization (bureaucracy)” under which humans of all subspecies and classes and individuated social molds survive and thrive is being rejected in a return to primitive violent intertribal wars.
Territorial wars for resources and ritualistic controls by our most sadistic masters over the more docile and compliant human individuals again are prevailing over [Liberal] Rational Organization.
The most primitive instincts of our leaders are now conquering our “better angels”, and this seems to be an evil and unresolvable cyclical phenomenon across time in the history of human society.
Of the four genera of great apes (Pan, Pongo, Gorilla, Homo) Homo is the only genus that contains just one extant species, the Homo sapiens (the most warlike of all the great apes). Apparently, the Homo sapiens species does not tolerate the existence any other species within their own genus Homo (all of which are now extinct) and they are also notably intolerant of different subspecies (races) and different tribes (cultures) within their own species.
Of course, there have been many other species in the genus Homo, though only we modern humans have survived. Some of the more notable extinct species in this genus include Homo neanderthalensis (neanderthals) and Homo erectus, the latter of which is believed to be one of the first human species to have looked a lot more like us than our ape cousins.
Interestingly, modern Homo sapiens (Humans) are the only great ape that isn’t endangered. With a total population of more than 7.9 billion as of 2021 (and counting!), the human population is substantially larger than that of any of our closest cousins.
Bureaucracies Provide for Enforced ‘Blind Collaboration’ among Compartmentalized Socio-Political-Economic Groups, as Required by God.
When social boundaries break down, society loses the regimentation necessary for the integration of its multiple disciplines necessary for the effective coordination of compartmentalized efforts to result in an affluent holistic human society. Internal chaos erupts within established social groups and chaotic destructive competition erupts among established compartmentalized human groups.
We need compartmentalized bureaucracies because our competitive instincts are much greater than our collaborative instincts. Hierarchical bureaucracies with inter-compartmental boundaries are the means society uses to enforce “Blind Collaboration” of internally disciplined compartmentalized groups whose efforts are directed and coordinated by higher level managers in the bureaucratic hierarchy. The result is that the efforts of all groups are integrated to achieve the holistic purpose of the hierarchy without unnecessary inter-competition among individuals performing disparate tasks and having defined roles that enforce their individual responsibilities, authorities to act and their communication boundaries to efficiently and effectively carry out their duties.
De-compartmentalization due to contentious rivalries among individuals on social media defending their own dutiful boundaries results in questioning compartmentalized boundaries, but the greatest impact of direct confrontations between individuals from differentiated social groups on social media is mass awareness of the competitive hostilities that can only be eliminated through bureaucratic enforcement of [social molds] individual role behaviors.
It has become clear that we individuals do not actually ‘get along’ with each other except under a well-managed bureaucratic system of inter-compartmental regimentation and control. Our concept of “freedom” must take this need for effective integration of diverse activities into consideration and limit “freedom” to those activities that reinforce effectiveness of individual activities so that we each contribute (through ‘blind collaboration’) to the affluence of holistic human society. That is what God requires of us all.
On 02/24/2022, Putin did not light a match. All he did was step in to a smoldering pile of ashes. The conflagration started well before he was born. Russia is not capable of
putting that conflagration out. Any probabilities as to any moves by Russia, regardless of political leadership, was determined by various modeling projections with limited predictive abilities. Look to the programming teams for any real miscalculations that occurred well before 2022. Russia really is not establishing new boundaries. The boundaries have not been determined with any accuracy for quite a while, which contributes even more "confusion" to the "conflagration". Short-time-intervals are starting to reveal long-time corruption of money flows and arbitrage by quite a few players in the international game boards. Once they all move into the international courts the real fun begins. That may never happen. So the smoldering pile may just smolder quite a while.
RE:"it helps to distinguish between deep, intermediate, and immediate causes."
This link from September 22 is relevant:
https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/ukraine-and-the-shifting-geopolitics-of-the-heartland/
A good quote from the link: "In Eastern Europe, Russia’s influence remains strong from a cultural and identity-driven perspective, but weak in terms of prospects
for alliance building and economic development when compared with the EU….Ukraine is a gatekeeper to Europe, a key indicator of where the continent is going and how the established powers in Europe, as well as those with imperial legacies, will respond. "
I have been wondering about the reasons for this war since it started, as many have. At first I thought it was for the fact that Kherson controls the canal providing water to Crimea, which was quickly unblocked after the invasion started in February. It turns out the reason may be a little more complex than this. It appears the Ukraine is home to some of the most significant deposits of rare earths, and that it has 117 out of 120 rare earths on its territory. Around 18 % of those deposits are in Donbas and Luhansk, and I understand the value of these deposits are worth around US$ 12 trillion. Rare earths are critical for the switch to the green economy, and also essential to produce advanced technology, including drones. Ukraine itself turns out to be a minerals powerhouse globally. Based on this information, well explained on a BBC podcast by Misha Glenny recently, this would suggest the key reason for this invasion and tenacity with which it is fought may be the rare earth deposits, which in the green economy are the new oil. It does not help that Russia is highly dependent on fossil fuels, which are entering a decline as the world switches to renewable fuels production that equally needs rare earths to make this critical switch. If so, it is unfortunate that the extraordinary emissions we will see in the global 2022 carbon accounts, arising from this war and its repercussions, are likely all about the essential minerals needed to fight climate change. Instead we are paradoxically fighting each other, Fiddling while Mother Earth burns.
I sometimes do believe that Russia, see that NATO is adding members to the "defence" alliance and is moving it's border closer to Russia and know if they would do again, as they did in 62, place rockets (not nuclear) on Cuba then the USA would take a very serious offense to is.
They see them self (and right so) as one of the 4 who defeated Nazi Germany in 1945, and it possibly could not have happened with our USSR. And to that end, they expect to be treated with respect … and the last few administrations have not done so (in the eyes of Putin).
The matter is very complex and will be discussed for centuries to come.
There is one big difference between WWI and the Ukraine war. A century ago young soldiers were so eager to fight, they were worried the war could be over before they got to the front. Onlookers were cheering as soldiers happily marched to war. It’s a completely different story today in Russia. Propaganda doesn’t work anymore like it used to. The futility of war has become very apparent and no amount of Kremlin propaganda will work. Those days are gone Mr Putin.
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Although foreign policy may feel remote to most people, it has always been heavily integrated with domestic politics and deeper historical legacies. Nowhere is this more apparent than in US policy toward Israel.
The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has begun, and so far, President Xi Jinping has had a lot more to say about national pride and security than about the economy’s rapid downturn. With Xi set to be confirmed for an unprecedented third term, we asked PS commentators whether the country is headed down a self-destructive – even dangerous – path.
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