The Foreign Service Journal, October 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2022 29 support for NATOmembership. Private sector polling showed that as late as 2012, only 28 percent of Ukrainians wished to join NATO. Not surprisingly, pro-Russian sentiment was stronger in the east, but the largest plurality was for neutrality. The 2014 Rus- sian seizure of Crimea and the fomenting of a violent separatist movement in eastern Ukraine sharply shifted Ukrainian public opinion. A poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation in June 2017 found 69 percent supported joining the alliance. Putin has promoted a narrative that the Western alliance took advantage of the chaos and weakness of Russia in the 1990s, and somehow pressured its former Warsaw Pact allies into join- ing NATO. But this was not the case at all. Having served in U.S. embassies for many years in communist Hungary (1986-1989) and later in post–Soviet bloc Ukraine (1997-1999) and Bulgaria (2009- 2012), it is clear to me that Russia has mostly itself to blame for the alienation of its former allies. As in the Kyiv NATO conference cited above, Western offi- cials hardly took the initiative to strong-arm Eastern European countries into joining. On the contrary, starting with Hungary and Czechoslovakia, these former Soviet satellites whose aspirations for autonomy had been crushed by Soviet tanks (Budapest 1956, Prague Spring 1968) saw NATOmembership as a shield from a future round of attacks from Russia. A wise post-Soviet Russian government policy would have been to issue swift and credible assurances that the era of Soviet-style suppression of true inde- pendence was past forever, and to implement that with concrete measures to reduce the threat perception. Russia for its part would have benefited by reducing its burden of military expenditures. But Russian policy in the Putin years turned increasingly aggressive, beginning with the attack on Georgia in 2008, and then the annexation of Crimea, instigation of separatism in the eastern Donbas region, and the start of a troop buildup on the Ukrainian border in early 2021. Even as Russia failed to take actions that would have eased tension in the region, NATO leaders emphasized that, based on the United Nations charter and international law, each sover- eign European country has the right to choose its own alliance partners. Although correct in law, this policy may not have been prudent. As China’s President Xi Jinping told President Biden on March 18, quoting a Chinese proverb: “He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off.” His point was that legalistic arguments may not be as wise as respect for and careful attention to powerful countries. Implicit also is a traditional conception of international relations, which is that major powers control spheres of influence and that smaller powers must accept them. A Russian Sphere of Influence According to Stephen Kotkin, a professor of Russian history at Princeton University, Putin believes that Russia rightfully deserves a sphere of influence in its “near abroad.” To Putin, Ukraine is not a state because it is not sovereign. Small or weak states are only instruments in the hands of the great powers. Where we see Moscow’s aggression, Putin sees defense. If Russia cannot control Ukraine, then the West will. Thus, countries like Ukraine become platforms for invasion. And then the West will dismember Russia as the USSR was dismembered. This way of thinking in Russia goes back to the tsars. Russia has no natural borders on its periphery. Stalin believed that without hegemony in Eastern Europe he would be subject to infiltration and subversion. But the peoples of Eastern Europe did not want to be forced to live under communism, and thus arose the very hostility Stalin feared. In a similar vein and updating this explanation of Soviet aggression, my Ukrainian friends offer another rationale for Putin’s attack. As an autocratic leader who has denied his people the human rights we in the West enjoy, such as a free press, an honest judiciary, and especially genuinely contested elections, he is threatened by a liberalizing Ukraine right on his border. After all, Putin’s 22-year tenure rests on banning free and fair elections, sti- fling dissent, and controlling domestic media, along with official propaganda that excoriates Western institutions and values. A Basis for Peace? I believe that any lasting peace settlement in Ukraine will have KENMOSKOWITZ Principal Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union Ross Wilson addresses a conference marking the 50th anniversary of NATO in Kyiv, 1999.