Jan 10, 2026
Wittgenstein wrote: “One thinks one is tracking the outline of a thing’s nature and one is merely tracing round the frame through which one looks at it.”
In this spirit, I try to conjure up a debate between two frames for looking at the Ukraine war. The post below reproduces the main points of a cogent criticism I received of ‘Ukraine – the Delusion of Warmongers’, which I posted on 15 December, together with my answers.
I would appreciate any responses to this exercise and any suggestions for further posts.
In my 15 December post, I argued that the Europeans were inflating the threat from Russia to the point of paranoia, using it to justify rearmament policies far in excess of what was needed. Critic argues that, on the contrary, the West has good reason to fear Russian willingness to “continue expanding if not opposed.” This central disagreement is the subject of this note. I ignore some secondary disagreements which can readily be reconciled.
In supporting his case, Critic asks us to consider both what Russia has done and the justifications it gives for its actions. Taken together, these point to the conclusion that Russia has ambitions beyond its stated security concerns. The case is set out as follows.
What Russia Has Done
Critic: “Russia has launched the largest conventional war in Europe since the Second World War.” “Russia deployed approximately 190,000 troops on multiple axes. That it failed within weeks doesn’t make it limited in conception; it makes it incompetently executed.”
Answer: As far as I can make out, the size of the assault force which actually entered Ukraine on 24 February 2022 numbered 130,000. The figure of 190,000 refers to the total size of the Russian force assembled on the frontier before the invasion—that is, allowing for additional forces or replacements if needed.
Whether one calls this a “special operation” or a “full-scale invasion” is largely a matter of rhetorical preference. The view of most analysts is that Russia expected a swift Ukrainian collapse, allowing it to install a pro-Russian government in Kyiv within a matter of weeks, and with minimal loss of life.
The conflict escalated into the “largest conventional war” in Europe because:
(a) Putin grossly underestimated the strength of Ukrainian resistance; and
(b) NATO—and notably Boris Johnson, during his visit to Kyiv in April 2022—promised Ukraine unlimited support.
The evidence seems clear enough that an agreement between Russia and Ukraine was at least in sight before the Johnson intervention (I deal with the Johnson visit in my essay The Lost Peace, 17 June 2024; Critic does not mention it).
Of course, Russia could have withdrawn after encountering resistance, but it is fanciful to suppose it would have done so in the absence of actual defeat.
Of the two reasons for escalation, Europe’s intervention was decisive. It was Europe’s promise to supply Ukraine with “whatever it takes,” backed by growing tangible support, which turned a limited operation into a full-scale war, at the cost of several hundred thousand lives.
Russia and NATO must jointly share responsibility for the escalation.
On Nuclear Threats
Critic: Russia has threatened nuclear retaliation.
Answer: Yes, but only in the event:
(a) of a NATO conventional or nuclear attack on Russia (as set out in the 2020 nuclear doctrine), or
(b) that NATO forces intervene directly in Ukraine, or supply Ukraine with long-range missiles such as Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Although the “red lines” Russia laid down have changed with the progress of the war, Russia’s nuclear posture has consistently communicated one message: Ukraine matters, NATO intervention is unacceptable, and state survival is non-negotiable. Everything else—however rhetorically heated—remains below the nuclear threshold.
On Grayfare
Critic: Russia has conducted “widespread hybrid operations,” including cyberattacks, assassination attempts on European soil, and infrastructure sabotage.
Answer: This is one of those umbrella assertions which cry out for evidence. Of political assassinations, the toll in Britain is: one success (Litvinenko, 2006), and one possibly failed attempt (Skripal, 2018) in twenty years. One—or even two—is too many, but this should be compared with the frequency and success rate of American and Israeli assassinations in foreign countries.
We are required to take on trust the extent of the alleged Russian “grayfare” (hostile acts which fall short of war). For example, we do not know who was responsible for the Nord Stream 2 sabotage of September 2022. It has been widely blamed on the Russians, but it is more plausible that the operation was carried out by the United States or an allied actor, given that Washington stood to gain strategically from the pipeline’s destruction, whereas Russia incurred a clear loss.
The truth is that states always conduct covert (“deniable”) operations against states they deem to be hostile. These practices nourish infantile fantasies on both sides, which carry risks of escalation into actual war. The art of diplomacy is to keep trust sufficiently high to edge the infants out of the game.
On the Nature of the Threat
Critic: “Russia’s actions preceded European rearmament advocacy.”
Answer: There is no doubt that European countries have used Russian acts, starting with the invasion of Ukraine and spilling over into “grayfare,” as an excuse for rearmament; the question is whether these acts are a rational justification for it. Paradoxically, Russia’s failures in Ukraine should have revealed Russian weakness rather than Russian strength.
On NATO Expansion
Critic: “NATO expansion has not caused Russian aggression; Russian aggression has vindicated NATO expansion.”
Answer: The second statement is not a disproof of the first; it confuses hindsight with motive and confuses vindication with causation. The question is: would Russia have invaded Ukraine had NATO not expanded after 1991 or not promised Ukraine membership?
Critic argues that the threat to the West is not that Russian tanks will reach the Rhine, but that Western acquiescence in the conquest of Ukraine will demonstrate that the post-1945 security architecture is worthless, encouraging further Russian revanchism.
The answer is that the post-1945 security architecture was destroyed in 1991; what was left was NATO. In the 1990s, both Henry Kissinger and George Kennan warned against the folly of NATO’s eastward expansion. They urged the creation of a new European security system that included Russia. Their advice was ignored.
Indeed, when Russia explored the possibility of joining NATO in the early 2000s, it was reportedly told by the then Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, to “stand in line.” This response encapsulates the failure to treat Russia as a prospective security partner rather than a defeated adversary, and was experienced in Moscow as a deliberate humiliation—reinforcing resentment and hardening the perception that Russia’s security concerns would never be taken seriously within the post-Cold War order.
The correct response was (and is) not to conjure up the threat of Russia on the Rhine but to build a security system that addresses the valid security concerns of both NATO members and Russia.
On Documentary Evidence
Critic: “The difficulty is that Russia’s stated objectives extend far beyond the security concerns it articulates.” Russia’s most frequently stated objective was to prevent Ukraine joining NATO. But it wanted much more than this. In his 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, Putin spoke of Ukraine being an integral part of Russia, artificially sundered from it. Russia’s December 2021 ultimatum required not only a ban on Ukrainian accession [to NATO] but also the restriction of NATO’s military presence in those member states which border Russia. Putin’s stated goal on 24 February 2022 was “demilitarisation and denazification.”
Cumulatively, these statements are clear evidence of Russian revanchism: an attempt not just to guard its security, but to undo the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Specifically, they are evidence of a Russian attempt to reabsorb Ukraine by force, and to roll back NATO expansion by nuclear threats.
Such a project would, if realised, ipso facto be a threat to Europe. That is why NATO was, and continues to be, justified in resisting the Russian assault on Ukraine.
Answer: There is no disputing that Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and invaded Ukraine in 2022. These actions demonstrate a willingness to use force. What does not follow is that Russia’s objectives amount to an existential threat to European security.
The evidence cited points to a claim to a sphere of influence, not a project of absorption or continental conquest. To insist on limits to Ukraine’s foreign-policy alignment—above all NATO membership—is to constrain sovereignty, but it is not to deny the existence of the Ukrainian state as such. Sovereignty has always been qualified in practice, especially for states situated between rival great powers.
This distinction is familiar in international politics. The United States did not deny Cuban statehood during the Cuban Missile Crisis; it insisted that Cuba could not host Soviet nuclear missiles. Nor does Washington’s current pressure on Venezuela imply a desire to abolish Venezuelan sovereignty. These are examples of coercive security politics.
Russia’s demands, however objectionable, fit this pattern. They reflect regional revanchism and security anxiety, not a Hitlerian plan of conquest. One may condemn the aggression while rejecting the threat inflation that confuses coercive influence on neighbours with existential danger to non-neighbours.
On the Budapest Memorandum
Critic: Russia’s breach of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 shows its word is not to be trusted. It was a formal international agreement registered with the UN which Russia broke.
Answer: This is incorrect. The Budapest Memorandum was only registered with the UN in 2014, at Ukraine’s request, two decades after its signature. I had argued that this Memorandum (not a treaty), which committed Russia and others to respect Ukrainian sovereignty, was based on the expectation that an independent Ukraine would remain within the post-Soviet space.
Critic correctly notes that it contained “no conditionality regarding Ukrainian foreign policy choices.” But all “understandings” (as opposed to treaties) are conditional, in the sense of being based on expected behaviour. The expectation that Ukraine would remain a partner of Russia was confounded by Ukraine’s application for a Membership Action Plan for NATO in 2008, its quest for EU membership, and by the anti-Russian Maidan uprising of 2014.
On the question of internal developments in Ukraine provoking Russian intervention, Critic should read Nicolai Petro and Richard Sakwa.
On Russia’s Behaviour
Critic: Russia’s behaviour confirms that “declining powers with revanchist ideologies do not typically accept their diminished status gracefully: they lash out seeking to restore greatness through military action…”
Answer: What examples does Critic have in mind of declining powers lashing out? The pattern, rather, is that as defeated powers recover their strength, they seek to reverse at least some of the consequences of their previous defeats.
Yes, Russia has a revanchist ideology. But the consequences to Europe of such an ideology depend on one’s view of:
(a) what it is Russia wants to restore, and
(b) its capacity to achieve its aims.
Taking both into account, it is hard to argue that it has either the will or the capacity to restore control over Eastern Europe, which it surrendered in 1989–90.
The truth is really much simpler. The collapse of 1990–91 was a low point, not a permanent enfeeblement; Russia was bound to try to repair as much of its broken shield as possible once it recovered its strength and self-belief. Putin recognises that part of the loss is irrevocable, since former Warsaw Pact members are now part of NATO, and he has repeatedly said that it would be mad to go to war with a NATO country.
On the Weimar Comparison
Critic: The Weimar Republic is an example of revanchism: “Germany in 1923 was economically prostrate, militarily restricted and demographically weakened. By 1938, it had partitioned Czechoslovakia. Economic weakness and demographic decline do not preclude aggressive revisionism; in declining powers with revanchist leaderships, they may intensify it.”
Answer: This is bad history. Hitler’s revanchism of the 1930s was based not on Weimar’s weakness, but on a recovered German economy and army. The Weimar comparison is a good example of a de-contextualised comparison yielding a false inference—in this case, that Putin’s Russia resembles Hitler’s Germany.
To put it simply: Hitler wanted not just to recover old territories (e.g. the Sudetenland, Danzig) but also to gain new territory (Lebensraum). Putin wants to recover as much of old Russian territory or influence as possible, not to seize territory it has never occupied.
Generalisations about the rise and decline of empires, about the inherent propensities of dictatorships and democracies, cannot substitute for attention to the facts of the particular cases.
On European Rearmament
Critic: One must not “conflate two distinct questions: whether Russia poses a threat to European security, and whether the proposed response is proportional.”
Answer: But one cannot separate the two: the more serious the threat is taken to be, the stronger will seem the argument for rearmament. To my mind, the reputable argument for European rearmament is to plug the gap in Europe’s self-defence left by likely U.S. disengagement.
The assertion that this requires expenditure rising from 2.5% to between 5% and 7% of European GDP depends, in my view, on the inflation of the Russian threat.
On the Ukrainian Agency and Spheres of Influence
Critic: “Your essay, like much realist analysis, treats Ukraine primarily as an object of great power competition rather than as a subject with its own preferences.” “Yes, small powers face constraints. But the postwar order was built on the principle that constraints should be political and economic, not military.”
Answer: There are two issues here. One is what were the so-called norms of international behaviour which Russia breached? The second concerns power: how much “agency” is it realistic to expect smaller powers to have in a world of jostling great powers?
The answer to the first is that all norms allow some discretion to some actors in exceptional circumstances. In the “postwar order” (confining that, for argument’s sake, to the actions of the West), this discretion was exercised by the hegemon, the United States. It included not just military intervention in the Western Hemisphere to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, but also around the world to stop any developments which the United States deemed threatening to itself.
Beyond the normative argument lies the question of power. “Agency” is one of those vague words which denotes the degree of a subject’s ownership of an action or policy.
Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane introduced terms such as “sensitivity” and “vulnerability” to assess how much effective agency formally independent states have in an interdependent world. Their conclusion is fairly obvious: small powers are strongly constrained by the wishes of neighbouring great powers; great powers are weakly constrained by “soft law” and institutions.
So we need to distinguish between independence and sovereignty. Broadly, independence allows for control over domestic policy choices; sovereignty, control over both domestic and foreign policy choices. Most countries in the world have the first but not the second. To argue for equal sovereignty is to ignore the facts of power. If carried to its logical conclusion, it would be a recipe for endless war to “equalise power.”
On Multipolarity and the Limits of Universalism
Critic: Your argument that Trump’s reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine makes it harder to dismiss out of hand Moscow’s assertion of “spheres of influence” ignores two things: first, that Trump’s logic does not validate Putin’s; second, that the Monroe Doctrine, however objectionable, never entailed the elimination of independence.
Answer: Good points. The brief answer is that the expectation of U.S. hegemony following the fall of communism—the “unipolar moment,” the “end of history” narrative—seemed to render such ideas as spheres of influence obsolete: America would police enlightened global institutions. The “return of history,” together with the concomitant weakness of international law, ensured the revival of doctrines of spheres of influence and buffer states.
Together with this comes the need to secure as much peace as is possible in a multipolar world, not to seek to remake the world according to a set of universal principles. This is the hardest lesson for Western statesmanship to grasp.
As for the second point, Putin’s 2021 rhetoric certainly implied that Ukraine had no right to a fully sovereign existence. But for fourteen years after Ukrainian independence, Russia was reasonably content with a compliant Ukraine. Critic needs to ask why this acquiescence in Ukrainian independence stopped after 2014, and what caused Ukraine itself to change course.
Conclusion
The conclusion to which my argument tends is that we should strive as hard as possible for a negotiated peace to end what Trump has accurately called a “senseless war.” Even were Russia to achieve its maximalist goals in Ukraine, this would not be an existential threat to Europe. The choice between capitulation and continued resistance is one for the Ukrainians to make, but the West should not encourage a resistance which merely postpones capitulation, at the cost of further devastation and loss of life, while offering no credible pathway to victory.
Critic’s argument is that Putin’s 2021 essay remains the charter statement of Russian objectives, and that those objectives are incompatible with a prosperous, democratic, European Ukraine. On this reading, any settlement that satisfies Russian demands is “not peace, but institutionalisation of conquest under another name.” The West must resist Russia’s attempt to impose “a capitulation… on the unconquered.”
The logic of this argument is stark. NATO powers must be prepared to sustain—and, if necessary, escalate—a proxy war with a nuclear-armed state in order to keep Ukraine fighting. It is precisely this logic that I reject. Statesmanship consists not in testing the outer limits of escalation, but in preventing catastrophe by recognising limits, restoring diplomacy, and securing the least bad peace available in an imperfect world.
Robert Skidelsky 