President Joe Biden is trying to end what many perceive to be a disastrous presidency. His departure from the White House could mark a turning point both in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and in three decades of ill-conceived Western policy that has alienated Russia and destroyed its democratic project. But that depends on President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to avoid repeating the mistakes of his predecessor.
Although it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who decided to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the ground for this conflict was prepared by American bureaucrats in the 1990s. At the time, Russia had just emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was much weaker and directionless, but as idealistic and incompetent as it was at the time, Russia’s leadership was unable to fully integrate with the West. I was working on the assumption that it was inevitable.
The decisions taken at that time sparked a conflict between Russia and the West, which reached its logical climax during the Biden presidency.
The problem was never the eastward expansion of NATO (a security agreement created to counter the Soviet Union) or the European Union itself, but the exclusion of Russia from the process.
Importantly, this approach put Ukraine on the path to Euro-Atlantic integration while pushing Russia away from it, creating a rift between two countries that are closely tied together historically, economically, and interpersonally. It also facilitated the securitization of Russia and the backsliding of democracy under Putin.
This outcome was by no means predetermined and required constant efforts by American bureaucrats to bring about it.
One of the missed opportunities for a different path was the Partnership for Peace program, formally launched by the Clinton administration in 1994. The program was designed to balance the aspirations of former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO with the important goal of keeping Russia included. As a nuclear power and a new democracy with a decidedly pro-Western government.
Russia joined in, but as American historian Mary Sarrott writes in her book Not One Inch, this useful framework was derailed at its inception by a small group of bureaucrats in Washington.
She specifically speaks of the “pro-enlargement troika” of Daniel Fried, Alexander Vershbow, and Richard Holbrooke, who pushed for aggressive NATO expansion despite protests from Moscow.
Sarot also mentions John Herbst as the author of a subsequent report on the informal non-enlargement promise of NATO with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which she suggests It shaped U.S. policy to ignore Russian complaints about NATO’s expansion into its borders. Decades from now.
The unrepentant arrogance and triumphalism that these security advocates embody can also be seen in Biden himself, who was a prominent congressman at the time. In a 1997 video, he ridiculed Russia’s protests against NATO expansion, saying that if Russia remained assertive it would have to accommodate China and Iran. At the time he clearly assumed that was an absurd and unrealistic scenario, and probably believed that Russia had no choice but to remain in the Western orbit. But it turned out to be what he thought was a witty joke.
In his hawkish politics toward Russia, Biden has found a willing partner in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. It is no coincidence that President Zelensky’s major change in direction on relations with Russia began at the same time as Biden took office.
Ukraine’s president was elected on a promise to end the smoldering conflict that began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The president met with Putin in Paris in December 2019, and the two sides agreed to a ceasefire in the Donbas region. Both sides largely respected it, reducing the death toll to almost zero.
But once Biden stepped into the White House, Zelensky ordered a crackdown on Putin’s Ukrainian ally Viktor Medvedchuk, while loudly calling for Ukraine’s membership in NATO, the return of Crimea, and the derailment of Russo-German Nord Stream 2. We have started a campaign. gas pipeline project.
Two factors may have played a role in Zelensky’s decision. Azerbaijan’s victory over Russian-backed Armenian forces in the fall of 2020 was achieved largely thanks to Turkey’s Bayraktar drones, giving hope that the high-tech war against Russia could be successful. Another factor is that Medvedchuk’s party was ahead of Zelenskiy’s in December 2020 polls.
Just a few days after Biden’s inauguration, President Zelenskiy gave an interview to the American media outlet Axios, during which he famously asked his American counterpart, “Why isn’t Ukraine yet a member of NATO?” . This was followed by an editorial by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba with the same question in its title, published by the Atlantic Council, a think tank that receives much of its funding from the US government and Pentagon contractors.
Not surprisingly, some of the figures who shaped U.S. policy toward Russia in the 1990s lobbied the Biden administration to adopt the aggressive policies that helped bring about the invasion.
On March 5, Fried, Vershbow, and Herbst, along with three others, presented a report to the Atlantic Council containing a list of recommendations for the Biden administration regarding Ukraine and Russia. These, in short, have escalated to put pressure on Putin on everything from proposing Ukraine to join NATO, to derailing Nord Stream 2, to “strengthening security” in the Black Sea.
Three weeks after the announcement, President Putin began deploying troops to Ukraine’s border, beginning a gruesome 11-month brinkmanship operation. During this period, the British warship HMS Defender entered Russia’s declared territorial waters off the coast of occupied Crimea in June, the United States began supplying secret weapons to Ukraine in September, and finally in November The United States and Ukraine announced a strategic partnership. For Kremlin hardliners, the move amounted to a walkover.
It was around that time that President Putin began preparations in earnest for the invasion, which ultimately began in February 2022. The resulting war is now approaching its third anniversary.
Despite massive Western support, Ukraine suffered terrible losses and gained nothing in taking the fight to President Putin. The war has plunged Ukraine into crisis, causing a massive refugee crisis, economic collapse, social collapse, and a rising death toll.
If peace is achieved in Ukraine this year, it would likely be in line with the failed 2022 Istanbul Accord, which envisaged an Austrian-style neutral Ukraine with limits on the size of the military. Russia is likely to insist on retaining much of the territory it gained as punishment for Ukraine’s intransigence. While this would technically be a defeat for Ukraine, it would be a clear victory not only for the Ukrainian people who bore the brunt of this war, but also for the rest of the world.
It would also be a major defeat for the secretive class that has been pushing for a new confrontation with Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Aggressively pursuing expansion at Russia’s expense was clearly a failed strategy. The time has come for Western policymakers to take a hard look at how they can reverse the situation and start slowly backtracking toward closer ties to Moscow.
This does not absolve the Putin regime of responsibility for its crimes of aggression or the Russian military’s war crimes. It is about removing the conditions that led to Russia’s military dictatorship and ending the conflict that will continue to support Putin’s regime.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.