The Russian-Ukrainian conflict began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and military actions in Donbas. For eight years, this conflict had a local character, but on February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation began full-scale hostilities on the territory of Ukraine. The first war in Europe in almost 80 years has a considerable number of political and economic reasons, due to which there is an opinion that Russia could restrain America and the United States could not deter Russia. I can’t entirely agree with this statement, as I believe this thesis is incorrect for many reasons, which require an examination of the chronology of events following the Euromaidan. The United States failed to contain Russia, but Russia had no goal to deter America.
Was the U.S. able to deter Russia
To answer the question of whether the U.S. could hold Russia, necessary to examine the history of the conflict and the reason for its development. Of course, it can be argued that the U.S. could not restrain because Russia’s military action began. However, this position does not reflect the whole reality, as it is also necessary to consider how the U.S. actions influenced the timing of the war, its intensity and the fact of its emergence in general.
The 2013 Euromaidan demonstrated the intentions of Ukrainian citizens to develop toward the countries of the European Union, which meant leaving the values of the Eastern neighbor. Taking advantage of the internal tensions in Ukraine at the time, Vladimir Putin took a swift operation to annex Crimea, which significantly increased his rating in Russian society (Jing, 2022). This event was condemned by most of the developed world, including the United States, but the Western world had relatively little reaction to such a gross violation of international norms (Minzarari, 2022). Leaders in the Western world have behaved ambiguously, continuing to work closely with Russia and increasing their dependence on Russian resources (Marcus, 2022). The sanctions packages adopted by the European Union and the United States have been small enough to have a meaningful impact on Russian policy, which has begun broadcasting ideas of protectionism and import substitution in its media area.
As part of the study of the annexation of Crimea and its consequences, essential to understanding that Russia did not consider itself an aggressor, and it qualified its actions as legal. Russian authorities began to refer to the historical mistake of Crimea temporarily becoming Ukrainian and to the referendum held on the peninsula. Besides, it is essential that Russia is a solid demilitarized state, which according to the deterrence model, led the country to decide that the Western world is ready to make any concessions, not to engage in hostilities (Zagare, 1998). Crimea did increase Russia’s military potential, as it was a strategic location in the Black Sea, the control of which provided an opportunity to strengthen the Russian Black Sea Fleet (Watts, 2022). According to the deterrence model, these facts should have led the aggressor to believe that its threats had the effect of easing world pressure, which was proved in 2022 (Evera, 1997).
The unwillingness of the European Union to lose profitable energy cooperation with Russia led to the fact that Russia was not much affected by the sanctions (Al-Naseralla, 2022). Later, under President Biden, the U.S. almost explicitly declared that Ukraine would be left alone in the event of a military clash since NATO countries would not go into conflict with Russia (Minzarari, 2022). On the one hand, this created confidence in the Russian authorities in their impunity, which corresponds to the deterrence model (Evera, 1997). On the other hand, the fact that sanctions were imposed against Russia only strengthened Russia’s domestic political rhetoric that NATO sought to weaken Russia. Russian propaganda over the next eight years will use the narrative that the entire world is united under the leadership of the United States against Russia, which is more in line with the spiral model. The desire to punish Russia has created the impression that the entire developed world is hostile to R.F.
Has Russia been able to contain the United States
To answer the question of whether Russia has deterred the U.S., worth understanding what Russia has tried to deter the U.S. The idea of preventing NATO’s sphere of influence from spreading eastward seems most relevant, but this position has several drawbacks. First, Russia has long shared borders with NATO in Latvia and Estonia. Second, when the conflict began, there was virtually no idea in Russian political polemics that Crimea needed to be taken away to counter the United States. At the time of the annexation of Crimea, the U.S. took a rather detached position in the conflict since there was no talk of Ukraine joining NATO and it was mainly about joining the European Union. According to a paper written by Frederick (2022), Russia’s aims in escalating the conflict with NATO were less likely, because the demands put forward by Russia before the military operation were initially impossible to fulfill. The Russian Federation demanded that NATO return to the 1997 borders and accept the status of Crimea, which was impossible legally.
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Russia’s unwillingness to recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty is the leading cause of the conflict (Kuzio, 2018). Also noteworthy is the Russian president’s address to the nation on the eve of the war. Vladimir Putin devotes much of his time to defending the claim that Ukraine has no national identity, history, or right to sovereignty. Consequently, the Russian Federation does not declare itself an aggressor and presents itself as a liberator from the fascists who, according to the Russian authorities, have seized power in Ukraine.
Thus, the U.S. has indeed failed to restrain Russia from initiating military action, and Russia has failed to deter the U.S. from America’s influence on Ukraine, according to the Russian authorities. Also, when viewed from the perspective of the Russian authorities, they have indeed failed to obtain guarantees of the non-proliferation of NATO’s sphere of influence, which should support the thesis. Nevertheless, many scholars agree that NATO deterrence was an additional rather than a primary reason for starting the war. At the start of the military operation, NATO was not even considering Ukraine for membership in the organization, and Russia already had land borders with NATO member states.
We can conclude that the U.S. confrontation was a pretext for repeating the Crimean effect, which was to increase the loyalty of Russian citizens to their president. The certainty that the Western world would again be unable to agree on Russia and that American neutrality would be maintained made war more likely, which is more in line with the deterrence model. It is difficult to say whether the war is a direct consequence of the sanctions imposed against Russia in 2014, which could relate to the spiral model because the Russian government only used the idea of confronting the world in its propaganda (Jing, 2022). In reality, it understood the weak effect of sanctions and the inability of the Western world to take decisive action. Therefore, I am more inclined to believe that the U.S. and the developed Western world could not contain Russia, and Russia did not set a primary goal to confront America. Its aggression occurred due to Russia’s domestic politics, the personal imperialist views of its president, and its confidence in the Western world’s inability to create punishment.
References
Al-Naseralla, F. (2022). The European Union as a global actor: The Russia-Ukraine conflict starting in 2014-2022. Diva, 38.
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Evera, S.V. (1997). The Spiral Model vs the Deterrence Model. Web.mit.edu. Web.
Frederick, B., Charap, S., Boston, S., Flanagman, S. J., Mazarr, M. J., Moroney, J. D., & Mueller, K. P. (2022). Pathways to Russian escalation against NATO from the Ukraine war. Rand Corporation, 12. Web.
Jing, X. (2022, July). The political reasons for Russia’s preference for taking control over Ukraine. In 2022 3rd International Conference on Mental Health, Education and Human Development (MHEHD 2022) (pp. 286-290). Atlantis Press. Web.
Kuzio, T. (2018). Euromaidan revolution, Crimea and Russia–Ukraine war: Why it is time to review Ukrainian–Russian studies. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 59(3-4), 529-553. Web.
Marcus M. (2022). Economic sanctions against a global superpower: Adequate for deterrence and punishment? Policy, 21. Web.
Minzarari, D. (2022). Failing to deter Russia’s war against Ukraine: The role of misperceptions. SWP Comment. 4(33), 8.
Watts, S., Rooney, B., Germanovich, G., McClintock, B., Pezard, S., Reach, C., & Shostak, M. (2022). Deterrence and escalation in competition with Russia: The role of ground forces in preventing hostile measures below armed conflict in Europe. Rand Corporation.
Zagare, F. C., & Kolgour, D. M. (1998). Deterrence Theory and the Spiral Model Revisited. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 10(1), 59–87. Web.