Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War by Paul D'Anieri

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War by Paul D'Anieri Danylo Sudyn (bio) Paul D'Anieri. Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War. 282 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1108713955. The newest book by political scientist Paul D'Anieri focuses on answering the question: why did war between Ukraine and Russia happen in 2014? Some scholars see it as an inevitable result of Russian revanchism—a reaction to the drastic change in Russia's geopolitical status after 1991, which was very similar to that of Weimar Germany in the 1920s. D'Anieri questions this approach and looks for the main factors that caused this conflict. He also criticizes two other explanations: (1) that Putin is personally responsible for the invasion of Ukraine and used the war to bolster his authority in Russia; and (2) that the Russian invasion can be explained in terms of international security—control over Ukraine is crucial for Russia's security in the region. All three explanatory strategies are seen by Paul D'Anieri as too "essentialist" or "invariant," characterizing Russia as innately and unchangingly aggressive. To use a mathematical metaphor to describe the war in Ukraine, Russia is a constant. D'Anieri rejects this perspective. He stresses the dynamic character of international relations in the region, which excludes the existence of actors with unchangeable interests. Thus, his analysis rests on two important assumptions. First, the reasons for Russia's war against Ukraine should be traced back to the breakup of Soviet Union in 1991. Second, relations between Russia and Ukraine, internal political processes in both countries, and their relations to the West should all be considered. Of course, two factors were external to this situation: democratization in Eastern Europe and Russia's striving to preserve its great-power status. The first has both national and international causes: Eastern European countries began building democracies after the breakup of the Warsaw Bloc, but the West also saw democratization as a means of strengthening geopolitical security in the region. Although Western support for democratization in the region never ceased, the level of support changed over time, especially in the 1990s. The second external factor does not refer to a timeless fact of the Russian state or identity. D'Anieri shows that in the early 1990s four schools of thought competed for dominance in Russian politics: westernizers, Slavophiles, Eurasianists, and derzhavniki (statists). Only the first school, the westernizers, focused on democracy and the free market as a central part of their ideology. The other three all rejected Western culture and institutions as improper for Russia. They were distinct in terms of ideology, but completely comparable in terms of their attitude towards the role of Russia in the region and the world. According to them, Russia should be imperialistic in its attitude toward its neighbors. Since the mid-1990s, westernizers have failed to gain political and social support in Russian society. This was caused by both internal and external factors. The Russian economy suffered from the crisis caused by the breakup of the [End Page 171] Soviet Union, the US provided little financial support for democratic and market reforms due to the 1991–92 recession, and the presidential election, when the situation in the post-Soviet states was of lower priority for US politicians. Thus, in the late 1990s westernizers lost the trust of almost all social groups and political forces in Russia, and Russian leaders began to derive ideas and legitimization from the other three schools: the Slavophiles, the Eurasianists and the derzhavniki. These external factors form merely the background for contemporary interactions between Russia and Ukraine. D'Anieri states that his approach is close to the offensive realist and neoclassical realist schools of thought, according to which the central role in international relations is played by the security dilemma, "a common phenomenon in international politics, [whereby] … actions that each state [takes] to preserve its security [create] problems for others, and [induce] fears about the acting states' intentions" (9). Thus, Russia's aggression is the result of a self-reinforcing cycle: Ukraine seeks security and applies for an alliance with NATO, which is seen by Russia as a threat...