Summary of Paul D'Anieri's Ukraine and Russia

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The conflict between Ukraine and Russia is the result of deep normative disagreements and conflicts of interest, and it is not dependent on mistakes by leaders.
#2 The problems that erupted in 2014 emerged from the conflict between Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the United States that began in the post-Cold War period.
#3 The conflict in Ukraine was not caused by the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2013, nor was it caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. It was caused by the deep mutual fears that the status quo in eastern Europe might change irreversibly.
#4 The complexity of the relationships involved has been overlooked, because it is difficult to focus on internal affairs in Ukraine and Russia, their relationship with each other, and their relationships with the West.

Sujets

• International relations
• Général

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 07 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669381426
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Paul D'Anieri's Ukraine and Russia
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia is the result of deep normative disagreements and conflicts of interest, and it is not dependent on mistakes by leaders.

#2

The problems that erupted in 2014 emerged from the conflict between Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and the United States that began in the post-Cold War period.

#3

The conflict in Ukraine was not caused by the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2013, nor was it caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. It was caused by the deep mutual fears that the status quo in eastern Europe might change irreversibly.

#4

The complexity of the relationships involved has been overlooked, because it is difficult to focus on internal affairs in Ukraine and Russia, their relationship with each other, and their relationships with the West.

#5

There are two schools of thought on Russia’s involvement in the war in Ukraine. The first sees Russia as aggressor, seeking expansion for domestic reasons. The second sees Russia as reacting against western expansion. While these explanations fit into the school of defensive realism, which believes states can usually manage the challenges inherent in the anarchic international system, they are still pessimistic in that they view the international system as bringing even nonaggressive states into conflict.

#6

The approach in this book is consistent with the school of thought known as neoclassical realism, which finds that the security dilemma conditions international politics. However, it differs from prevailing interpretations by acknowledging that the various leaders were constrained by both international and domestic politics.

#7

The book is not a work of history, as it is not based primarily on archival sources. However, it does describe what happened and how the actors at the time explained what they were doing.

#8

The conflicts between Russia and the West, and Ukraine and the West, were rooted in deep disagreements about what the post-Cold War world should look like. Those differences have persisted to this day, and they constitute each side's perception of what the status quo was or should be.

#9

After the Cold War, Russia, Ukraine, and the West had very different expectations about how their relationship would be based on sovereign equality or on traditional Russian hegemony.

#10

The post-Cold War order was being overturned by Russia, which saw the West trying to overturn it by expanding NATO eastward and by promoting colored revolutions against governments that Russia supported.

#11

The end of the Cold War represented a massive geopolitical shift driven by mostly peaceful democratic revolutions in eastern Europe. The West learned that democratization also brought important security gains. However, democratization repeatedly undid the status quo, and Russia feared that it would be next.

#12

After the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, democracy promotion became not just the pursuit of an ideal, but a powerful weapon in the contest for influence in a chaotic world.

#13

The spark that led to the Ukrainian conflict was provided by Ukraine’s internal politics. Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine, sought to fundamentally reorder politics in the country in ways that many of its citizens and elites did not accept. This led to a protest over integration policy becoming an effort to remove Yanukovych from power.

#14

Domestic politics in Russia, Ukraine, and the United States also played a role in why those countries did not take steps that might have led to better outcomes.

#15

The contrast between the Ukrainian and Russian states is clear. Ukraine’s independence in 1991 was enabled by the collapse of the Soviet state in Moscow, while Russia’s was enabled by the weakness and corruption of its own state.

#16

The underlying sources of conflict in Ukraine are the incompatible goals of the region and the status quo, exacerbated by the security dilemma. The proximate and contingent factors are what made war not inevitable until it began.

#17

From 1991 to 1994, Russia and Ukraine skirmished over the role of the CIS, the status of the Black Sea Fleet and its base in Sevastopol, and the disposition of the nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. The United States and Russia jointly pressured Ukraine to surrender any claim to nuclear weapons.

#18

After the war in Yugoslavia, the US committed itself to NATO enlargement in 1994, and the war in Yugoslavia helped ensure that it happened. In 1999, NATO officially admitted three new members, and two weeks later began bombing Serbia. In November 1999, Leonid Kuchma was elected President of Ukraine, accelerating a trend toward autocracy.

#19

While the West was focused on Ukraine’s relationship with NATO, Russia was focused on its relationship with the European Union. In 2010, Ukraine elected a president, Viktor Yanukovych, who seemed to have changed his ways and was seen as a legitimate politician. But he began taking dramatic steps to consolidate political power and gain Russia’s support very quickly.

#20

After the Euromaidan Revolution, the Ukrainian government made decisions that enraged protesters, and this led to the evaporation of Yanukovych’s support. Within a week, little green men began the seizure of Crimea, and within a month the annexation was complete.

#21

The strategy of awaiting Putin’s departure is unlikely to succeed. Russia’s demands to be a great power and regional hegemon are widely shared by the Russian elite and populace. Democracy will not lead Russia to abandon these aspirations.

#22

The war in Ukraine that began in 2014 was the result of long-term forces in the post-Cold War environment and short-term decisions made by Ukrainian, Russian, and western leaders in 2013‒2014.

#23

The tendency to focus on blame is discussed in Paul D’Anieri, Ukraine, Russia, and the West: The Battle over Blame, The Russian Review 75 (2016): 498–503.

#24

The theory of loss aversion is applied to the conflicts in Crimea and eastern Ukraine by Aleprete, Minimizing Loss. According to this theory, people will do anything to avoid losing something, even if it means giving up something else.

#25

The US has used transnational liberalism to bolster its dominance, especially through the NATO alliance.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The Brezhnev Doctrine, which was enunciated in 1968, stated that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in socialist countries when forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism. In 1989, Gorbachev spoke of any interference in internal affairs, which was seen as a revocation of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

#2

The ingredients of the crisis that emerged in late 2013 and early 2014 were already present by 1993. These problems resisted solution because they were rooted in three highly challenging environments that overlapped each other.

#3

In March 1990, elections were held for the republic-level parliaments, and for the first time candidates who were not members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were allowed to run. In Ukraine, the newly formed Rukh Party won a quarter of the seats in the Verkhovna Rada.

#4

In July 1991, a group of prominent political and cultural figures published a Word to the People calling on the reforms to be halted. The letter equated Russian nationalism with the preservation of the Soviet Union, and saw the moves toward independence and economic reforms as a sellout of the country to outside enemies.

#5

The coup against Gorbachev overwhelmed all of these leaders’ plans. On August 24, the Rada declared Ukraine independent, extended the authority of speaker Kravchuk to act as head of state, and scheduled a referendum on independence.

#6

In 1991, Ukraine was preparing to separate from the Soviet Union. The referendum and presidential election were held, and Kravchuk, the acting president, won easily with 61. 6 percent of the vote to 23. 3 percent for Rukh leader Vyacheslav Chornovil.

#7

After the vote in Ukraine, Yeltsin, Kravchuk, and Belarusian president Stanislav Shushkevich met to hammer out a deal on the relationship among the successor states. They dissolved the 1922 Union Treaty, which served Yeltsin’s need to make Gorbachev irrelevant and Kravchuk’s need to dissolve central structures.

#8

From the very beginning, there was a conflict of interest between Russia’s desire to retain some central control over the region, and Ukraine’s opposition. Even Boris Yeltsin, who was far more democratically and western oriented than other Russian leaders, sought central control over the republics.

#9

The CIS was founded in December 1991, but Russia was determined to maintain a single CIS military. Ukraine was determined to build its own military out of the Soviet forces on its territory.