Title:Vladimir Putin's Mistrust of the West Runs Deep.

• Author: Goodman, Andrew

Text:

While most Western analysts and commentators place responsibility for the war in Ukraine squarely on Vladimir Putin, a few contend that NATO's enlargement provoked the Russian invasion. Based on my personal interactions with Putin while serving as a U.S. diplomat in St Petersburg in the 1990s, I would argue that a collision between the West and a revisionist Russia led by Putin was virtually inevitable.

The Realist Thesis of Western Responsibility for the Ukraine Crisis

University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer is the primary advocate of the idea that the West provoked Putin by enlarging NATO. He first advanced his thesis in 2014 following Putin's seizure of Crimea ("Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault," Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2014). Following the Russian invasion last February, Mearsheimer amplified his contention that the West is at fault ("John Mearsheimer on Why the West is Principally Responsible for the Ukrainian Crisis," The Economist, March 11, 2022). The crux of his argument is that the war has been caused by Western efforts to turn Ukraine into a "Western bulwark," primarily through NATO's "expansion." Mearsheimer's position has been supported by some early critics of NATO enlargement, such as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, who maintains the West is partly to blame for the Ukraine crisis by unnecessarily provoking Russia through the Alliance's enlargement ("This is Putin's War. But America and NATO Aren't Innocent Bystanders," The New York Times, February 21, 2022).

There are a number of reasons for disputing this "realist" critique of Western policy, such as its rather peculiar view that NATO enlargement came about because of the Alliance's alleged recruitment of new members, rather than the aspirations of Eastern European countries to join NATO. What seems to be missing from the debate, however, is consideration of whether Putin's intentions - and therefore, his actions - are the product of his experiences since he became President of Russia or whether they are more deepseated and stem from his politically formative years - the 1980s and 1990s - well before he assumed national office. This is a key period of Putin's life, but one about which relatively little is known, as several prominent scholars have pointed out (e.g., Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, "The American Education of Vladimir Putin," The Atlantic, February, 2015).

My personal knowledge of Putin stems from this crucial period in Putin's political development, when I was posted to the U.S. Consulate General in St Petersburg in the early 1990s and Putin, who was then responsible for the city's external relations, was my designated interlocutor in the city government. My conversations with Putin and observations of his actions suggest that Putin's invasion of Ukraine and his current...