Map of European NATO members in 2004. Countries admitted that year are colored light blue. Created using Mapchart.net
November 1, 2022
In a 1990 article for Foreign Affairs, political columnist Charles Krauthammer triumphantly declared a “unipolar moment.”1 After an ailing Soviet Union withdrew from the Cold War, Krauthammer confidently predicted that we, the Americans, would soon inherit the Earth. Fortunately, this bold claim could be proven with a single question: who was left to compete with us? Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, their powers sapped after two world wars, had grown utterly dependent on American military muscle.2 3 China had been out of the equation since before the century began. The Soviet Union, the last domino to fall, did so with a resounding ‘thud’ in late 1989. This confluence of events left open a window for America to exert unrivaled power on the world stage. We were the last superpower left standing– the “unipole.”
Krauthammer’s landmark column was nothing if not prophetic, describing the global dynamic of the following two decades with pinpoint accuracy. In the post-Cold War world, American hegemony, in every sense of the word, spanned across the globe, from nearby Latin America to the far-flung lands of Central Asia. Military bases bearing the American flag spanned the Middle East, while Big Macs and Hollywood flicks were consumed en masse from Veracruz to Vietnam. Yet the most visible manifestation of our unipolarity came in the form of dramatic military undertakings. The United States rallied an international coalition to restore the sovereignty of Kuwait, spearheaded a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, and as the pièce de résistance, not only staged invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, but spent trillions attempting to resurrect them as democracies. Even Russia and China, our chief geopolitical competitors, were forced acknowledge the unipolar, American-led world before them in a 1997 joint communique.4 Not since the days of Rome had one nation so dominated the international system.
But the “unipolar moment” was just that– a moment. Rather than embrace utopian promises of a post-Cold War “end of history,” Krauthammer’s piece warned that the United States would one day lose its monopoly on world power. In his view, there was “no doubt [that] multipolarity will come in time.” Three decades have passed since those words were written, and it is hard to ignore the fact that our “unipolar moment” has elapsed. We have seen a once-dependent European continent pursue strategic autonomy and, through the supranational entities of NATO and the EU, assert itself collectively as a great power in its own right. We have seen China, after a centuries-long absence from great state diplomacy, resume its role as the foremost power of Asia. Perhaps most infamously, we have seen Russia, once mired in a post-Soviet depression, now wage a war of territorial conquest in Ukraine, acting in defiance of Europe and the United States. Gazing across the Atlantic, we see a grand chessboard that spans the Eurasian continent, dotted with queens and kings exerting immense power over pawns in their periphery. Although the great nations and powerful factions of this new century often find themselves at odds, each is its own stark reminder that America is no longer alone.
However, as the years pass, the disconnect between this new world’s realities and the policies pursued by Washington has only grown sharper and sharper. Instead of charting a new course to navigate this “post-post-Cold War” era, Washington still clings to the halcyon days of the unipolar moment, sending us on a collision course with the multipolar world lying beyond our borders. To properly explicate the fundamental flaws behind our modern foreign policy, it is easiest to begin with the most conspicuous and shocking geopolitical left turn Americans have witnessed in a generation.
Starting in February of this year, the war in Ukraine is the largest European conflict since the Second World War.5 The Russian invasion has produced misery and bloodshed not seen on the continent for two decades, inviting some of the most expansive sanctions ever imposed on a sovereign nation.6 Despite the conflict’s massive scale and broad ramifications, all but a few have seriously investigated how the catastrophe in Ukraine came to be. In Western intellectual circles, it has become fashionable to attribute all of Russia’s actions to the erratic proclivities of its leader, who is assumed to act without rhyme or reason. Although the personal despotism of Vladimir Putin certainly factors into the equation, this diagnosis overlooks the many crises, confrontations, and diplomatic failures that precipitated the conflict in Ukraine and how the United States, still frozen in its unipolar moment, utterly failed to prevent it.
Most Americans’ first memories of Russo-Ukrainian animosity date back to 2014, when Russia’s annexation of Crimea made headlines across the Western world. But to properly understand the Russo-Ukrainian war, we have to turn back the clock another ten years. In March 2004, the United States and its European allies greatly expanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Born out of Western European fears of Soviet aggression,7 NATO requires member states to defend all other members in the event of an armed attack. In the fading days of our unipolar moment, we helped admit seven Eastern European nations into the pact, from Bulgaria in the south to Estonia and Latvia in the north.8 As NATO facilities, materiel, and armed forces would be situated on the Russian border for the first time, Moscow decried the move as a threat to its national security.9 But as the Kremlin had serious economic woes to attend to, it chose not to dwell on fears of NATO aggression.
It is here, at the tail end of our unipolar moment, that American policymakers ought to have walked away from the table. The United States, through the enlargement of NATO, promoted liberal democracy and strengthened our presence in Eastern Europe while avoiding any serious bad blood with Russia. Yet, rather than put things to rest, Washington turned up the heat on an already-irritated Moscow. During the Bucharest Summit in 2008, the Bush administration, against the objections of France and Germany, adamantly insisted that Ukraine and Georgia be accepted into NATO’s program for future members.10 The inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia, two historical provinces of the Russian Empire, would advance the borders of NATO right up to Moscow’s doorstep. Washington falsely assumed that, just as in 2004, Russia would begrudgingly acquiesce to more border states joining NATO. Just four months after America expressed its intentions, Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Georgia, torpedoing hopes of NATO accession by backing rebellions in two provinces.11 Similarly, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014and fanned the flames of civil war in the country’s east.12 Militarized and consolidated under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, the Russian nation considered itself a great power once again and would no longer tolerate whatever it perceived as threats to its security.
In a prior age, Washington might have respected the now blood-red line drawn by Russia. But rather than changing course, we pressed down on the gas pedal. Following the Russian annexation of Crimea, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations funneled billions of dollars in arms into Ukraine, and Washington further encouraged the nation to join NATO.13 After seven years of this policy, a firm answer was delivered in early 2022, as Putin stationed over a hundred thousand troops along the Ukrainian border.14 During negotiations, Moscow demanded that Ukraine be precluded from joining NATO.15 When the West refused, it triggered a Russian invasion that has slain thousands on both sides, uprooted tens of millions from their homes, and thrown a continent into economic crisis.
Many will obfuscate the American role in precipitating this conflict by citing the brutal measures undergone by the Kremlin. It is obvious that Russia’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine are morally reprehensible. But this does not excuse the United States from blowing past warning sign after warning sign. The entire Ukraine saga, from optimistic beginning to bloody end, was an abject failure of American foreign policy, one that ultimately stems from Washington’s apparent inability to process this current world order. In 2004, unipolar America could expand NATO to Russia’s borders and not face reprisal, as our fading hegemony could still deter Russia from retaliating. Washington’s attempts to repeat this policy with Ukraine and Georgia betray a naive ignorance of our own limitations.
Ultimately, we cannot know how much culpability the United States bears regarding the war in Ukraine. Perhaps Putin was using NATO encroachment as a pretext to invade. Perhaps NATO expansion eastward was inevitable, whether Washington liked it or not. It is entirely possible, for these reasons, that any attempt at an American compromise with Russia may have been doomed from the start. America’s mistake does not lie in the fact that such an effort failed. It lies in the fact that such an effort was never even made.Although Ukraine has taken center stage in American headlines, a plethora of crises have since broken out across the globe. Chinese saber-rattling in the Taiwan strait, a European continent in economic peril, both coupled with recent flare-ups in Kosovo, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, have all directed the most attention to foreign policy in a generation. It seems that the further we travel through this “post-post-Cold War” era, the rougher and more tortuous the path becomes. If we wish to survive this century, the United States simply cannot afford to make the same mistakes it committed in Ukraine. Bungling any geopolitical issue of that magnitude not only jeopardizes our own geopolitical position but runs the risk of nuclear war. After a certain point, our luck will run out. Instead of clinging to the myth of unipolar America, Washington should rediscover the statesmanship of a previous era, one in which we were not the sole locus of power.
During the rivalrous decades of the Cold War, the United States pursued an effective foreign policy that ultimately encircled and defeated our totalitarian nemesis, the Soviet Union. That being said, few would agree that America’s Cold War conduct was beyond reproach. Our memory of the era is colored by the various coups, civil wars, and revolutions instigated by Washington in the service of containing its archrival, from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran. But within this checkered past lies the blueprints of a careful, calculated foreign policy. As the United States was constrained by both its limited power and the countervailing influence of the Soviet Union, Cold War circumstances forced Washington to navigate the hurdles of a bipolar world. While Washington often employed unscrupulous tactics to secure its influence, genuine bilateral and multilateral friendships also had to be fostered in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, paving the way for collective defense agreements such as NATO and the Rio Pact. Finding creative ways around balance-of-power constraints, Washington even made inroads with ideological rivals. In the 1970s, we achieved détente with both China and the Soviet Union, ensuring that the two Communist giants would be closer to America than they were to each other. All throughout, we threaded the needle on the issue of nuclear weapons, working with sworn adversaries to promote nuclear non-proliferation.
Washington’s Cold War foreign policy was by no means perfect. But the diplomats of this era learned the value of reluctant cooperation over unilateral exertions of strength. It is no wonder that George Kennan, the primary architect of our Cold War doctrine, lamented NATO expansion in 1998 as “a tragic mistake” and “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”16 In order to lead our values to victory over the Soviet bloc, Washington had to fine-tune a careful, conciliatory foreign policy, one that stressed cooperation with our allies and strategic compromise with our opponents. Just as we once achieved détente with two of our greatest adversaries, we should once again take great steps to avoid provocation, considering how other great powers may react before moving a piece on the grand chessboard. By relearning some of the doctrines of a not-too-distant past, we might just succeed in weathering the storms of this young century.
Edited by Kyler Kantz, Patrick Swain, and Clara Durski.
Image via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
1. Krauthammer, Charles. “The Unipolar Moment.” Foreign Affairs. Last modified January 1, 1990. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1990-01-01/unipolar-moment.
2. Allen, Michael A., et al. “The US Military Presence in Europe Has Been Declining for 30 Years – the Current Crisis in Ukraine May Reverse That Trend.” The Conversation, 6 Oct. 2022, https://theconversation.com/the-us-military-presence-in-europe-has-been-declining-for-30-years-the-current-crisis-in-ukraine-may-reverse-that-trend-175595.
3. Bandow, Doug. “It’s Time to End Japan’s Defense Dependence on the United States.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 28 Jan. 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2013/01/28/its-time-to-end-japans-defense-dependence-on-the-united-states/.
4. China, and Russian Federation. Letter, “Letter dated 15 May 1997 from the Permanent Representatives of China and the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General.,” May 15, 1997. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/234074?ln=en.
5. “Russia’s War in Ukraine: Insights from Rand.” RAND Corporation, https://www.rand.org/latest/russia-ukraine.html.
6. Holmes, Frank. “Russia Is the Target of the Harshest Sanctions on Record. Will They Be Enough?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 7 Mar. 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2022/03/07/russia-is-the-target-of-the-harshest-sanctions-on-record-will-they-be-enough/?sh=20694fa5b026.
7. NATO. “Why Was NATO Founded?” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, https://www.nato.int/wearenato/why-was-nato-founded.html.
8. “Seven new members join NATO.” North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Last modified March 29, 2004. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://www.nato.int/docu/update/2004/03-march/e0329a.htm.
9. Gidadhubli, R. G. “Expansion of NATO: Russia’s Dilemma.” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 19 (2004): 1885-87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4414989.
10. Erlanger, Steven, and Steven Lee Myers. “NATO Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia and Ukraine.” The New York Times. Last modified April 3, 2008. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/world/europe/03nato.html.
11. NATO prefers to avoid admitting nations with disputed territory. Follain, John. “How a Country Joins NATO (and Why Putin Cares).” Bloomberg, 12 Jan. 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-12/how-a-country-joins-nato-and-why-putin-cares-quicktake.
12. Isachenkov, Vladimir. “EXPLAINER: The story behind Ukraine’s separatist regions.” Associated Press. Last modified February 21, 2022. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-russia-vladimir-putin-moscow-bcd0c04a2aa146e76b7e757f482f27bb.
13. Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. “U.S. Security Cooperation with Ukraine.” U.S. Department of State. Last modified September 16, 2022. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine/.
14. Bowen, Andrew S. “Russian Military Buildup Along the Ukrainian Border.” Congressional Research Service. Last modified February 7, 2022. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11806.
15. Carpenter, Ted Galen. “The U.S. and NATO Helped Trigger the Ukraine War. It’s Not ‘Siding With Putin’ to Admit It.” The Cato Institute. Last modified March 7, 2022. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://cato.org/commentary/us-nato-helped-trigger-ukraine-war-its-not-siding-putin-admit-it.
16. Friedman, Thomas L. “Foreign Affairs; Now a Word From X.” The New York Times. Last modified May 2, 1998. Accessed September 26, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/opinion/foreign-affairs-now-a-word-from-x.html.
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