Stephen Kinzer’s book Boiling Point argues that the 2022 Russian invasion was not “unprovoked,” tracing 75 years of U.S. efforts—from early Cold War covert operations to post-1991 promotion of anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism—to turn Ukraine into a counterweight against Moscow.

Kinzer contends a simple public declaration that Ukraine would not join NATO could have prevented the war, and he advocates a neutral status modeled on Austria rather than continued confrontation, noting that Washington privately acknowledged Ukraine was not ready for membership.

He attributes much of U.S. policy to officials with Eastern European family backgrounds who shaped Democratic administrations’ approach, and he sees the conflict as a great-power rivalry that has devastated Ukraine while primarily serving to weaken Russia, with little prospect of early NATO expansion or easy postwar reconstruction.

In his new book, Boiling Point, journalist and historian Stephen Kinzer traces decades of US involvement in Ukraine, which helped start one of the deadliest and most consequential conflicts in the 21st century.

The narrative surrounding the Ukraine war often marks its beginning on February 24, 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. But the rivalries and political decisions that brought the two countries into conflict stretch back centuries. The start of the Cold War, meanwhile, was the beginning of sustained US efforts to further antagonize Ukraine’s relationship with Moscow.

In his new book, Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine, author Stephen Kinzer presents an account of how successive US administrations sought to cultivate Ukrainian nationalism and challenge Moscow, helping set the stage for conflict. Instead of viewing the invasion in isolation, Kinzer details Washington’s involvement over decades, from covert CIA operations in Soviet Ukraine during the early Cold War to Ukrainian independence and the post-Cold War tensions with Russia over NATO expansion, which all culminated in the outbreak of war.

Kinzer provides an extensive, detailed account of the history of US foreign policy in the region, without losing sight of the larger geopolitical forces at play. By challenging the conventional narrative of the war’s origins, Kinzer offers a deeply researched perspective largely absent from mainstream discussions.

Understanding the decades of geopolitical competition and political motives that preceded the war is essential to seeing why it began and where it might lead. Any eventual peace settlement will pose difficult questions about territory and security guarantees, as well as Ukraine’s reconstruction and place between Europe and Russia. The war will likely end without resolving Ukrainian and Russian divisions that, as Kinzer describes in his book, US policy helped deepen, leaving both countries and the wider region to contend with the consequences for years to come.

As a journalist, author, and historian, Kinzer has spent decades examining American foreign policy, interventionism, and the consequences of US involvement abroad. His work has appeared in The New York Times and other major publications, and he’s written several books exploring America’s role in shaping international affairs. I spoke with him about the history behind Boiling Point, the choices that might have prevented the war, and what he believes lies ahead for Ukraine.

John P. Ruehl: Your new book, Boiling Point, examines the history of US policy toward Ukraine and Russia, tracing Washington’s efforts since the end of World War II to cultivate Ukrainian nationalism and challenge Moscow’s influence. It looks at how those efforts contributed to the tensions that ultimately erupted into the ongoing war in Ukraine.

To start, could you tell us a little about the book, its central argument, and the history you believe readers need to understand to make sense of the war today?

Stephen Kinzer: One of the points that I hope people will take away from this book is that much of what we have been told about the Ukraine war is wrong. And, in particular, there’s one word we constantly hear about the Russian invasion, and it was that word, really, that set me off after about the 200th time I heard it, and that word, of course, is unprovoked. We always read about that not just the February invasion, or the Russian invasion, or the military invasion, but the unprovoked invasion. Now, you can say a lot of things about this invasion, for example, that it was illegal under international law, just like many American operations have been, but it was definitely not unprovoked. How do I justify that statement? That’s my book.

The book traces 75 years of uninterrupted American plans to turn Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia. This began with the dropping of armed commandos into Ukraine back in the late 1940s, and it continued through a whole series of covert actions leading up to Ukrainian independence in 1991; then the project went into overdrive. [The US] spent huge amounts of money promoting anti-government groups in Ukraine and groups that would support the idea of confrontation with Russia.

That finally exploded. You might make an argument that we did the right thing to provoke Russia and to promote all this nationalist feeling in Ukraine. And I’m okay with that. But before you make any judgment on the justice or nature of the Ukraine war, you should know what happened before.

If you look at a snapshot of… February 24, 2022, you will see what happened. Russia invaded a peaceful country, Ukraine. But that picture should really be seen as just one frame in a very long movie that unfolded over 75 years. My book is an attempt to show you the real........

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