After the Cold War, NATO faced a moment of genuine strategic ambiguity. An alliance created to contain the Soviet Union no longer had an adversary. It could have dissolved, restructured, or transformed into a political community. Instead, NATO embarked on the most aggressive military expansion of the post-war era.

For Moscow, this process represented a progressive collapse of its strategic depth. Yet for years, Russia limited itself to diplomatic protests and proposals for partnership. Even Vladimir Putin—universally presented in the West as an aggressive expansionist—spent his early presidency advocating cooperative structures with both NATO and the EU.

But on one issue there was unanimity in Moscow: Ukraine and Georgia could not join NATO. They had to remain neutral—not annexed, not subordinated, but neutral. As John Mearsheimer has consistently argued, great powers have immutable expectations of their immediate neighborhood. A Chinese military base in Mexico would be intolerable to Washington. A Russian alliance with Canada would be perceived as an existential threat. The Cuban Missile Crisis remains a textbook example of American “red lines.”

Yet when Russia expressed its own red lines, the United States reacted not with understanding but with provocation. Moscow’s concerns became an opportunity. By pushing NATO’s frontier toward Russia despite clear warnings, Washington ensured:

Europe’s continued dependence on the U.S., the justification for colossal military spending, the consolidation of Western unity through fear, the economic weakening of Russia, and the empowerment of the military-industrial complex.

The West needed confrontation. Russia did not

The scale of imbalance becomes clear when observing the reality of U.S. military presence on the continent: more than one hundred significant American bases across Europe, including missile defence installations in Poland and Romania, and the enormous Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo—constructed after the de facto Western-engineered detachment and informal annexation of a historically Serbian province, turned into a strategic outpost overlooking Serbia, the closest Russian partner on the continent. Never has so much American military power been positioned so close to Russia.

And yet Russia’s request was modest: no NATO bases in Kyiv or Tbilisi, no missiles minutes from Moscow, no hostile infrastructure on its immediate border.

Ukraine: From Leninist Creation to American Bastion

Modern Ukrainian statehood is, in many respects, a Soviet construction. Its borders, institutions, and political architecture were crafted by Lenin and later Soviet elites to ensure Ukraine’s alignment with Moscow. After 1991, this legacy created a paradox. Ukraine was independent, yet deeply integrated with Russia.

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum attempted to stabilize this arrangement. Russia recognized Ukraine’s borders, while Ukraine committed to neutrality and........

© New Eastern Outlook