Ukraine, Multipolarity and the Crisis of Grand Strategies

ABSTRACT Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has unleashed the largest and most lethal war on the European continent since 1945. Vladimir Putin and the Russian government bear most of the responsibility for the invasion and its terrible humanitarian consequences. However, explanations for the war deriving from Russian domestic political dynamics or Vladimir Putin’s imperial nostalgia do not provide a comprehensive understanding of the crisis that led to war. Situating the crisis and ensuing invasion within the broader historical context of post-Cold War relations, we argue that the war in Ukraine has two main sources. The first is the longstanding Anglo-American grand strategy of NATO consolidation as a vehicle for political and economic domination in Europe. The second is the grand strategy of Russia. Unable to accommodate itself on an equal basis in the new U.S.-led post-Cold War global capitalist order, Russia gradually adopted a geopolitical and nationalistic agenda of confrontation in response to NATO’s seemingly inexorable eastward advance, its increasing participation in ‘out of area’ activities, and the United States’ illegal invasions of Serbia, Iraq, and Libya. The collision of these grand strategies has triggered simultaneously a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty and independence and a U.S.-Russia proxy war.