Russia's Wars in Georgia and Crimea Were Warnings the West Chose to Ignore

A speech, a short war, a plastic button, an annexation and two cease-fire agreements. That is a short list for fifteen years of history, and every item on it was a warning. The trouble with warnings is that they only help if somebody reads them, and between 2007 and 2015 the West read them, nodded gravely, and filed them under "regrettable."

I want to lay the record out in dated order and let the dates do the arguing. The claim is narrow and, I think, hard to dispute: Moscow tested Western resolve in Georgia in 2008 and in Crimea in 2014, the costs it paid were small relative to what it gained, and a regime that gains more than it pays tends to try again. That is a claim about incentives, and the dates will show the incentives. It is not a claim about the present battlefield, and I will not make one.

Some terms first. Annexation means a state formally taking another's territory. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 was a set of political assurances given to Ukraine, by Russia, the United States and Britain, when Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union. Minsk agreements are the two cease-fire arrangements, in 2014 and 2015, meant to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Reset was the Obama administration's name for its 2009 effort to improve relations with Russia.

The setup: 1994 to 2007

December 5, 1994: the Budapest Memorandum. Russia, the United States and Britain gave Ukraine assurances regarding its independence, sovereignty and existing borders when Ukraine agreed to transfer the nuclear weapons on its soil to Russia and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Why it mattered: it was Russia's own signature on respect for Ukraine's borders, which makes the events of 2014 a violation of a commitment made twenty years earlier, not a dispute over a gray area. It was a political assurance, not a defense treaty, and critics have long noted that a promise without a mechanism is only as good as the promisor.

1999 to 2000. Vladimir Putin became prime minister, then president. Moscow fought a second war in Chechnya. The pattern of a strongman consolidating power at home and a harsh war on the periphery was in place before most of the Western world was paying attention.

February 10, 2007: the Munich speech. At the Munich Security Conference, Putin gave a long address in which he declared the unipolar world untenable, criticized American use of force and argued that NATO's enlargement had no connection to European security. Why it mattered: it was a public statement of grievance and intent from the head of a major power. You can argue about whether the grievances were fair, and I will do so below. You cannot argue that he kept his views a secret.

The Georgia war: 2008

April 3, 2008: Bucharest. At a NATO summit, the alliance declared that Georgia and Ukraine "will become members of NATO," but declined to give either a Membership Action Plan, the formal road to joining. Why it mattered: it was the worst of both worlds. The language gave Moscow a reason to feel threatened, and the withholding of the plan gave Moscow reason to think the West would not follow through. A promise without a commitment is an invitation.

August 7 to 8, 2008: the war begins. Georgia and its breakaway region South Ossetia had been in a low-level conflict for years, with Russian "peacekeepers" in the region. On the night of August 7, Georgian forces shelled the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, and Russia sent forces across the border in strength, pushing deep into Georgia proper. It is worth being fair about the origin of the shooting. An independent European Union report, issued in 2009 under the Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, concluded that the onus for triggering the war lay with Georgia, and also that Russia bore blame for a substantial number of violations of international law, with both sides responsible for the escalation. I report both findings because the facts are not tidy.

August 12, 2008: the cease-fire. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, representing the European Union, brokered a six-point cease-fire. The main fighting was brief, a matter of days.

August 26, 2008: recognition. Russia formally recognized South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent states. Almost no other country followed. Why it mattered: Russia had used force to change a European border, and then dressed the result in the language of self-determination. Russian troops stayed.

The Western response. It was real and limited. The United States sent humanitarian aid, including by military aircraft and naval ships, and in September 2008 the Bush administration withdrew from Congress a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia. NATO suspended the formal meetings of the NATO-Russia Council. The measures hurt Moscow's image more than its position.

The reset: 2009 to 2012

March 6, 2009: the button. In Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a gift: a small box with a red button, labeled in Russian to say "reset." The Russian word on it turned out to be the one for "overload," a mistake that Lavrov pointed out on the spot. The press loved it. I mention the gag because it captures the problem. The policy intended to say that we are turning a page, and the page it turned to was only seven months after Russian tanks had crossed an international border.

The reset produced some results. In April 2010, the two countries signed the New START treaty in Prague, limiting deployed strategic nuclear warheads, and there was cooperation on supply routes to Afghanistan. Those are fair credits. But the central logic, that the 2008 war could be set aside to make room for broader cooperation, sent a message about how Western governments weigh a breach of the European order against a signature on an arms control agreement.

March 26, 2012: the open microphone. At a summit in Seoul, President Obama, believing the microphones were off, told the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that after his reelection he would have "more flexibility" on missile defense. The remark was not a state secret, but it was a good picture of the mood: a President eager for accommodation, speaking in the one setting where he thought no one was listening.

Crimea: 2014

February 21 to 22, 2014. After months of protests in Kyiv, centered on the Maidan square and triggered by the government's decision to shelve an association agreement with the European Union, President Viktor Yanukovych left the capital and the parliament removed him. Russia called it a coup.

February 27, 2014. Armed men in uniforms without insignia seized the Crimean parliament building and key sites on the peninsula. Moscow said at first that they were local self-defense forces. In April, Putin acknowledged that they were Russian soldiers. Why it mattered: it was the use of deniable force against a neighbor, and the denial was exposed within weeks, a bit of theater with no real audience.

March 16, 2014. A referendum was held on the peninsula, under the guns of the armed men, with a result announced at an implausible level. Western governments and Ukraine said it was illegitimate.

March 18, 2014. Russia signed a treaty absorbing Crimea. It was a plain violation of the spirit of the 1994 assurances, and a formal seizure of a neighbor's territory in the middle of Europe.

March 27, 2014. The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution affirming Ukraine's territorial integrity and declaring the referendum invalid. The vote was 100 in favor, 11 against, and 58 abstentions. Why it mattered: the world majority said no, and the majority did nothing more.

March 2014 onward: the response. The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on a list of Russian and Crimean officials and some companies, and later on larger sectors of the Russian economy. Russia was suspended from the group of eight leading industrial nations, which went back to being the G7, and the planned summit in Sochi was canceled. These steps were meaningful. They did not restore Crimea, and by design they were calibrated not to do so.

The war in the east and the Minsk agreements

April 2014. Armed groups seized government buildings in cities of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and a war began. Ukraine called it a Russian-backed operation, and Russia denied direct involvement while its support of the separatists was documented by observers.

July 17, 2014. A Malaysia Airlines passenger plane, Flight MH17, was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard. An international investigation led by the Netherlands concluded that it had been brought down by a Buk missile fired from territory held by the separatists.

September 5, 2014: Minsk I. Representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the separatists signed a protocol on a cease-fire. It did not hold.

February 12, 2015: Minsk II. After more fighting, the leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine met in the Belarusian capital and reached a second package of measures, including a cease-fire, a withdrawal of heavy weapons and a political settlement. Why it mattered: the agreements froze the front without resolving its causes, and each side read the text differently. A cease-fire that leaves the aggressor holding what it took is a reward in diplomatic dress.

The arms question. The Obama administration declined to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons, including anti-tank missiles. In December 2017, the Trump administration approved lethal arms sales to Ukraine, and in March 2018 the State Department approved the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles. Whatever you think of each decision, the contrast tells you how much was left undone in the intervening years.

The pattern in numbered premises

Let me draw the argument out of the dates.

1. Moscow stated its grievances in public, in 2007. No one can say they were not told.
2. In 2008 it used force to alter a border and paid little. The cost was a pause in NATO-Russia meetings and a withdrawn nuclear cooperation agreement.
3. In 2009 the West proposed a reset. Whatever its merits, it showed that the 2008 war had not changed the Western approach.
4. In 2014 it used force again, against a country that had been promised respect for its borders. The costs were sanctions, which hurt, and a suspension from the G8.
5. The Minsk agreements left Moscow holding the gains. A regime that sees that sequence will draw a conclusion about the price of the next step.

The strongest objection

There is a serious counter-argument, and it is not simply Kremlin propaganda. Some scholars, including prominent realists, argue that NATO enlargement provoked Russia, that the Bucharest language was reckless and that a more modest Western policy would have kept the peace. On this view, Georgia and Crimea were responses to Western overreach, and the lesson is to avoid drawing lines we are not prepared to defend.

I will answer in three points, taking the objection at its strongest.

First, the Bucharest point is partly right. The declaration was careless, as I said above. It promised what it did not plan to deliver. But that is an argument that the West was unclear, not that Moscow was provoked into invasion. A neighbor is not entitled to invade a country because it dislikes the country's foreign policy.

Second, the grievance does not explain the means. Governments disagree about alliances all the time without seizing territory. The choice to send tanks across a border was a choice, and Russia's own 1994 signature, and a 1997 treaty of friendship with Ukraine, show that it knew where the line was.

Third, the realist argument cuts both ways. If you believe that great powers act on the opportunities they see, then the lesson of 2008 is that opportunities were visible. A realist should prescribe strength, not retreat. The most realistic account of Moscow is that it takes what it can hold. Our own best advice on this is found in Deterrence Fails When an Enemy Thinks You Will Not Pay the Price.

The Founding angle, and what to do with it

Washington's Farewell Address warns against permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world, and a fair reading of it, in What Washington's Farewell Address Really Said About Foreign Entanglements, cautions against both reckless alliances and naive disengagement. The Founders wanted the country to deal with the world from a position of strength and independence. That is a standard worth applying to the question of what America and its allies promised, and what they were willing to enforce. A commitment is only as credible as the means and will behind it. For the text of the alliance that kept Europe at peace for decades, see Read the North Atlantic Treaty, All Fourteen Articles Take Ten Minutes, and for what allies promised to spend on their own defense, see The 2014 Wales Pledge Explained, Where NATO's Two Percent Came From. The Wales summit, remember, was held in 2014, in the shadow of Crimea.

There is also the matter of how to think about American support for Ukraine, which is a real debate among conservatives, and which Should Conservatives Back Ukraine? Two Honest Answers, Weighed Fairly treats fairly. The arms-control record is useful as a comparison, as in The INF Treaty Proved Arms Control Works Only When You Hold Cards, and so is the story of the 1990s drawdown in Peace Dividends Always Come Due, the 1990s Drawdown Reconsidered.

One wry note to close the record. Every few years, a Western official has announced that this time the relationship with Moscow would be reset, restarted, refreshed or rebooted, as though it were a laptop. Relationships between states are not computers. They run on interests, and the interests of a government that treats its neighbors' borders as negotiable do not change because someone presses a button, even one with the right word on it.

The case in brief

1. Moscow stated its grievances plainly at Munich in 2007, and the Bucharest summit of 2008 gave a promise to Georgia and Ukraine that it declined to back with a plan.
2. In August 2008 Russia used force in Georgia, recognized two breakaway regions and paid a modest price, and the 2009 reset showed the approach had not changed.
3. In 2014 Russia annexed Crimea, in violation of the 1994 Budapest assurances, and the response of sanctions and the Minsk agreements left it holding what it took.
4. Fair-minded critics who blame NATO enlargement are partly right about Bucharest's carelessness, but they cannot explain why a grievance justifies an invasion.
5. The lesson is about incentives: aggression that is cheap invites more, and credible deterrence is the cheapest policy in the long run.

What you can do: read the Budapest Memorandum and the NATO Bucharest declaration, both public documents, then write your representative and ask what commitments Congress thinks America has made to its partners, and what it is prepared to enforce.