This truth upsets Washington's sense of its own geopolitical primacy, and Brussels' sense of its own geopolitical non-zero-sum-ness.
It also complicates the "just stop expanding NATO" line, because stopping NATO won't make the problem go away.
It's worth remembering that Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine was sparked *by a trade treaty*, not by a near- or even mid-term threat of NATO expansion.
And no, the EU is not a back door to NATO. If anything, the NATO is a back door to the EU, which is much, much harder to join.
Moscow's problem with the EU is geo-economic, which should not be read as being somehow less salient than geo-politics. Put briefly, the continued expansion of the European geo-economic project poses a threat to the current Kremlin's political survival.
The expansion of EU influence puts insurmountable pressure on the Russian political economy to move from a rent-based, patronal model of wealth creation and power relations, to a system of institutionalized competition.
Having satellite states that are governed in the same patronalist mode as Russia gives Moscow geo-economic breathing space, adding years or decades to the system's viability. Losing those satellites removes those years and decades.
That's why Moscow needs an effective veto not over Kyiv's defense policy, but over its ability to integrate with the EU, to reform its institutions, and to reorient its markets -- a veto that the Donbas war makes possible.
That's also why NATO is a red herring. Yes, a Ukraine that is in NATO -- or greatly supported by NATO -- can resist or even reverse the pressure exerted via the Donbas. But keeping Ukraine out of NATO won't be enough for Moscow, if Kyiv keeps pursuing ties with the EU.
And it's why the 'Finlandization' idea is so pernicious: it means allowing Moscow to dictate not only Ukraine's security relationships, but its economic relationships, too. (Remember that Finland and Austria didn't join the EU until 1995!)
And no, geo-economic 'Finlandization' isn't an option. It is impossible -- as a matter of economic governance, and as a matter of customs law -- to integrate simultaneously with the EU and the EEU. One way or another, Ukraine will be forced to choose a primary trading bloc.
Now, I'm not here to say that Moscow is out to destroy the EU. It isn't, and Moscow profits -- to a degree -- from having the EU as a trading partner. But only to a degree.
Even within its current borders, the EU puts immense pressure on Russia to do things like adapt the natural gas sector -- the country's biggest source of rents -- to fit the Third Energy Package.
Moscow's worst nightmare isn't hypersonic missiles in Ukraine -- it's the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
Now imagine that mechanism -- and others like it -- extended to Ukraine, and maybe you begin to get my point.
In other words, while NATO is easy to set up rhetorically as a threat to Russian security -- a threat that Moscow knows is highly unlikely ever to materialize -- it is the EU that poses the clearest and most present danger to the Kremlin's ability to maintain power.
It's gratifying to see how much attention this thread has garnered -- almost all of it constructive.
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but this is not the end of Trump. To paraphrase Churchill, it’s not even the beginning of the end. And to be honest, I’m not sure that it’s the end of the beginning.
Any jubilation is misplaced, I’m afraid.
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Trump’s response to these verdicts is the logical continuation of his response to the election. In that regard, I’m not worried about people storming the courthouse. The capacity of Trumpworld for violence is, I think, overrated.
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A violent challenge to the system requires an appetite for risk and a degree of solidarity that I don’t see in Trump’s supporters. The Jan. 6 prosecutions and the lack of aftermath make that clear. But the non-violent risk is almost worse.
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For context and insight, it might be useful to go back to something @gbrunc and I described in "Putin vs the People", about how Putin understands and utilizes crises and tragedies:
So many thoughts have been expressed in the time that it has taken me to collect my own, that I'm not sure what this is worth. By the key words are Navalny's own: не сдавайтесь. Don't surrender.
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Navalny is not the first of Putin's political opponents to die. He will not likely be the last. But it is up to those who care to find a way -- any way -- to keep Russia's other political prisoners alive. The pressure must always be on.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza. Ilya Yashin. These names you know, or should know. Evan Gershkovich, too. Or Navalny's own lawyers, Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser. But there are hundreds more.
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This excellent thread from @DrRadchenko is in part a rebuttal to one aspect of my thread yesterday, in which I argued, inter alia, that Putin needs a forever war. Sergey argues Putin needs victory and would be happy for the war to end. It’s worth unpacking this.
First, I think we both agree that Putin needs the war to continue — in some form or another — through the March 2024 presidential election. The Kremlin has predicated Putin’s campaign on this war continuing and will not want to pivot too quickly.
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Second, I agree with Sergey’s point that, from a macro-historical perspective, there is no predetermination here. I also share Sergey’s aversion to monocausal explanations. It was never inevitable that Putin would take this path.
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Does Vladimir Putin want negotiations? Almost certainly yes.
Does Putin want to negotiate? Almost certainly not.
The difference is not semantic.
(A long-ish 🧵)
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We have all, by now, read the reporting in the @nytimes about "quiet signals" evidently being sent from the Kremlin to Washington. We have all, I imagine, also seen the criticism of that reporting on this website and elsewhere.
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And, to be sure, we have also seen Russia's continual escalation of its violence in Ukraine, including today's massive aerial bombardment of civilians.
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I’d ignore the bluster about weapons production. Yes, of course Russia makes more than Ukraine. We already knew that. And so did the people Putin’s talking to.
But why throw ideology into the mix?
Because it’s ideology, not artillery, that wins the war at home for Putin.
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Putin is asking people in the Russian military to believe that this is a war worth fighting. He’s asking the rest of the elite and society to believe this is a war worth making sacrifices for. Ideology is key to both, but not in a straightforward way.
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