Thread
To help provide context and analysis of the 🇺🇦-🇷🇺 War that is grounded in international relations scholarship, here is an updated 🧵of the threads I've written over the past few months (and years) offering perspective on the 🇺🇦-🇷🇺 relationship and conflict.
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First, it's critical to understand that a war b/w Russia and Ukraine has been long in the making. Since the early 1990s, observers of the region recognized that Ukraine represented the key post-Cold War flashpoint in Europe
Second, some claim that "the West" exacerbated an already tense relationship (see above) by pushing NATO expansion after the Cold War. In particular, it's claimed that the USA promised the USSR that NATO would never expand. Is that true? Partially.
Third, even if you don't buy 🇷🇺's claims about a pledge, you could still say that @NATO pushed the limits of expansion (poking the bear?) when it admitted the Baltic states (🇪🇪🇱🇻🇱🇹) in the early 2000s. How did that happen?
Fourth, important to remember that this war is really an escalation of a internal conflict (and proxy @NATO-Russia war) that has raged in Eastern Ukraine since 2014. Indeed, USA aid to Ukraine to help fight that war made Ukraine highly dependent on the USA
Fifth, recall that Trump leveraging Ukraine's dependency on USA aid is what lead to his first impeachment.
Sixth, now that invasion has begun, how will it unfold? Specifically, what are Russia's (read: Putin's) aims?
Finally, the current war solidifies a lesson I've long shared with my students (and have shared here on Twitter many times): Russia is THE central player in the major wars over the past 200+ years.
Addition 1: There are concerns that the war has gone from "a crisis with nuclear powers" to a "nuclear crisis". Here I lay out reasons to there are concerns nuclear weapons could be used
Addition 2: In this threaded response to @McFaul, I elaborate on why this situation is unprecedented
Addition 3: From sanctions, to macroeconomic disruptions, to war finance and supply, a 🧵 on the economics of the Ukraine-Russian War.
Addition 4: 🧵with my counter-argument to the "US/West is to blame for Russia’s invasion" claim.
I claim that an alternative IR theory -- offensive realism -- offers "a better" (not necessarily "best") explanation (& point to the irony in my claim).
I claim that an alternative IR theory -- offensive realism -- offers "a better" (not necessarily "best") explanation (& point to the irony in my claim).
Addition 5: 🧵 on the downsides and potential faults in the economic sanctions imposed by the international community
Addition 6: In this threaded response, I elaborate on why the sustainability of the sanctions (i.e. holding the coalition together) is my primary reason for questioning whether the sanctions will eventually prove effective.
Addition 7: Determining when this war becomes (or already is) a "World War" (or, at minimum, a war between major powers) requires defining "participation": is it only when a country's troops are involved in direct, sustained fighting?
Addition 8: 🇷🇺's war economy is leaving it vulnerable to becoming dependent on 🇨🇳, just as 🇬🇧's war economy during World War I made it dependent on 🇺🇸
Addition 8: In 1918, defaulting on external debt at the end of WWI was a way for the Bolsheviks to dissociate from the Tsarist regime. In 2022, a default in the middle of the war with Ukraine would delegitimize Putin's own regime.
Addition 9: Wars commonly end in settlements, so ending this war means coming to terms with offering 🇷🇺 an "off ramp". What might that be? Hard to say.
Addition 10: Russia has a long history of using an "attrition model": keep taking losses until the other side quits, is destroyed, or, if the fighting goes long enough, Russia itself decides to stop fighting.
Addition 11: Despite rhetoric suggesting otherwise, this war undermines Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" thesis. He identified 🇺🇦-🇷🇺 as a crucial case for his theory.
Addition 12: The UNSC has received a lot of blame for not doing "enough" for Ukraine. But that criticism misses the point of the UNSC
Addition 13: Is being under NATO's Article 5 Protection worth all the fuss (e.g. Finland and Sweden joining)? Seems so.
