Richard Sakwa, Britain’s foremost scholar of Russian politics and foreign policy, has written a detailed and highly illuminating account of the Ukrainian crisis. Frontline Ukraine interweaves historical narrative with a foreign policy critique that derives largely from a realist approach to international relations. The central point of his argument is not just that there is both a domestic and an international component to this crisis, but that they feed on each other.

On the domestic side, Sakwa points to the persistence of two mutually exclusive approaches to state building in Ukrainian politics. The “Orange” approach, named after the color adopted by the 2004 Maidan (Independence Square) protesters, is “a type of ‘monism’” or “monist nationalism” that emphasizes the singularity of the Ukrainian experience. It is opposed by the “Blue” approach, which argues that the country must embrace the diversity of its cultural and historical experience.

According to Sakwa, the present Ukrainian crisis is the result of the rise to power and institutionalization of “restitutive nationalism,” the ideology which lies at the heart of the Orange Revolution. Supporters of this ideology seek to “restore” the nation to what it ought to be; that is, more “truly Ukrainian.” The current situation, where large swaths of the population in the East and South speak Russian and comfortably blend Ukrainian and Russian culture, is unacceptable to monists because it is the result of centuries of “Russian imperial oppression.” Russian speakers are thus made to feel that they are not “real Ukrainians,” and their hope for a culturally pluralistic national identity is labeled treason. According to the author, in the process “a hate-filled generation was being nurtured” (p. 163).

The sequence of events that began in 2014, from the unconstitutional removal of Viktor Yanukovych to the secession and then annexation of Crimea by Russia, to the smoldering rebellion in Donbass region, are all, says Sakwa, a logical consequence of this conflict of visions. It is therefore not surprising to him that what supporters of the Orange sought to portray as a “European choice” developed with close ties to the Far Right, whose “integral nationalism,” inherited from the Ukrainian nationalistic organizations that attacked Poles, Soviets, and Jews during World War II, was far better attuned to the values of monist nationalism than to liberal democracy.

As divisive as the domestic aspect of the Ukrainian crisis is, however, it was exacerbated by the similarly “monist” approach that Western statesmen often took to European security. This too has a back story that Sakwa, like George F. Kennan, traces to NATO expansion.

At the end of the Cold War, Russia was effectively shut out from the European alliance system. The failure to establish a genuinely inclusive and equal European security system then combined with a “powerful Wilsonian strain of liberal interventionism in Washington” to set the stage for the current crisis in Ukraine (p. 219).

Much of the blame for this lies with the European Union, according to Sakwa, which instead of trying to be an honest broker between the parties in Ukraine, openly supported the Orange against the Blue. In doing so, he argues, the EU discredited the very notion of dialogue (p. 234), and greatly contributed to what he terms “the suicide of Europe” (p. 227).

It is the overlap of these two monist visions, one in the domestic arena, the other in international relations, that has turned Ukraine into “the sharpest manifestation of instability of the post-Cold War international system” (p. 3).

It is worth noting that Sakwa does not argue that Russia’s behavior is without fault. He describes Russia as a “neo-revisionist power” that is quite willing to challenge the international status quo, which, he argues, turned against it after 2003 (see Chapter 2). But Sakwa believes that Russia’s neo-revisionism does not seek to change the fundamentals of the international system, but rather to ensure that Russia is treated as an equal in the current system.

The charge that is frequently made in the West—that Russia is seeking to undermine the international system—is therefore false. It is, however, trying to challenge the preeminence of U.S. interests in the global order. Russia, says Sakwa, had hoped “that there was space in which it could sustain its ‘quiet rise,’ on the Chinese model” (p. 235). Alas, it seriously miscalculated America’s willingness to abide such a challenge. Now that Russian honor and Vladimir Putin’s personal prestige is at stake, the country cannot (publicly) back down.

Sakwa’s insightful and original arguments are supported by a wealth of documentation. Despite their complexity, his arguments are easy to follow, and, much to his credit, he eschews the polemics that dominate this topic.

There are few things that I wish Sakwa had dealt with in greater detail. For example, he points out that Donbass military commander Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov) “claimed to have been ‘the one who pulled the trigger on this war’” (p. 150), though that distinction has recently also been claimed by the former head of the Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh. The latter’s account adds tantalizing new details about how parts of the Ukrainian government worked to undermine the Geneva peace talks in May 2014 before any serious fighting (“Pershii nastupalnyi byi viyni vidbuvsia 20 kvitnia 2014-go,” Censor.net, April 22, 2016, http://censor.net.ua/r385673). More might also have been said about the three National Dialogue Roundtables on resolving the crisis in Eastern Ukraine that were held under the auspices of former ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, and why they led nowhere.

Aside from noting the role of the United States in assisting the Maidan protestors before February 2014, and in the appointment of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, there is little mention of the direct role that the United States has assumed in current Ukrainian politics, even though a number of former appointees of Petro Poroshenko, like the former governor of Donbass Sergei Taruta, have candidly described it as “external administration” (“Nyneshnee rukovodstvo pogubit Ukrainu,” Interfax-Ukraina, August 30, 2016, http://interfax.com.ua/news/interview/366544.html).

Despite these minor oversights, however, Frontline Ukraine is clearly the gold standard for anyone wishing to understand the underlying causes of Ukraine’s seemingly endless political crises, and how the West got involved in them.

Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer’s Conflict in Ukraine seeks answers to the same questions, but with much less attention to the domestic context. Instead, it focuses on Ukraine as a foreign policy problem. After cursorily acknowledging the significance of regional diversity, the authors shift to referring to “Ukrainians” monolithically, essentially dismissing the political significance of those selfsame regional differences. That seems to have been a conscious choice, since they view the conflict primarily in the context of Russian-Ukrainian relations, whereas Sakwa views it in the context of Ukrainian-Ukrainian relations.

Menon and Rumer pay particular attention to the motives for Russian intervention, which they link to the need for a new ideological foundation for Russian foreign policy. They find this new foundation in the writings of Alexander Dugin and the “Eurasianists” who, they claim, were propelled “to the leading ranks of the new, muscular brand of Russian foreign and security policy ideologues” by the annexation of Crimea (p. 95).

There is precious little evidence, however, that either Dugin or any other Eurasianist thinker has had much impact on Russian foreign policy. Although both Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have often quoted émigré thinkers, I cannot recall either of them quoting any who were Eurasianists. As for Dugin, he publicly blamed Putin for his June 2014 firing from his job at Moscow State University.

On the other hand, the concept of the “Russian World,” which Menon and Rumer also talk about, is a much more important concept whose history goes back more than a century. It is a cultural and religious notion that originated in Ukraine, and is often attributed to St. Laurentius of Chernigov (1868–1950). It remains less politically significant in Russia than in Ukraine, where it serves as a cultural antipode to the current government’s monist view of Ukrainian identity.

The authors are clearly at their best when discussing the foreign policy implications of this crisis. At times, however, their focus on Western foreign policy concerns serves to mask preexisting tensions. This is the case in their discussion of the secession and annexation of Crimea, which fails to deal seriously with the apprehensions that most Crimeans had at the time toward the new regime in Kiev. That Ukrainian leaders knew full well of these sentiments has recently been revealed by the publication of the notes of the February 28, 2014, meeting of the Ukrainian National Council for Security and Defense (“Kak ‘teryali’ Krym,” Segodnya.ua 22 February 2016, http://u.to/6Z04Dw).

One point that both books agree on is that the West erred grossly in failing to conceive of a post—Cold War security framework that could include Russia. Ultimately, however, Menon and Rumer conclude that pragmatism will win out and that NATO will eventually “extend the olive branch to Moscow,” which the latter will eagerly accept. This reassuring vision privileges Realpolitik over hurt pride and emotion, but after the failure of so many efforts to resolve the current crisis, is such complacency really warranted?

Ultimately, Menon and Rumer’s optimism is based on all sides seeing the advantages of supporting the current world order. But it is not at all clear why these advantages were not already apparent two or three years ago. Moreover, it is clear that the current Ukrainian leadership sees no advantages to returning to the previous security arrangements in Europe, and fully intends to hold its Western partners to a new standard.

This highlights the main problem with focusing so heavily on the foreign policy aspect of this crisis. By conflating the two crises—European security and Ukrainian instability—into one, Menon and Rumer tend to lose sight of Ukraine itself. Sakwa’s decision to distinguish between the two crises allows him to give domestic factors their proper weight, while also acknowledging Ukraine’s centrality to the conflicting notions of security being proposed by the EU and Russia.

This is a rather important distinction. Menon and Rumer rather simplistically assume that there must be one source for the current crisis: But for Moscow’s interference, there would be no Ukrainian crisis, and if that external threat is contained, Ukraine will heal itself.

Sakwa, on the other hand, believes that the Ukrainian crisis has been long in the making. The Russian and Western responses were not preordained, but emerged from the state of relations at the time. Ukraine, however, will not be able to heal itself, or be anything but a source of international tension, until its political elite come to terms with the fact that it is a bicultural nation.

The contrast between these two views, and their foreign policy implications, could not be more striking.