Jakob Tolstrup could not have had better, or worse, timing in the publication of his book. Anyone who wants to understand the dynamics leading to the greatest post–Cold War geopolitical crisis should read Russia vs. the EU. Tolstrup’s postscript concludes in mid-2013, however, before Euromaidan, and before Russia’s invasion of Crimea. His careful empirical work and theoretical ambition extended to 2013–14 would be invaluable, but only because his account of 1991–2010 is so exceptionally good and remarkably clear in exposition.

Tolstrup compares domestic developments and external influence by Russia and by the European Union (and the United States occasionally) on democratization in Moldova, Belarus, and Ukraine across four time periods. With a positivist epistemology, and broadly adapting the linkages theory associated with Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, he argues convincingly that we ought to complement their approach with his own emphasis on gatekeeper elites in political, economic, and civil society realms. He dispels a few misconceptions but broadly reinforces our sense of democratization and geopolitics.

First, Russia and the EU, for the most part, played the same roles during the last year that they have played for nearly 20 years. The EU is inconsistent. It generally supports democratization, except when visions of Realpolitik and stability take over. Russia almost always favors authoritarian rule, but will sometimes support democratic tendencies when gatekeepers defy Russian interests. Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenka occasionally earned their ire, and moved the Kremlin to support his opposition.

Tolstrup can complicate the moral universe because he breaks down democracy into many dimensions, inspired by Wolfgang Merkel’s scholarship. He thoughtfully distinguishes forms of influence as variations of direct and indirect influence, mainly as positive or negative accelerators or balance tippers. He also explores the conditions under which gatekeepers can build external linkages, or break them. He works very carefully on the borderlands of comparative politics/international relations to build, incrementally but consequentially, what we know in theoretical terms. This is really good work, especially for a first book.

Involved as I am in engaging the contemporary Ukrainian crisis, as most readers of this review should be, I conclude by thinking about how this fine book could inspire a superior approach to that crisis, and how the crisis itself might challenge his own conclusions. With regard to the former, I will mention only three of the many things that one might learn from Tolstrup.

First, the author shows us that the crisis is only an acceleration of what we have seen already. It is not just the 2008 Georgia war but the ways in which Russia’s presence in Transnistria has hobbled Moldova’s democratization that should worry us now that Russia has taken Crimea. The West should have expected that invasion given Vladimir Putin’s past behavior, and should now plan for a different geopolitics based on what might be learned from Moldova and Tolstrup.

Second, the author elaborates how Russia’s modes of influence—from using energy supplies as weapon to blatant information war and political technology—have been refined over these last decades. And that raises a critical question. Is it really adequate for the West to promote general procedural principles over support for particular candidates? One reason Russia keeps winning these battles is that its duplicity—decrying Western meddling while it uses every tool at its disposal to secure electoral outcomes it wishes—seems to work. And when it does not it can go to war. We need more discussion of theory and practice and principles and Realpolitik in democracy’s futures in light of Russia’s behavior.

Third, diplomacy really matters, but when? The West has been pretty good at preventing more severe political repression in these states over the last 20 years. It is generally good in crisis, keeping the bad from getting awful. At least it was before 2014. Diplomacy’s role has certainly diminished in these times. The geopolitical contest that has flared in 2014 is qualitatively different from the already accelerated tensions of the last decade described by Tolstrup. Putin is changing the rules of the game, the terms of the world order. Gatekeepers have to recognize that they cannot so easily play the middle against both sides, as Viktor Yanukovych learned. And thus this raises the question: How does Tolstrup’s leverage/linkages/gatekeeper perspective need evolve in a world whose rules are being transformed?

Putin’s asymmetrical warfare is one thing that changes the terms of the game, but the revolutionary spirit of 2011–13 has changed our sense of the world, too. The Maidan was different from the color revolutions that preceded it, not least for the willingness of youth to meet violence in lesser kind for it, and with the more general awareness that circulations of elites, while necessary, are not sufficient for the transformation of societies, especially when corruption tarnishes all elites. Indeed, variations on that spirit could envelop the world and change our sense of the domestic itself.

It is already a great step to figure the articulation of the domestic and the international in political science, but one might also consider what could happen if that meeting would develop beyond elites and formal rules. If one had a richer sense of the social in the domestic, something Maidan demands, would the black box of values, of societal pressure, play a different role in figuring democratic trajectories? In that light, we might even ask how societies could learn from one another not only in movement repertoires but in moral courage, in expectations of governance, in corruption’s legitimacy.

In that social, intellectual transformation, we might even change this fine book’s question. It is not only a question about Russia versus the EU, or even how those hegemons contest Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus. It is also about the ways in which elites become implicated in one another’s worlds and how publics judge those associations. Ukraine’s struggles today are not just about geopolitical contest, important as that is. They are also about public responsibility and empowerment and how states respect and manipulate those terms of democracy.

Russia vs. the EU is critical reading, not only for those who seek better theories articulating international relations and domestic politics but also for anyone wanting a better understanding of the alternative futures facing Europe and Eurasia and—with thoughtful extension—the world.