This slim volume dispels some myths about the crisis in Ukraine that followed the Euromaidan revolution. Samuel Charap and Timothy Colton challenge several common explanations of the crisis, such as those stressing Russia's imperial ambitions, western expansionism, President Vladimir Putin's preoccupation with his regime's internal stability, and a regionally unbalanced security system. Instead, the authors stress the growing self-adversarial behavior of both the west and Russia, with little effort to find mutually-acceptable solutions and overcome what they call a zero-sum political game in Eurasia.
The book's structure serves the argument well. In the first chapter, titled “Cold Peace,” Charap and Colton lay out the historical preconditions that made it difficult for Russia and the west to agree. They argue that the settlement that officially ended the Cold War was not satisfactory. While Mikhail Gorbachev advocated neutrality for east central Europe, referring to the option as Finlandization, the west embraced the idea of expanding NATO and the EU as its two best-functioning institutions. Both institutions expanded by leaving Russia on the periphery of the new Europe and offering assurances that the expansion would suit Russia's interests by providing stability and good governance. Neither NATO nor the EU were interested in negotiations, instead presenting their decisions to Russia and others in the region as the only choices available. The Kremlin, too, assumed it would dominate in the region through the Commonwealth of Independent States and the application of various bilateral political and economic tools.
The second chapter shows how the established Cold Peace unraveled in the mid-2000s. The color revolutions of 2003–5 caught Russia by surprise and developed the perception in the Kremlin that western security agencies worked to undermine Russia's internal stability and influence in the former Soviet region. In the meantime, NATO and the EU continued to expand and politicians like Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia and Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine pushed for their membership in the new Europe as a way to turn their back on Russia.
These and other developments constituted the context in which the crisis in Ukraine became possible and indeed inevitable. Chapters 3 and 4 document developments preceding and following the Euromaidan revolution and propose solutions to the crisis. The authors identify Russia's and the EU's mutually-exclusive positions regarding potential membership for Ukraine in their political and economic organizations. Before 2013, Moscow was pushing President Viktor Yanukovych to enter the Russia-controlled Customs Union. Moscow then prevailed on Yanukovych not to sign the Associate Agreement with the EU, which set the stage for public protests in Ukraine. All subsequent developments, including political negotiations, elections, and the military confrontation between Kyiv and eastern Ukraine are then analyzed in terms of zero-sum competition between Russia and the west. Charap and Colton argue for the importance of entering open-ended negotiations involving Russia, the west, and Ukraine over the stability of east central Europe and Eurasia. Such negotiations never really took place since the Cold War's end. A new institutional arrangement should be based on economic modernization, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and military neutrality of the states in-between.
It would not be possible to squeeze into this short book all the relevant developments regarding the crisis in Ukraine. Some important omissions include the Odessa massacre on May 2, 2014, discussion of the strategy and activities of eastern fighters, as well as those of neo-Nazi divisions sponsored by Igor Kolomoisky. Analytically, the biggest omission is the role of common values and Russian-Ukrainian memories suppressed by those whom Charap and Colton misleadingly call “pro-Western nationalists” such as Saakashvili and Yushchenko. In reality, these ethnonationalists were pro-western only rhetorically, banking on the liberal west's support against Russia but aiming to eventually purge their lands of Russian culture and its bearers. Charap and Colton view ethnonationalism as a problem, but don't discuss its constituting role in forming Ukraine's new identity and relations with the authorities in Kyiv.
Overall, however, this is a balanced and very readable book that also contains helpful maps and chronology. Given these qualities, as well as the book's scope and skilled review of various economic and security issues in Eurasia, the volume would serve as an ideal text for graduate and upper division undergraduate courses on international politics of central and eastern Europe and Eurasia.
