KimmageNot every Russian would disagree with this U.S. policy toward
Europe, with the benefits it has brought, and with its intellectual and
strategic validity. But a great many do. There is the widely held belief in
Russia, for instance, that the United States broke the promises it made
about NATO at the end of the Cold War. NATO was supposed to not
be expanded beyond Germany, and then it was expanded not just to
Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, but all the way to Estonia—
a few hours’ drive to Saint Petersburg. In 2008 NATO even gestured
toward Georgia and Ukraine. Russians regard Western diplomacy on
this point as dishonorable and the eastward drift of NATO as dangerous.
That the United States wields its power for the sake of good is
anything but clear from a Russian vantage point. It is not incumbent on
Russians, after all, to share the ideals of U.S. foreign policy. The United
States is far away from Russia, and its culture and history are radically
far away. Even though the two countries have often been allies, they
have never been partners. Some degree of conflict is inevitable. Friction
and government propaganda have given rise to wilder speculation: the
thesis, say, that the United States has employed the CIA to sponsor a
“colored revolution” in Russia; that the uprisings in Ukraine were in fact
a U.S. plot; that the United States would be happy to exploit Russian
resources if given the chance; or that the United States will willfully
invade, destabilize, and overthrow whatever government stands in the
way of its maniacal hunger for hegemony.
All of which is to say that, rational or irrational, the negative attitude
toward the United States in Russia is real. It shapes Russian politics,
and it orders Russian foreign policy. To anticipate Russian actions,
the makers of U.S. foreign policy need to have the imagination to see
themselves in the unflattering light in which they often exist in Russia.
The United States may have had its reasons for expanding NATO, but
it should have expected the eventual Russian response: the explosion