Getting Russia Right by ThomasGraham. Washington: Polity Press, 2023. 272 pp. $29.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5095‐5689‐2
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: Though relations between Russia and the United States had been in crisis for years before, the 2022 invasion of Ukraine marked a turning point, the moment when post-Cold War hopes for Russia's eventual convergence and integration with the liberal-democratic West ended for good.As Thomas Graham shows in this provocative, well-argued book, that long-running crisis is largely because Russia-like the United States-has always been an expansionist power, albeit one that mainly "expanded out of geopolitical necessity in an unending search for security" (p.43).U.S. policy mistakes, Graham argues, made the problem worse.After the end of the Cold War, the United States pursued a dual-track strategy, seeking both to integrate Russia into a preexisting Western security architecture while at the same time hedging against the possible return of a revanchist Russia.Graham argues that Washington demanded too rapid a transformation of Russia's national characterand then overdid the hedging when it became clear Russia was not going to turn into post-1945 West Germany or Japan.In that sense, Graham sees the West's misreading of Russia in the years leading up to 2014 as the principal factor in Russia's transformation into an aggressive, revanchist state.From 2014 on, though, Graham sees Russian leader Vladimir Putin's embrace of an ideological vision as the primary cause of the war in Ukraine.Putin, like his predecessors Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, started off by making a "wager on the United States," supporting the global war on terror to facilitate Russia's strategic reassertion in Eurasia and midwife "a 'special relationship' with the United States" (pp.109, 107).This bid for a special relationship provoked skepticism among Russian elites, but in other ways, Graham sees Putin's geopolitical assertion and demands for respect of Russian interests as very much within the Russian foreign policy mainstream.Graham nevertheless emphasizes Putin's personal responsibility for starting the wars in Ukraine.Ukraine (and Belarus) occupies a special place in Russian elites' mental maps as both the cradle of Russian civilization and a demographic reserve to reinforce the Slavic, Orthodox essence of Russian identity.For these reasons, any Russian leader would be reluctant to see Ukraine fall out of the Russian orbit.Yet Graham sees Putin as having a peculiar fixation with Ukraine that led him to drag Russian foreign policy in a dangerously ideological direction, away from the traditional emphasis on "geopolitical necessity" driving Russian expansion.Similar to previous rulers such as Emperor Nicholas II, Putin's pivot to an ideological foreign policy is fraught with perils for Russia and for the world at large.Like much of his foregoing analysis, Graham's recommendations for pulling Russia back from the brink will be controversial.Graham urges U.S. policymakers to acknowledge and respect Russia's "legitimate interests," including its demand for strategic depth around its borders and acceptance of its
Source: The Russian Review
DOI: 10.1111/russ.70004
Author: Jeffrey Mankoff
Institution: National Defense University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4407832787