From Diplomacy to Deterrence Failure: The Preconditions of the Ukraine War
The prevailing Western narrative reduces the conflict to caricature: an irrational autocrat waking one morning with imperial nostalgia and tanks. That account collapses under even minimal scrutiny.
did not seek war as a first resort. He sought the reversal of specific post-2014 Ukrainian statutes that systematically stripped ethnic Russians in the Donbas of linguistic, cultural, and political rights—measures that would be universally condemned if imposed on any protected minority within a NATO member state. The sustained refusal to address these grievances through diplomacy rendered escalation increasingly inevitable.
More critically, Ukraine’s trajectory toward NATO membership constituted a direct violation of longstanding security assurances. was explicitly understood—by Western leaders themselves—not to expand “one inch eastward.” That understanding was not merely breached; it was methodically erased, expansion by expansion, missile system by missile system, until Russian strategic depth was functionally eliminated.
This is not conjecture. It is doctrine. States do not tolerate hostile military alliances embedding advanced weapons platforms on their borders. They never have. They never will.
The West understands this principle perfectly—when it suits them. The benchmark case is the , during which the United States came within hours of nuclear war over Soviet missiles positioned ninety miles from Florida. Washington did not debate Moscow’s “intentions.” It asserted an absolute right to act pre-emptively in defense of its national security.
Russia is afforded no such intellectual charity.
By any coherent standard of international realism, Moscow’s actions were defensive, not expansionist—a reaction to sustained encroachment, not a spontaneous land grab. To deny this is not analysis; it is propaganda. The argument that Russia must passively accept a hostile alliance advancing to its doorstep is an argument no serious state has ever accepted, including those now making it.
If this scenario were reversed—if Russian missiles were deployed in Mexico or Canada under a formal military alliance—the Western response would be immediate, overwhelming, and framed as morally self-evident.
Geography did not change. Human behavior did not change. Only the flag colors did.
The refusal to acknowledge this symmetry is not ignorance. It is willful intellectual dishonesty.
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