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Russia's military assertion and direct interventions in its near-abroad have become one of the defining features of the 21st century. After years of being on the back foot in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's breakup, Moscow has been making a seemingly ever-expanding series of dramatic moves to reestablish some form of its lost security posture. It is worth asking whether behavior like this on the part of powers suspicious of the United States and its allies is an outlier or likely to increasingly become the norm, and why this might be so.Sumantra Maitra's recently published book 'The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power?' (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) seeks to make sense of the motivations for this increasing turn to interventionism by Russia towards its neighbors. Preferring to focus on Stephen Walt's Balance of Threat theory, Maitra shows how Moscow came over time to the conclusions that currently fuel its policies today and how that decision making process was a logical outcome to the radical uncertainty of international politics, regardless of how one feels about the wisdom of specific Russian actions.According to Balance of Threat theory, the overriding security concern of states is less about the global balance of power (though this is a factor) than it is the situational relationship between countries and the specific threat, often in the form of attempts to change the status quo, posed by one to the other. Proximity, the state of relations, and historical grievance therefore combine to dictate what the primary counterbalancing position of a state will be. Russia, for example, sees the continuous expansion of the NATO alliance ever closer to its borders as an existential danger since the proximity of potentially hostile forces shows no sign of limiting its advances. On the flip side, but still in accordance with Balance of Threat theory, European states generally find the closer location of the Russian state far more threatening than the more distant but more powerful United States.Most Western audiences are probably used to Balance of Threat theory being deployed in a U.S.-based or North Atlantic-based context, but the interesting part of Maitra's work here is to show just how well its theories work for the largely land-based security concerns of the Russian state. As he writes, "Security considerations take precedence over ideology and ideological alliances survive longer when interests align." While China could, one day, threaten Russia, the constant alterations to the balance of power that is NATO's growth is seen as the more immediate danger. This danger, then, produces a desire to view Russia's vulnerable land borders and near abroad in zero-sum terms, particularly on its western and southwestern flanks. Maitra uses this understanding — that Balance of Threat is a mostly defensive posture (at least as seen by domestic Russian elites) — to emphasize an important and unique element of Moscow's calculations: the danger posed by "color revolutions." A sudden break with the past and the start of a new or revolutionary regime can always raise suspicions of its old allies due to its conscious break with established order. It is this insecurity, and the danger that a new regime may be able to appeal for support from abroad, that stokes fears of encirclement in Moscow. Thus, the threat of foreign influence over smaller nations bordering Russia is viewed as a direct attack on the Russian ability to maintain a secure frontier. Russia's first militarized strike abroad after relations broke down with the Western powers came in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008. Georgia's turn towards Western nations in the aftermath of the Rose Revolution saw the rise of the Saakashvili government and its push to overhaul much of Georgian politics at home and abroad. The Kremlin-backed government of Autonomous Republic of Adjara was replaced, and Moscow feared that Tbilisi intended to do the same to the other two autonomous regions in Georgia. Its influence already on the wane in Georgia proper, the Kremlin concluded it was better to salvage two regions rather than potentially lose it all. More important, however, was the calculus that creating an active conflict zone would scare NATO away from Georgia and deter other countries in the Russian orbit from making similar changes to their foreign policy. Though the war was a victory for Moscow, it exposed many problems in the Russian ability to project power far afield.Despite the fact that much of Maitra's text was written before the outbreak of full scale war in Ukraine in 2022, the nature of that country's position in Russian strategy is a major theme of the book, and the strategic assumptions about Russian denial strategy in their near-abroad made by the author hold up. Going back to the Orange Revolution in 2005 and on through the Maidan and Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russian activities in the country have taken on the aspect of "strategic denial." This follows as a sequel to the events in Georgia. The overriding fear among the Russian elite was that shrinking influence in Ukraine would mean the entire country could become a NATO proxy where nothing, not even perhaps the primary anchorage of the Black Sea fleet, could be salvaged. And with this fear came a certainty in Moscow that every domestic upheaval in the country was a plot designed to bring about the loss of any sphere of influence whatsoever. Better, the Russians came to think, to retain part of a country than to see a loss of influence over the whole.Maitra leaves his readers with a warning: rhetoric about the specific nature of the Putin government is unhelpful since the issues of Russia's desire to retain predominance in its near abroad are geographic. This means they are effectively timeless and not limited to one regime. A Russian state under a more open or democratic government is still a Russian state with a desire to retain strategic autonomy in its own neighborhood as a way of maintaining its position against the other great powers. These issues are not going anywhere anytime soon, so it is worth understanding the actual motivations behind the Russian foreign policy establishment as opposed to framing the conflict as something that can be dealt with in short order with moralistic rhetoric about the clash of the "authoritarian" and "democratic" worlds. The failure to account for the well-established fact that great powers seek spheres of influence shows a disconnect with many in the North Atlantic alliance with the actual motivations of statecraft as it is practiced in much of the world.What delving into this one specific example while using an international relations perspective – that of balance of threat theory – makes clear is that intentions do not matter when large security alliances expand. What ends up expanding is the uncertainty they bring ever closer to a rival power's center of gravity. Should the alliance network emphasize a values conformity among its members, the chances that a government would radically reorient its traditional, regionally rooted diplomatic orientations in a way other powers located nearby might interpret as hostile increases. Indeed, this process of action-reaction has other applications beyond Russia, The logic of NATO, both as a security and as an almost missionary-like alliance seems to be repeating in other parts of the world where the United States seeks to shore up its security arrangements. By invoking the idea of permanent commitments around shared values, the avenues of diplomacy are reduced rather than increased, and the risk of offensive action by rival powers escalates.

Israeli military operations in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas have continuously expanded throughout its near abroad in an ever-widening range. While it is true that Hamas has many diplomatic and logistical connections with other actors such as Hezbollah and Iran, it also seems apparent that the embattled Netanyahu government wants to prolong the war, if not expand it, in a bid to stay in power.Up until now he has had the support of Israelis — including members of the opposition and the majority of the public — to "finish the job."But patience may be running out, particularly on the issue of the hostages, coupled with a backlash over the many embarrassing intelligence failures that enabled the original terror attack to happen. As many commentators have noted, only by keeping a state of continuous crisis can Netanyahu retain his current position. Already in official statements he declares that military operations will continue at least into 2025.This week's airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus risks significant escalation with Iran and took place in a country currently too embattled with its own still-ongoing civil war to be a significant threat to Israel. This comes on the heels of attempts by Israel to not just strike at Hezbollah across the border with Lebanon, but to potentially make the area uninhabitable for anyone using (U.S.-supplied) white phosphorus munitions. This only helps to prolong and expand the war in Gaza into places the U.S. may not be ready for or even willing to accept.The United States has been attempting to pivot away from the Middle Eastern region for years, and yet its ideological and sentimental attachment to Israel always plays a major role in drawing it back in. The aftermath of the Gaza War has shown beyond a doubt just how much the interests of the two countries have diverged in the post-Cold War world. What once served as a relationship meant to check a perceived (and overblown) pro-Soviet tilt among early Arab nationalists has now become a strategic millstone around the neck of any rational definition of American interest.As early as the First Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein fired missiles at targets in Israel in a bid to lure Tel Aviv into joining — and therefore undermining — the Arab-majority regional coalition against his designs in Kuwait, the signs of danger have been apparent.Both the United States and Israel were badly affected by the hubris of the 'unipolar moment' of the 1990s and 2000s. No longer believing that meaningful counterbalancing against their interests was possible, both societies appear to have let their strategic cultures become distorted toward short-term thinking and an inability to comprehend the growing capabilities of rival powers. The Israeli position seems to assume that its relationship with the United States invalidates any need to seek a true regional modus vivendi with its immediate neighbors, states whose existence are likely more permanent than predominant U.S. influence in the region. This is made all the more apparent by the willingness to sabotage local relations despite having had some diplomatic breakthroughs prior to the war under the framework of the Abraham Accords. This relationship has also become extremely unequal, and not in the way that one would normally think when examining that of a small regional power and a large global one. All the way back in 1996, President Clinton apparently flew into a rage after meeting with Netanyahu, asking who "the fu*king superpower" was in the relationship.Attempts by various American administrations to seek a solution to the Palestinian issue have repeatedly foundered, all while certain elements of the Israeli public advocate for yet more territorial expansion far outside of officially recognized borders in an attempt to create a "Greater Israel."American largesse seems to be fueling a sense of entitlement, to the tune of billions of dollars. Meanwhile, Israeli combat performance against its neighbors since at least the 2006 Lebanon War comes far short of the mythical capabilities of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which many commentators assume remain frozen in the pristine amber of the mid-20th century. This now takes us to today as the United States, a country coming around late to the idea that its own unipolar moment is over, should be seeking to avoid perpetual brushfire wars that are irrelevant to the global balance of power. Operations in the Gulf of Aden and the damage done to global shipping in that region might not be happening at all were it not for Washington's unconditional support for Israel in an otherwise localized struggle.Attempts to work out an arrangement for de-emphasizing the Middle East are consistently undermined by not only Israeli demands, but also by retaliatory strikes launched by Iranian allies and others on tripwire against U.S. bases that serve little purpose outside of providing some kind of non-specified leverage. Every time one of these dubious outposts is fired upon, it increases the risk of casualties and escalation, which in turn increases the chance that the U.S. will redirect force deployments back to the Middle East.Now, with the Biden Administration planning on sending U.S. troops directly into the Gaza combat zone by building a "humanitarian port" there, it is worth acknowledging that the U.S.-Israel alliance has become extremely damaging to Washington's conception of rational self-interest, Israel's ability to realistically adapt to the realities of its neighborhood, and both countries' ability to avoid escalation into a regional war.The key element currently bringing out the worst in both is the Netanyahu government itself, which appears intent on running roughshod over any calculation of long-term interest in a desperate bid to keep itself in power for as long as possible.

At the height of the "unipolar moment" of the 1990s and 2000s, a popular school of thought argued that the U.S. could use its unchecked power to do good on the world stage. When peace proved elusive after the fall of the Soviet Union, the world saw exceptionally deadly warfare and attempted ethnic cleansing erupt in Karabakh, the Congo, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia. If there was one power that could do anything about this, it was the United States.The primary ideologue of this push for humanitarian interventionism would become Samantha Power. A journalist and author of the influential book A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, Power argued that the U.S. and other liberal nation states should use military force to halt crimes against humanity in other countries. Nation-states have a responsibility to protect their citizens, and if they are found not be doing this, other states may then step in to do so should the situation continue to deteriorate. This principle was called "Responsibility to Protect," or "R2P," and it became so influential that it was adopted into the United Nations Charter in 2005.Two decades later, the concept has been shown to be both hypocritical and dangerous. As Israel bombs Gaza to dust, world elites have shown no interest in living up to their apparent responsibility to protect civilians. Contrast this with the response to Russia's war in Ukraine, in which commentators called for direct intervention to save innocent Ukrainians. And actual examples of R2P have led to disaster, as civilians in Libya can attest. Fortunately, there's a simple answer to this hellish problem: abandoning R2P once and for all.Who's protecting who?Power's line of argument masked the darker history of so-called humanitarian interventions. Both the Romans and Spanish, more than 1000 years apart, argued that their bloody conquests in Carthage and Central America would help the world by ending the practice of human sacrifice. In the 19th century, the colonial states of western Europe began to see their maritime expansion abroad not simply in terms of wealth and power acquisition but as an inevitable stage of human moral development. France and Britain in particular dove into Africa with the justification of putting an end to tribal wars and extirpating the slave trade. With economic and technological shifts, the same empires who had once expanded with shackles in hand now came, so they said, as liberators. Yet the result of this "liberation" was little more than violence and famine.Unfortunately, the lessons of this sordid history didn't stick. Barack Obama would end up recruiting Power for multiple roles in his administration. While Obama ran explicitly against the disastrous foreign policy of George W Bush in 2008, subsequent events related to the "Arab Spring" would see him continue if not expand these same policies, launching an overt regime change war in Libya (and a covert one in Syria) while intensifying U.S. operations in Yemen.It was in the Libya war that Power would see her dream fulfilled, when R2P was explicitly invoked to protect Libyan civilians in rebel-held areas from retaliation by the government of Muamar Gaddafi. This operation resulted in widespread state failure, a collapse of central authority, a massive refugee crisis, a resurgence of extremism in that country, and, most gallingly of all, the return of slave markets along the North African coast. It turned out that there are worse things out there than oppressive governments.R2P's reputation took a hit and receded from the discourse, at least until Russia's invasion of Ukraine gave it life once more. Some members of the press called for no-fly zones over the country, and politicians in NATO states debated if such ideas were feasible. Ultimately, they decided that it was not, given Russia's conventional capabilities, particularly in the field of anti-aircraft weaponry. There was also the inconvenient fact of Moscow having nuclear deterrence. Any attempts to create a safe area for Ukrainians using NATO military forces risked a level of escalation deemed unpalatable by most in the alliance. This clearly showed that R2P was only ever really meant to be used by great powers against smaller countries that could not defend themselves. It never had any utility against more robust foes. Interestingly, Moscow had picked up on the trick and justified its invasion of Ukraine using explicitly R2P-flavored rhetoric about protecting lives in the Donbass.The Gaza challengeThe current Gaza War is, by all the standards usually cited by humanitarian interventionists, a perfect case for invoking R2P. Rhetoric from some actors inside the Israeli state suggests that some form of population displacement is at least being considered. The incredible population density of the Gaza Strip means civilians bear the brunt of the violence. Lack of access to medicine and food exacerbates all of these problems.Samantha Power is the current head of USAID in the Biden administration. One cannot help but wonder what she thinks of the war currently unfolding in Gaza while she coordinates food shipments through Egypt's Sinai that are often held up at border checkpoints. For one so adamant that the U.S. must intervene whenever war disproportionately hits a civilian populace, she has been strangely silent.Meanwhile, Yemen's Houthis explicitly cite their own version of R2P to justify their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. This shows the true future of R2P, if it is to have any — one of selective applications by great powers that muddy the waters around their wars in an attempt to gain media approval from within their alliance networks. As the world's balance of power inevitably moves into its more normal state of multipolarity, governments further undermine claims of ethical conduct in foreign policy, as states now have constant incentive to claim that their foes have a monopoly on human rights abuses. Inevitably, this will lead to all such claims being met with greater and greater skepticism by the global public, regardless of their factuality.Far from the centers of great power rivalries, the utility of R2P seems to be declining, as crises such as Myanmar and Sudan are assiduously ignored by the countries expected to be intervening, likely out of fear of being sucked into another Syria or Iraq and giving one's foes more opportunities to indirectly strike at stretched-thin tripwire forces.It is a trite observation to point out that great powers have different moral standards for their allies and their enemies, but R2P is a foreign policy doctrine entirely based on moralist claims. Not being able to live up to its own principles when a humanitarian crisis is unleashed by an allied country such as Israel is the last nail in the coffin for a thoroughly failed idea. We can only hope that a silver lining of this difficult moment in history is that we never have to hear about the Responsibility to Protect again.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan raised suspicions in Washington for his decision to maintain relations with the Kremlin. In a characteristically unsubtle move, Khan also visited Moscow shortly after the war began. He returned to Islamabad with a chip on his shoulder.


"What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and will do whatever you ask of us? We are friends of Russia and we are friends of the United States," Khan told a crowd of his supporters. "We are friends of China and Europe, we are not part of any alliance."


Little did Khan know that these words may have helped bring about the end of his political career. According to Pakistani diplomatic cables published by the Intercept, U.S. officials reacted to Khan's stance on the war by subtly encouraging his opponents to remove him from power.


While it is doubtful that the United States was the sole or primary actor in the events that would land the prime minister in jail and lead to a military crackdown on the country's political system (a state of affairs that remains in place today), the cables reveal that opponents of Khan were informed of U.S. anger over Khan's statements on the Ukraine War and may have moved to oust him with the expectation of being rewarded with closer ties by Washington.


Most of the reactions to this breaking story have understandably focused on the Cold War-like aspect of what seems to be brazen interference in another country's internal affairs. However, what is in danger of being overlooked is something more fundamental to how so many in D.C. conceptualize foreign policy as a whole.


While it is hardly surprising that Washington would leverage its influence to support a soft regime change of sorts in Islamabad, what is remarkable is the desire to punish a country far away from Europe and the conflict raging in Ukraine for daring to take an "aggressively neutral" stance (the State Department's terminology, according to the cables) on what to them is a regional conflict far away from their core security concerns.


The presumption among leaders in the U.S. foreign policy establishment is clear: States with less geopolitical influence have to follow Washington's lead on major global crises, whether it benefits them or not. Pakistan's neighbor India, by contrast, has charted a remarkably neutral stance over the course of the war by balancing opposition to border revisionism with a clear-eyed determination to maintain its long-standing military ties with Moscow. But New Delhi knows that its much greater power on the world stage gives it some protection from the wrath of Washington.


Smaller countries do not share this privilege. Meanwhile, it is hard to see why Pakistan's views regarding European affairs even matter to Washington any more than, say, an Eastern European country's formal stance on the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Bulgaria, to use one example, would not be expected to declare a strong position on the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean.


But the U.S. foreign policy elite, so monomaniacally fixated on Ukraine, believes it is of vital importance that everyone else adopt its priorities. This assumption is not only dangerous to many of Washington's partners in various regions around the world; it is also dangerous to the grand strategy of the United States itself. By taking regional conflicts and unnecessarily globalizing them, the risk of spreading instability through the interdiction of vital raw materials or manufactured goods increases. Trade networks adversely impacted by sanctions can thus undermine developing economies. Smaller countries, whose interests must be more narrowly defined, are always going to prioritize regional concerns over the more globally-oriented positions of the major world powers.


The most likely explanation for this behavior on the part of Washington is an attempt to shore up a dedicated "international community" that it can use to blunt the ambitions of revisionist powers like Russia and China. The problem with this approach, however, is that it breeds resentment and an even greater desire for pressured countries to break out of the U.S. orbit. This helps explain why an increasing number of states are considering dropping the dollar as the default global currency. When there are multiple options available, the least invasive one is usually considered the safest.


Thankfully, a better approach is possible. A great power that can compartmentalize various regions and not assume all that its smaller compatriots must adopt its priorities is one that will actually have an advantage over its rivals in the contest for influence abroad. The more the United States allows its smaller partners to pursue their own paths, the less threatening it will seem and the more desirable a partner for voluntary association it becomes.


This was a major part of why the United States once had so much more global goodwill compared to traditional European powers, as it leveraged its geographic isolation with its economic power to be comparably less threatening than most of its rivals. If Washington is truly serious about showing the world the danger presented by the ambitions of Beijing and Moscow, then U.S. policy should be less threatening to the sovereignty of others than that of its rivals.


As the relative power of 'middle power' countries increases, many regionally anchored states will increase their autonomy of action and so greatly expand their ability to diverge from great power expectations. As this trend accelerates, their ability to choose partnerships will tilt more towards reliability and mutual respect rather than simple deference. In this polycentric and, yes, multipolar world, massive overreaches into a partner's domestic policy are far more likely to create backlash than truly constructive long-term results.


To bring about this turn of thought and increase the amount of strategic empathy in a blinkered U.S. foreign policy establishment, perhaps it would be wise to consult the words of George Washington's farewell address, which sounds notes quite similar to Imran Khan's speech about Pakistani foreign policy:



"Nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."



Many countries today find themselves in the same uncertain place as the early United States once did. The U.S. foreign policy apparatus would do well to remember that.