An International Relations

Theory Guide to the War

in Ukraine
A consideration of which theories have been vindicated—and which have fallen
flat.

The world is infinitely complex, and by necessity we all rely on various beliefs or theories
about “how the world works” to try to make sense of it all. Because all theories are
simplifications, no single approach to international politics can account for everything
that is taking place at any given moment, predict exactly what will happen in the weeks
and months ahead, or offer a precise plan of action that is guaranteed to succeed. Even
so, our stock of theories can still help us understand how the tragedy in Ukraine came
about, explain some of what is happening now, alert us to opportunities and potential
pitfalls, and suggest certain broad courses of action going forward. Because even the
best social science theories are crude and there are always exceptions to even well-
established regularities, wise analysts will look to more than one for insights and retain
a certain skepticism about what any of them can tell us.

Given the above, what do some well-known international relations theories have to say
about the tragic events in Ukraine? Which theories have been vindicated (at least in
part), which have been found wanting, and which might highlight key issues as the crisis
continues to unfold? Here’s a tentative and far-from-comprehensive survey of what
scholars have to say about this mess.

Realism and Liberalism

I’m hardly an objective observer here, but it is obvious to me that these troubling events
have reaffirmed the enduring relevance of the realist perspective on international
politics. At the most general level, all realist theories depict a world where there is no
agency or institution that can protect states from each other, and where states must
worry about whether a dangerous aggressor might threaten them at some point in the
future. This situation forces states—especially great powers—to worry a lot about their
security and to compete for power. Unfortunately, these fears sometimes lead states to
do horrible things. For realists, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (not to mention the U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003) reminds us that great powers sometimes act in terrible and
foolish ways when they believe their core security interests are at stake. That lesson
doesn’t justify such behavior, but realists recognize that moral condemnation alone
won’t prevent it. A more convincing demonstration of the relevance of hard power—
especially military power—is hard to imagine. Even post-modern Germany seems to
have gotten the message.

Regrettably, the war also illustrates another classic realist concept: the idea of a
“security dilemma.” The dilemma arises because the steps that one state takes to make
itself more secure often make others less secure. State A feels unsafe and seek any ally
or buys some more weapons; State B gets alarmed by this step and responds in kind,
suspicions deepen, and both countries end up poorer and less safe than they were
before. It made perfect sense that states in Eastern Europe wanted to get into NATO (or
as close to it as possible), given their long-term concerns about Russia. But it should also
be easy to understand why Russian leaders—and not just Putin—regarded this
development as alarming. It is now tragically clear that the gamble did not pay off—at
least not with respect to Ukraine and probably Georgia.

To see these events through the lens of realism is not to endorse Russia’s brutal and
illegal actions; it is simply to recognize such behavior as a deplorable but recurring
aspect of human affairs. Realists from Thucydides on down through E.H. Carr, Hans J.
Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, Kenneth Waltz, Robert Gilpin, and John Mearsheimer
have all condemned the tragic nature of world politics, while at the same time warning
that we cannot lose sight of the dangers that realism highlights, including the risks that
arise when you threaten what another state regards as a vital interest. It is no accident
that realists have long emphasized the dangers of hubris and the perils of an overly
idealistic foreign policy, whether in the context of the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq
in 2003, or the naive pursuit of open-ended NATO enlargement. Sadly, in each case their
warnings were ignored, only to be vindicated by subsequent events.

The remarkably swift response to Russia’s invasion is also consistent with a realist
understanding of alliance politics. Shared values can make alliances more cohesive and
enduring, but serious commitments to collective defense result primarily from
perceptions of a common threat. The level of threat, in turn, is a function of power,
proximity, and foe with offensive capabilities and aggressive intentions. These elements
go a long way to explaining why the Soviet Union faced strong balancing coalitions in
Europe and Asia during the Cold War: It had a large industrial economy, its empire
bordered many other countries, its military forces were large and designed primarily for
offensive operations, and it appeared to have highly revisionist ambitions (i.e., the
spread of communism). Today, Russia’s actions have dramatically increased perceptions
of threat in the West, and the result has been a display of balancing behavior that few
would have expected just a few short weeks ago.

By contrast, the main liberal theories that have informed key aspects of Western foreign
policy in recent decades have not fared well. As a political philosophy, liberalism is an
admirable basis for organizing society, and I for one am deeply grateful to live in a
society where those values still hold sway. It is also heartening to see Western societies
rediscovering liberalism’s virtues, after flirting with their own authoritarian impulses.
But as an approach to world politics and a guide to foreign policy, liberalism’s
shortcomings have been exposed once again.

As in the past, international law and international institutions have proved to be a weak
barrier to rapacious great-power behavior. Economic interdependence did not stop
Moscow from launching its invasion, despite the considerable costs that it will face as a
result. Soft power couldn’t stop Russia’s tanks, and the U.N. General Assembly’s
lopsided 141-5 vote (with 35 abstentions) condemning the invasion won’t have much
impact either.

As I’ve noted previously, the war has demolished the belief that war was no longer
“thinkable” in Europe and the related claim that enlarging NATO eastward would create
an ever-expanding “zone of peace.” Don’t get me wrong: It would have been wonderful
had that dream come true, but it was never a likely possibility and all the more so given
the hubristic way it was pursued. Not surprisingly, those who believed and sold the
liberal story now want to pin all the blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin and
claim that his illegal invasion “proves” that NATO enlargement had nothing whatsoever
to do with his decision. Others now lash out foolishly at those experts who correctly
foresaw where Western policy might lead. These attempts to rewrite history are typical
of a foreign-policy elite that is reluctant to admit errors or hold itself accountable.

That Putin bears direct responsibility for the invasion is beyond question, and his actions
deserve all the condemnation we can muster. But the liberal ideologues who dismissed
Russia’s repeated protests and warnings and continued to press a revisionist program in
Europe with scant regard for the consequences are far from blameless. Their motives
may have been wholly benevolent, but it is self-evident that the policies they embraced
have produced the opposite of what they intended, expected, and promised. And they
can hardly say today that they weren’t warned on numerous occasions in the past.

Liberal theories that emphasize the role of institutions fare somewhat better by helping
us understand the rapid and remarkably unified Western response. The reaction has
been swift in part because the United States and its NATO allies share a set of political
values that are now being challenged in an especially vivid and cruel way. More
importantly, if institutions such as NATO did not exist and a response had to be
organized from scratch, it is hard to imagine it being anywhere near as rapid or
effective. International institutions cannot resolve fundamental conflicts of interest or
stop great powers from acting as they wish, but they can facilitate more effective
collective responses when state interests are mostly aligned.

Realism may be the best overall guide to the grim situation we now face, but it hardly
tells us the whole story. For example, realists rightly downplay the role of norms as
strong constraints on great-power behavior, but norms have played a role in explaining
the global response to Russia’s invasion. Putin is trampling over most if not all of the
norms pertaining to the use of force (such as those contained in the U.N. Charter), and
that is part of the reason that countries, corporations, and individuals in much of the
world have judged Russia’s actions so harshly and responded so vigorously. Nothing can
stop a country from violating global norms, but clear and overt transgressions will
invariably affect how its intentions are judged by others. If Russia’s forces act with even
greater brutality in the weeks and months ahead, current efforts to isolate and ostracize
it are bound to intensify.

Misperception and Miscalculation

It is also impossible to understand these events without considering the role of

misperception and miscalculation. Realist theories are less helpful here, as they tend to
portray states as more or less rational actors that calculate their interests coolly and
look for inviting opportunities to improve their relative position. Even if that assumption
is mostly correct, governments and individual leaders are still operating with imperfect
information and can easily misjudge their own capabilities and the capabilities and
reactions of others. Even when information is plentiful, perceptions and decisions can
still be biased for psychological, cultural, or bureaucratic reasons. In an uncertain world
filled with imperfect human beings, there are lots of ways to get things wrong.

In particular, the vast literature on misperception—especially the seminal work of the

late Robert Jervis—has a lot to tell us about this war. It now seems obvious that Putin
miscalculated badly on several dimensions: He exaggerated Western hostility to Russia,
gravely underestimated Ukrainian resolve, overstated his army’s ability to deliver a swift
and costless victory, and misread how the West was likely to respond. The combination
of fear and overconfidence that seems to have been at work here is typical; it is almost a
truism to say that states do not start wars unless they have convinced themselves that
they can achieve their aims quickly and at relatively low cost. Nobody starts a war that
they believe will be long, bloody, expensive, and likely to end in their defeat. Moreover,
because humans are uncomfortable dealing with trade-offs, there is a powerful
tendency to see going to war as feasible once you’ve decided it is necessary. As Jervis
once wrote, “as the decision-maker comes to see his policy as necessary, he is likely to
believe that the policy can succeed, even if such a conclusion requires the distortion of
information about what others will do.” This tendency can be compounded if dissenting
voices are excluded from the decision-making process, either because everyone in the
loop shares the same flawed worldview or because subordinates are unwilling to tell
superiors that they might be wrong.

Prospect theory, which argues that humans are more willing to take risks to avoid losses
than to achieve gains, may have been at work here as well. If Putin believed Ukraine was
gradually moving into alignment with the United States and NATO—and there were
ample reasons for him to think so—then preventing what he regards as an irretrievable
loss might be worth a huge roll of the dice. Similarly, attribution bias—the tendency to
see our own behavior as a response to circumstances but to attribute the behavior of
others to their basic nature—is probably relevant too: Many in the West now interpret
Russian behavior as a reflection of Putin’s unsavory character and in no way a response
to the West’s prior actions. For his part, Putin seems to think that the actions of the
United States and NATO stem from an innate arrogance and deeply rooted desire to
keep Russia weak and vulnerable and that the Ukrainians are resisting because they
either are being misled or are under the sway of “fascist” elements.

War Termination and the Commitment Problem

Modern IR theory also emphasizes the pervasive role of commitment problems. In a

world of anarchy, states can make promises to each other but cannot be certain that
they will be carried out. For example, NATO could have offered to take Ukrainian
membership off the table in perpetuity (though it never did in the weeks before the
war), but Putin might not have believed NATO even if Washington and Brussels had put
that commitment in writing. Treaties do matter, but in the end they are just pieces of
paper.

Moreover, the scholarly literature on war termination suggests that commitment

problems will loom large even when the warring parties have revised their expectations
and are seeking to end the fighting. If Putin offered to withdraw from Ukraine tomorrow
and swore on a stack of Russian Orthodox Bibles that he’d leave it alone forever, few
people in Ukraine, Europe, or the United States would take his assurances at face value.
And unlike some civil wars, where peace settlements can sometimes be guaranteed by
interested outsiders, in this case there is no external power that could credibly threaten
to punish future violators of any agreement that might be reached. Short of
unconditional surrender, any deal to end the war must leave all parties sufficiently
satisfied that they do not secretly hope to alter or abandon it as soon as circumstances
are more favorable. And even if one side capitulates entirely, imposing a “victor’s
peace” can sow the seeds of future revanchism. Sadly, we appear to be a long way from
any sort of negotiated settlement today.

Moreover, other studies of this problem—such as Fred Iklé’s classic Every War Must End
and Sarah Croco’s Peace at What Price?: Leader Culpability and the Domestic Politics of
War Termination—highlight the domestic obstacles that make it hard to end a war.
Patriotism, propaganda, sunk costs, and an ever-growing hatred of the enemy combine
to harden attitudes and keep wars going long after a rational state might call a halt. A
key element in this problem is what Iklé called the “treason of the hawks”: Those who
favor ending the war are often dismissed as unpatriotic or worse, but the hard-liners
who prolong a war unnecessarily may ultimately do more damage to the nation they are
purporting to defend. I wonder if there’s a Russian translation available in Moscow.
Applied to Ukraine, a worrisome implication is that a leader who starts an unsuccessful
war may be unwilling or unable to admit they were wrong and bring it to a close. If so,
then an end to the fighting comes only when new leaders emerge who are not tied to
the initial decision for war.

But there’s another problem: Autocrats facing defeat and regime change may be
tempted to “gamble for resurrection.” Democratic leaders who preside over foreign-
policy debacles can be forced from office at the next election, but they rarely if ever face
imprisonment or worse for their blunders or crimes. Autocrats, by contrast, have no
easy exit option, especially in a world where they have reason to fear postwar
prosecution for war crimes. If they are losing, therefore, they have an incentive to fight
on or escalate even in the face of overwhelming odds, in hopes of a miracle that will
reverse their fortunes and spare them ouster, imprisonment, or death. Sometimes this
sort of gamble pays off (e.g., Bashar al-Assad), sometimes it doesn’t (e.g., Adolf Hitler,
Muammar al-Qaddafi), but the incentive to keep doubling down in hopes of a miracle
can make ending a war even harder than it might be.
These insights remind us to be very, very careful about what we wish for. The desire to
punish and even humiliate Putin is understandable, and it is tempting to see his ouster
as a quick and easy solution to the whole god-awful mess. But backing the autocratic
leader of a nuclear-armed state into a corner would be extremely dangerous, no matter
how heinous his prior actions may have been. For this reason alone, those in the West
who are calling for Putin’s assassination or who have said publicly that ordinary Russians
should be held accountable if they do not rise up and overthrow Putin are being
dangerously irresponsible. Talleyrand’s advice is well worth remembering: “Above all,
not too much zeal.”

Economic Sanctions

Anyone trying to figure out how this plays out should study the literature on economic
sanctions too. On the one hand, the financial sanctions imposed this past week are a
reminder of America’s extraordinary ability to “weaponize interdependence,” especially
when the country acts in concert with other important economic powers. On the other
hand, a substantial amount of serious scholarship shows that economic sanctions rarely
compel states to alter course quickly. The failure of the Trump administration’s
“maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is another obvious case in point. Ruling
elites are typically insulated from the immediate consequences of sanctions, and Putin
knew sanctions would be imposed and clearly believed the geopolitical interests at stake
were worth the expected cost. He may have been surprised and discomfited by the
speed and scope of economic pressure, but nobody should expect Moscow to reverse
course anytime soon.

These examples do no more than scratch the surface of what contemporary IR

scholarship might contribute to our understanding of these events. I’ve not mentioned
the enormous literature on deterrence and coercion, any number of important works on
the dynamics of horizontal and vertical escalation, or the insights one might glean from
considering cultural elements (including notions of masculinity and especially Putin’s
own macho “personality cult”).

The bottom line is that the scholarly literature on international relations has a lot to say
about the situation we are facing. Unfortunately, no one in a position of power is likely
to pay much attention to it, even when knowledgeable academics offer their thoughts in
the public sphere. Time is the scarcest commodity in politics—especially in a crisis—and
Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, and their many subordinates are not about to start leafing
through back issues of International Security or the Journal of Conflict Resolution to find
the good stuff.

Warfare also has its own logic, and it unleashes political forces that tend to drown out
alternative voices, even in societies where freedom of speech and open debate remain
intact. Because the stakes are high, wartime is when public officials, the media, and the
citizenry should work hardest to resist stereotypes, think coolly and carefully, avoid
hyperbole and simplistic clichés, and above all remain open to the possibility that they
might be wrong and that a different course of action is required. Once the bullets start
flying, however, what typically occurs is a narrowing of vision, a rapid descent into
Manichaean modes of thought, the marginalization or suppression of dissenting voices,
the abandonment of nuance, and a stubborn focus on victory at all costs. This process
seems to be well underway inside Putin’s Russia, but a milder form is apparent in the
West too. All told, this is a recipe for making a terrible situation worse.