U.S. policy makers have thought they can impose their rules on much of the rest of the world. It hasn’t worked. From
With Russia launching a military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the corporate press has grown shrill in its calls for punishing Russia with draconian sanctions, supplying Ukraine with increased military aid, and diplomatically isolating the Eurasian power as much as possible. The Two Minutes Hate against Russia has been cranked up to eleven, making any nuanced analysis of why the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has reached such a point almost impossible.
The failure of policy wonks to understand why Russia took decisive action against Ukraine is emblematic of a flawed grand strategy that has dominated DC foreign policy circles since the end of the Cold War. Once the dust from the Soviet Union’s collapse settled, international relations specialists were convinced that the US had entered an “end of history” moment where liberal democracy would become the governing standard worldwide. Former Soviet Union states would be the preliminary trial ground for this new liberal democratic project.
Through expanding the reach of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into former Soviet states and carrying out color revolutions in the region, Washington believed that it could reshape this part of the world in its image. From dealing with violent insurgencies in the Caucasus to confronting precipitous declines in life expectancy and other social ills, such as rising criminal activity, the Soviet Union’s successor, the Russian Federation, was in no shape to resist American influence, let alone project power in its own backyard during the 1990s.
