Shifrinson Publishes Book Review in Russia Matters
Joshua Shifrinson, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent book review on No Place for Russia: European Security Institutions Since 1989 (Columbia University Press, August 2018) by William H. Hill.
Shifrinson’s review, entitled “‘No Place for Russia’: How Much Are Old US Ambitions in Europe to Blame for Russia-West Tensions Today?’” was published on January 3, 2018 in Russia Matters.
From the text of the review:
Why have relations between Russia and the West—particularly the United States—collapsed over the last decade? Analysts remain starkly divided. Many blame the Russian government and Vladimir Putin for seeking militarized solutions and changes to Europe’s post-Cold War status quo. Others attribute the estrangement largely to Western policy, seeing the expansion of NATO and the European Union, alongside Western efforts to assert influence in Russia’s so-called near abroad, as “provoking the Russian bear.” And still others believe an insecurity spiral is at work, as the steps each side took to advance its interests inadvertently antagonized the other and contributed to the relationship’s degradation.
William Hill’s recently published book “No Place for Russia” stakes out a variant of the second explanation. In his depiction, one cannot understand the estrangement of Russia and the West apart from Russia’s interaction with Europe’s security architecture—that is, NATO, the European Union and the often overlooked Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Here, per Hill, the real problem is Western reluctance to adapt Europe’s post-Cold War security institutions to craft a place for Russia. This was not done as part of an explicit, formal decision to isolate Russia; as Hill—with long experience as a Foreign Service officer in the former Soviet Union and with the OSCE—compellingly shows, Western security policy evolved in a series of fits and starts, without central planning. However, with U.S. policymakers (whose opinions most mattered) intending NATO to remain a closed and U.S.-dominated shop, the European Union focused on knitting Western and Central European states closer together and the OSCE quickly sidelined in European security debates, Russia was left without a guaranteed seat at the security table. That Russia was a basket case for much of the 1990s—beset by economic turmoil, political unrest and often reliant on Western assistance—only reinforced the situation, leaving Russian leaders without the wherewithal to effectively assert Russian concerns.
As a result, and even though Western states regularly sought to engage Moscow, the terms and conditions of this engagement were defined largely by the West. Thus, relations could be dialed up or back depending on Western concerns and the West’s evaluation of Russian interests independent of what Russia itself interpreted as its concerns. For precisely this reason, the primary Russian complaint throughout the post-Cold War world was Russian ill ease (and later resentment) over being forced to operate within a framework in which its interests were near automatically given second shrift. Over time, as Russian power recovered from the depths of the post-Soviet collapse and Western institutions began moving into Russia’s near abroad, the stage was set for confrontation. Even as the West sought to sustain a security order that it dominated, therelative improvement to Russian powerand the growing challenge to its interests no longer made acquiescing to this situation strategically or politically palatable.
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson’s teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of international security and diplomatic history, particularly the rise and fall of great powers and the origins of grand strategy. He has special expertise in great power politics since 1945 and U.S. engagement in Europe and Asia. Shifrinson’s first book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Cornell University Press, 2018) builds on extensive archival research focused on U.S. and Soviet foreign policy after 1945 to explain why some rising states challenge and prey upon declining great powers, while others seek to support and cooperate with declining states.