The folly of realism How the West deceived itself about Russia and betrayed Ukraine

In this searching critique of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine, Vindman (Here, Right Matters), an ex--National Security Council staffer who testified against President Trump in the 2019 impeachment proceedings, alleges that "realist" geopolitics have sacrificed America's values. He argues that for decades the U.S. has consistently prioritized relations with Russia while neglecting Ukraine--failing to help reform Ukraine's politics or develop its economy, and tacitly accepting Russian attacks against it by withholding military aid. All of this was justified, he contends, by a philosophy of "realism"--promoted by international relations theorists including Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer--that holds that America should pursue a policy of cold-blooded national interests, one in which stable relations with a great power like Russia take precedence over the moral claims of weaker countries like Ukraine. In practice, Vindman writes, this "limp realpolitik" amounted to a feckless approach of short-term crisis management as Russian aggression steadily escalated. Instead, he argues, America should have adopted a "neo-idealist" policy that fostered and bolstered a democratic Ukraine committed to Western values and able to defend itself. Vindman combines intricate analysis with personal observations--as a military attaché based at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, he nearly got killed while reconnoitering troop movements on the front lines of Russia's 2014 military incursion into eastern Ukraine--to make a spirited riposte to "realists" who argue America has no vital interests in Ukraine. It's a penetrating take on American foreign relations. (Feb.)

European affairs expert Vindman recounts the many ways in which American foreign policy has gone astray. "Realism's impulse to avert crisis at virtually any cost doesn't even avert crisis," declares the author, deprecating the long-standing doctrine, courtesy of Henry Kissinger and company, that indexes foreign policy decisions to American interests. Instead, Vindman advocates a rising doctrine called neo-idealism, which "demands using a more nuanced and coherent understanding of interest, viewed through our values, along with other important inputs, to determine a compass heading for a US foreign-policy approach." In the instance of his native Ukraine, Vindman argues, U.S. foreign policy has been driven by Moscow's narrative, a holdover of a long-ago empire and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in which Ukraine is seen as an integral part of Russia. "Without Ukraine, Russia cannot sustain an imperialist, revanchist narrative of the so-called unity of the ethnic-Russian and Russian-speaking peoples," he writes. Vladimir Putin's use of this narrative includes the view that the U.S. has continued to wage the Cold War all along, using "hybrid warfare" that includes--deep irony here--American interference in Russian elections. In a carefully laid-out case, Vindman urges that the U.S. take stronger steps to protect Ukraine as a democratic nation with Western values whose very existence repudiates Putin's Russia "and Putinism itself." Neo-idealism also demands that the U.S. take greater interest in protecting democratic nations that realism would consider insignificant and, with that, "strengthening South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan" against China. Regrettably, he concludes, all that's unlikely to happen under his bête noire, Trump, with the result that the "next administration will inherit not just a fractured global order but also allies wary of America's reliability"--a situation reparable by means of neo-idealism. A persuasive case for rethinking America's guiding foreign policy doctrine in the face of global chaos. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.