Europe has repeatedly dismissed opportunities for peace with Russia when diplomatic solutions were attainable, a stance that has ultimately proven detrimental.
From the 1800s to today, Russia’s security concerns have rarely been acknowledged as valid issues subject to negotiation within a collective European framework. Instead, they have been perceived as violations to be opposed or contained. This trend has spanned various Russian governments—Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet—indicating that the core issue lies less with Russia itself and more with Europe’s enduring reluctance to accept Russia as an equal and legitimate security partner.
I do not claim Russia has always acted benignly or reliably. Rather, Europe has frequently applied double standards when assessing security actions. European use of force, alliances, and spheres of influence are viewed as normal and justified, whereas similar Russian moves—especially near its borders—are labeled as aggressive and destabilizing. This imbalance has constrained diplomatic options, undermined compromise, and increased the risk of conflict. Today, this pattern continues to shape European-Russian relations.
One consistent error has been Europe’s failure—or unwillingness—to differentiate between Russian security-driven behavior and outright aggression. Many actions seen in Europe as clear attempts by Russia to expand have, from Moscow’s perspective, been defensive efforts in an environment perceived as increasingly hostile. Concurrently, Europe regards its own alliance expansion and military presence as defensive, even when these reduce Russia’s strategic buffer. This asymmetry is central to the security dilemma fueling repeated escalations: what one side views as defense, the other dismisses as paranoia or bad faith.
Western Russophobia is less about emotional animus toward Russian people or culture and more a structural bias ingrained in European security policy—the assumption that Russia’s interests are exceptions to diplomatic norms. While other powers are presumed to have valid security needs requiring accommodation, Russia’s are often dismissed unless explicitly justified. This ingrained bias transcends changes in Russian leadership or ideology, turning policy disputes into moral absolutes and making compromise suspect. Consequently, Russophobia operates as a systemic distortion that repeatedly undermines European security itself.
I explore this theme through four historical phases. First, in the nineteenth century, Russia was initially a key player in shaping the post-1815 Concert of Europe but soon became cast as a menace. The Crimean War stands as a foundational episode, initiated by Britain and France despite diplomatic options, driven by moral hostility and imperial anxiety. The Pogodin memorandum of 1853, alongside Tsar Nicholas I’s marginal comment—“This is the whole point”—offers a critical lens into Europe’s double standards and the source of Russian distrust.
Second, during the revolutionary and interwar years, Europe and the U.S. shifted from rivalry to direct interference in Russia’s domestic affairs. I analyze Western military interventions in the Russian Civil War, the exclusion of the Soviet Union from collective security efforts in the 1920s and 1930s, and the failure to unite against fascism, drawing on Michael Jabara Carley’s research. These actions did not contain Soviet power but instead contributed to Europe’s security collapse and the devastation of World War II.
Third, the early Cold War period presented a chance to secure peace, but Europe again turned away. Although agreements like Potsdam envisioned German demilitarization, the West later violated them. The rejection of Stalin’s 1952 reunification proposal—despite evidence of its sincerity—cemented Germany’s division, intensified the East-West divide, and solidified militarization across Europe.
Finally, after the Cold War, Europe faced its clearest chance to break this cycle. Gorbachev’s concept of a “Common European Home” and the Charter of Paris promoted inclusive security. Instead, Europe pursued NATO expansion and a security framework structured around excluding Russia. This was an intentional Anglo-American strategy, most clearly stated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, which viewed Eurasia as the pivotal arena for global dominance and sought to prevent Russia from consolidating power.
The present consequences are stark: the conflict in Ukraine, the breakdown of nuclear arms agreements, severe impacts on Europe’s energy and industry, renewed arms races, political fragmentation, and erosion of strategic independence are cumulative results of two centuries of ignoring Russia’s security interests.
Ultimately, achieving peace with Russia does not demand blind faith but requires acknowledging that lasting security in Europe cannot be forged by denying Russia’s legitimate security needs. Unless Europe abandons this reflex, it risks continuing a pattern of rejecting peace when viable—paying ever-higher costs for this stance.
The Origins of Structural Russophobia
Europe’s repeated failure to foster peaceful relations with Russia is rooted not in recent leaders or ideologies but in deeper structural biases. Rather than treating Russian security concerns as negotiable issues, Europe has long cast them as moral violations. This narrative began in the nineteenth century, when Russia shifted from being a co-guardian of Europe’s balance to its designated threat.
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, Russia was a central player, having carried a heavy share of the fight. The Concert of Europe was founded on the assumption that great powers would accept each other’s roles and resolve conflicts through diplomacy rather than moral denunciation. Yet within decades, a British and French viewpoint emerged that portrayed Russia as a civilizational threat whose regional defensive actions were interpreted wrongly as aggressive expansion.
This shift is vividly captured in Mikhail Pogodin’s 1853 memorandum to Tsar Nicholas I, highlighted by Orlando Figes in The Crimean War: A History (2010). Pogodin juxtaposed Western imperial aggression and coercion with Europe’s harsh reaction to Russia’s regional maneuvers:
France seizes Algeria from Turkey, and England progressively annexes Indian territories: neither disturbs the balance of power. But Russia’s temporary occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia provokes alarm. France’s occupation of Rome during peacetime is tolerated; Russia’s mere contemplation of taking Constantinople is seen as threatening. England wages war on China and intervenes in Greece, yet Russia must seek permission for disputes with neighbors. England’s actions are viewed as lawful, but Russia’s treaty demands to protect Christians are seen as undermining balance.
Pogodin’s conclusion—“We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice”—is underscored by Nicholas’s note: “This is the whole point.” This exchange encapsulates the persistent pathology in European-Russian relations: Europe insists on the legitimacy of its own security claims while dismissing those of Russia, making political compromise impossible since acknowledging Russian interests becomes a moral error.
The Crimean War illustrated this dynamic. While triggered by Ottoman decline and religious disputes, the real question was whether Russia could secure recognized influence in the Black Sea and Balkans without being branded a predator. Unlike earlier crises, by this point, cooperation in the Concert of Europe had weakened, and British public opinion had hardened against Russia, narrowing diplomatic options.
Significantly, a negotiated solution existed: the Vienna Note aimed to balance Russian concerns with Ottoman sovereignty to avert war. However, mistrust and political incentives favored escalation, leading to the Crimean War. This conflict was not indispensable strategically but became likely because British and French compromise had become politically taboo. Its devastating costs included casualties, a lack of stable security structures, and entrenched reflexes treating Russia as exceptional and threatening—fueling a hostile cycle that complicated future crisis management.
The West’s Military Campaign Against Bolshevism
This pattern extended into the upheaval following 1917. When Russia’s government changed, the West did not shift to neutrality but instead opted for active intervention, refusing to tolerate a sovereign Russia outside Western control.
During the Russian Civil War—a complex battle among Reds, Whites, nationalist forces, and foreign armies—the West intervened militarily across vast regions: North Russia, the Baltic, the Black Sea, Siberia, and the Far East. Initial official justifications, such as preventing war supplies falling to Germany after Russia exited World War I, faded after Germany’s surrender in 1918, yet intervention persisted aiming at regime change.
David Foglesong’s America’s Secret War against Bolshevism (1995) provides a definitive account of U.S. efforts to prevent Bolshevik consolidation. More recent work, like Anna Reid’s A Nasty Little War (2024), frames Western intervention as deliberately intended to overturn the revolution. The widespread geographic reach and persistence of Allied military presence underscore that Russian concerns about Western intentions cannot be labeled mere paranoia.
Western forces not only advised but armed and at times controlled White factions, becoming entangled with reactionary and violent elements. This complicates Western moral narratives, revealing that opposition to Bolshevism often involved support for forces at odds with liberal ideals. From Moscow’s viewpoint, this confirmed longstanding warnings that Western powers were prepared to use force to prevent Russia’s autonomy—a conviction central to Soviet memory.
Ironically, Western intervention strengthened Bolshevik legitimacy by enabling the narrative that they defended Russian independence against imperial encirclement. This historical episode highlights a recurring pattern: Russophobia leads to coercive Western policies that fuel the very Russian grievances and mistrust they seek to counter, narrowing space for genuine diplomacy.
By the early 1920s, as foreign troops withdrew and the Soviet regime stabilized, Europe had made two critical errors with lasting consequences: refusing to acknowledge Russian interests as legitimate, and successfully demonstrating that it would use military force not only to contain but also to shape Russia’s sovereignty. These misguided choices undermined collective security efforts, set the stage for the Cold War’s militarization, and foreshadowed future Eastern European tensions.
Collective Security and the Choice Against Russia
By the mid-1920s, despite immense adversity, the Soviet state had emerged sovereign. Europe confronted a pivotal decision repeatedly: whether to accept Russia as a legitimate security partner or exclude it permanently. Europe chose exclusion, with costly results.
Legacy distrust from the civil war and Allied intervention profoundly shaped Soviet views of Western intentions. Moscow’s mistrust was rational from its vantage point, but European diplomacy often dismissed it as unfounded, fueling further alienation.
During the 1920s, Europe vacillated between conditional engagement and exclusion. Agreements like the 1922 Rapallo Treaty showed pragmatic ties between Germany and Soviet Russia; yet Britain and France’s relations with Moscow remained instrumental and limited. Integration of Russia into a robust European security framework as an equal was never seriously pursued.
In the 1930s, this ambivalence hardened dangerously. Though Nazi Germany posed an existential threat, European powers saw Bolshevism as the greater menace, shaping policies that forgone alliances, delayed guarantees, and weakened deterrence against Hitler.
This was no passive ideological drift but a sequence of conscious strategic choices by key European actors. France and Britain preferred Eastern Europe arrangements that preserved their influence but excluded Soviet integration. Poland, backed tacitly by London and Paris, refused Soviet troop transit even to defend Czechoslovakia, prioritizing fear of Soviet presence over the Nazi threat. These decisions favored managing Hitler’s rise over including Soviet power—actively choosing a security logic that ultimately collapsed.
Michael Jabara Carley’s archival work reveals that the Soviet Union, especially under Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov, engaged in sustained, concrete efforts to build collective security against Nazism—proposing mutual assistance treaties, coordinated military plans, and explicit guarantees for vulnerable states. Soviet membership in the League of Nations in 1934 also reflected an earnest attempt to operationalize European deterrence.
However, Western anti-communism outweighed anti-fascist priorities. British and French elites feared domestic and international legitimization of Bolshevism more than Hitler’s threats. Including the USSR was seen as politically unacceptable, viewed as contaminating European politics.
The strategic fallout was profound. Appeasement policies stemmed from viewing Nazi aggression as manageable and Soviet power as inherently subversive. Poland’s refusal to grant Soviet transit rights epitomized this preference: risking German invasion rather than Soviet presence, even defensively.
The failed 1939 Anglo-French negotiations with the Soviet Union stemmed not from Soviet duplicity but Western unwillingness to commit seriously or treat the USSR as an equal partner. Western delegations lacked authority and urgency, effectively offering no genuine alliance.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact is often cited as cause for Europe’s failure; Carley reverses this view, showing it was a consequence of Western refusal to build security with Russia. The pact was a harsh but understandable outcome after Britain, France, and Poland had rejected peace efforts that might have stopped Hitler.
The consequences were devastating: Europe suffered tremendous loss, disempowerment, and became the main theater for superpower rivalry. Once again, rejecting peace with Russia led not to safety but to greater war and destruction.
One might have thought that such devastation would inspire post-1945 rethinking of European relations with Russia. It did not.
From Potsdam to NATO: The Architecture of Exclusion
The immediate postwar period quickly shifted from cooperation to confrontation. Even before Germany’s surrender, Churchill directed planners to prepare for possible conflict with the Soviet Union. “Operation Unthinkable” envisaged using Anglo-American and even rearmed German forces against Russia. Although militarily impractical and shelved, the plan underscores how deeply the presumption of Russian illegitimacy had taken hold.
Western diplomacy failed to acknowledge that the Soviet Union bore immense wartime sacrifices—27 million dead—and that Russia’s concerns about German rearmament were valid. Durable peace demanded accommodating these core security needs, chiefly preventing a remilitarized Germany threatening Russia’s western borders.
At Yalta and especially Potsdam in 1945, the Allies agreed on principles for Germany: demilitarization, denazification, democratization, economic unity, and no rearmament or alliances. From Moscow’s perspective, these terms were vital, reflecting trauma from prior German invasions and the catastrophic losses of World War II.
Potsdam explicitly stated that Germany must never again threaten its neighbors or the world’s peace. While dividing Germany into occupation zones was accepted as temporary and administrative, Western powers soon began undermining these commitments as their strategic interests shifted.
Melvyn Leffler’s A Preponderance of Power (1992) details how U.S. priorities transitioned toward economic recovery and Western alignment for Germany, sidelining Soviet security needs. The Soviet Union was recast from ally to potential adversary, prompting efforts to contain its influence in Europe.
This shift predated formal militarized Cold War crises. Before the Berlin Blockade, Western zones were politically and economically combined, violating Potsdam’s principle of a unified Germany. The issuance of a separate currency in 1948 was a politically charged act cementing division—seen by Moscow as unilateral breach.
The Soviet blockade of Berlin is often depicted as aggressive. However, context reveals it as an attempt to pressure the West back to four-power governance and prevent West German statehood. Though the Western airlift averted immediate crisis, it did not resolve the abandonment of a neutral, demilitarized Germany.
The Korean War’s outbreak in 1950 reframed the Cold War globally, providing political cover for West German rearmament—previously unacceptable. Now, Western defense was seen as impossible without German military participation.
This marked a turning point: German remilitarization was a deliberate choice, not forced by Soviet aggression. Britain and France, wary but yielding to U.S. pressure, accepted this shift. When the European Defense Community plan collapsed, West Germany joined NATO in 1955—a decision that finalized the Potsdam framework’s collapse from Moscow’s view.
Thus, Germany ceased to be neutral or demilitarized and became part of a military alliance explicitly aimed against the USSR. This was precisely the outcome Soviet leaders had sought to avoid since 1945.
It is important to emphasize that German division and remilitarization were caused by Western decisions, not Soviet acts. Stalin’s 1952 offer of reunification on neutral terms was serious and came after Germany was already set on a NATO-bound course. The Stalin Note was an attempt to reverse the process, later rejected by the West.
Viewed this way, the early Cold War settlement reflects another instance of Europe subordinating Russian security to NATO priorities. Germany’s neutrality was rejected not because it was unfeasible, but because it conflicted with Western alliance cohesion and U.S. leadership aspirations.
These choices incurred profound and lasting costs: Germany became the Cold War’s central dividing line, Europe was militarized with nuclear deployment, and strategic autonomy shifted to Washington. Moreover, Soviet distrust of Western intentions was reconfirmed.
This context is vital for understanding the Stalin Note. It was neither surprising nor cynical but a rational response to broken postwar promises. Like earlier peace offers, it was rebuffed, perpetuating conflict.
1952: The Rejection of German Reunification
Stalin’s 1952 proposal for a united, neutral Germany was clear and firm. As detailed by Rolf Steininger in The German Question: The Stalin Note of 1952 and the Problem of Reunification (1990), the offer included free elections, withdrawal of occupation forces, and a peace treaty guaranteed by major powers. This was a genuine strategic offer motivated by Soviet fears over German militarization and NATO expansion.
Steininger’s archival findings challenge common Western narratives. A 1955 confidential memorandum from Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick reveals that Chancellor Adenauer knew the offer was real but declined it, fearing that German democracy might turn toward neutrality and reconciliation with Moscow, weakening West Germany’s alignment with the West.
Accordingly, Western rejection of peace and reunification stemmed not from impossibility but political inconvenience. Neutrality threatened the emerging NATO structure and was dismissed as a “trap.”
Western European elites actively supported Atlantic alignment. Adenauer’s refusal reflected a consensus favoring U.S. leadership over European strategic independence. Neutral Germany would have forced direct negotiations with Moscow, undermining U.S.-led frameworks that insulated Western Europe from such engagements. Thus, rejecting neutrality also meant shirking responsibility, choosing security without diplomatic commitment to coexistence—at the cost of Europe’s division and militarization.
In March 1954, the Soviet Union sought NATO membership, arguing it would enhance European collective security. The U.S. and allies promptly rejected this, fearing it would dilute the alliance and hinder West Germany’s NATO accession. Once more, a neutral, demilitarized Germany and collective security framework were dismissed in favor of military bloc structures.
The 1955 Austrian State Treaty exposed the contradictions inherent in this logic. Austria gained neutrality, saw Soviet troop withdrawal, and prospered peacefully. The feared domino effects did not materialize. Austria’s experience demonstrated that a similar arrangement was feasible for Germany, but strategic preferences blocked it. Europe accepted neutrality in Austria because it did not threaten Western hegemony but rejected it in Germany, where it did.
The enduring outcomes included nearly four decades of German division, entrenched militarization with nuclear presence, and European security subject to American strategy—again making Europe a primary site of great-power confrontation.
By 1955, it was clear that peace with Russia would only be accepted if fully consistent with the U.S.-led Western order. When peace entailed genuine concessions on Russian security—such as German neutrality or non-alignment—it was systematically denied. The repercussions shaped subsequent decades.
The 30-Year Refusal of Russian Security Concerns
The end of the Cold War offered a unique chance to break this sustained pattern. Unlike previous shifts at 1815, 1919, or 1945—prompted largely by military defeat—this moment emerged from voluntary choice. The Soviet Union collapsed peacefully, renouncing force as a basis for European order under Gorbachev and later Yeltsin. Both accepted the loss of control in Central and Eastern Europe, advocating a security framework based on inclusion rather than blocs. The failure lay not with Russian initiatives but with Europe and the U.S.-led Atlantic system’s refusal to embrace this vision.
Gorbachev’s “Common European Home” was a concrete doctrine rejecting Cold War rivalries as obsolete amid nuclear deterrence. He envisaged indivisible security, cooperative guarantees, and phasing out alliances. His 1989 speech to the Council of Europe and the 1990 Charter of Paris codified commitments to democracy, human rights, and collaborative security.
Europe faced a pivotal choice: build a security system around the OSCE with Russia as an equal partner or maintain Cold War hierarchies under new rhetoric. Europe chose to preserve the status quo.
NATO remained intact and expanded. Publicly justified as defensive measures stabilizing Eastern Europe, these expansions directly conflicted with Russia’s core security concerns—geographically, historically, and psychologically—as Russia repeatedly stressed and Western diplomats privately acknowledged.
Claims that no formal promises were made about NATO’s non-expansion beyond Germany overlook that diplomacy also relies on implicit understandings and trust. Declassified documents show Soviet leaders were repeatedly assured NATO would not advance eastward. These understandings shaped Soviet acceptance of German reunification. When expansion occurred regardless, Russia perceived it as a profound betrayal.
Over time, European governments increasingly embraced NATO enlargement as a European initiative, intertwining it with EU enlargement, reducing space for alternatives like neutrality. Even Germany’s policy, influenced by Ostpolitik and economic ties with Russia, subordinated accommodation to alliance priorities. Expansion was framed as a moral imperative, marginalizing Russian concerns as outdated nostalgia rather than legitimate security issues. Europe thus ceded much of its strategic independence, increasingly aligning with Atlantic priorities favoring expansion at the cost of stability.
This failure is most apparent here: rather than recognizing NATO enlargement contradicted the indivisible security principle from the Charter of Paris, European leaders dismissed Russian objections as illegitimate, offering consultation without decision-making power. The 1997 NATO–Russia Founding Act institutionalized this imbalance: partnership without equality or veto. European security architecture was constructed around Russia—and in spite of Russia.
George Kennan’s 1997 caution that NATO expansion was a “fateful error” accurately foresaw the risks. Kennan did not claim Russia was virtuous but warned that humiliating a weakened great power would breed resentment and militarization. His realistic warning was largely ignored, yet history has since confirmed his analysis.
The ideological roots of this dismissal are clear in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s writings. In The Grand Chessboard (1997) and his Foreign Affairs essay “A Geostrategy for Eurasia” (1997), Brzezinski presented a vision of maintaining U.S. dominance by controlling Eurasia, the planet’s “axial supercontinent.” Ukraine, in this view, was the geopolitical linchpin. “Without Ukraine,” he famously wrote, “Russia ceases to be an empire.”
This was not mere theory but a strategic blueprint prioritizing U.S. primacy over accommodating Russia’s security concerns, which were regarded as obstacles. This logic was absorbed by Europe, reliant on U.S. security guarantees, often without facing its full consequences. The resulting European policy consistently favored alliance growth and moral grandstanding over real stability and compromise.
These dynamics became obvious in 2008. At NATO’s Bucharest Summit, the alliance declared that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Though no timeline was specified, the political message was clear and crossed long-noted Russian red lines. William Burns, U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time, reported in a cable titled “NYET MEANS NYET” that Russia experienced this as an existential threat, unifying diverse political groups in opposition. The warning was ignored.
From Russia’s standpoint, the pattern was unmistakable: Europe and the U.S. invoked sovereignty and rules selectively while dismissing Russia’s fundamental security concerns. Their conclusion echoed historical lessons from the Crimean War, Allied interventions, interwar failures, and the Stalin Note: peace would only be offered on Western-dominated terms.
The 2014 Ukraine crisis was not a deviation but a climax. The Maidan uprising, Yanukovych’s fall, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and conflict in Donbas all unfolded within a fractured security order. The U.S. actively supported the coup overthrowing Yanukovych and influenced the new government formation. European responses focused on sanctions and condemnation, portraying the conflict in moral terms. Yet a peaceful resolution remained possible. The Minsk agreements, especially Minsk II in 2015, presented a framework for de-escalation, regional autonomy, and reintegration within a broader European economic space.
Minsk II implicitly accepted that peace required compromise addressing both internal divisions and external security issues. Western resistance ultimately undid Minsk II; when officials later suggested Minsk II merely postponed conflict to allow Ukraine’s rearmament, they deepened Moscow’s mistrust, confirming suspicions that Western diplomacy pursued cynical, instrumental goals rather than sincere settlement.
By 2021, the European security framework had unraveled. Russia submitted draft proposals for negotiations on NATO expansion, missile deployments, and military exercises—the very issues it had expressed concerns about for decades. These were promptly dismissed by the U.S. and NATO, with NATO expansion declared non-negotiable. Again, Russia’s core security worries were denied legitimacy as negotiation subjects. Conflict ensued.
When Russian troops entered Ukraine in February 2022, Europe labeled the invasion “unprovoked,” a description that obscures the historical context. The invasion stemmed from a security order systematically excluding Russia and a diplomatic process rejecting negotiation over Russia’s vital concerns.
Even then, peace remained achievable. In early 2022, Russia and Ukraine negotiated in Istanbul, producing a detailed draft framework. Ukraine proposed permanent neutrality with international security guarantees; Russia accepted. The draft addressed force limitations, guarantees, and steps toward resolving territorial issues—realistic proposals reflecting battlefield and geopolitical realities.
However, the Istanbul talks collapsed after U.S. and U.K. intervention advised Ukraine against signing. Boris Johnson later acknowledged that Western hegemony was at stake. This collapse demonstrates that peace was within reach early in the conflict but sacrificed for strategic dominance.
By 2025, the same Istanbul framework reemerged as a diplomatic reference. After enormous losses, negotiators returned to compromise proposals—typical of conflicts shaped by security dilemmas where initially rejected settlements resurface as tragic necessities. Still, Europe resists peace.
Europe now faces unavoidable consequences from decades of ignoring Russia’s security concerns: severe economic damage, commitments to costly rearmament, strained political unity amid inflation, migration, war fatigue, and diverging state interests. Europe’s strategic independence has declined as it once again becomes a battleground for great-power rivalry instead of an autonomous actor.
Most perilously, nuclear threats have reentered European security calculations. For the first time since the Cold War, Europeans live under the possibility of escalation between nuclear powers. This danger is not merely moral failure but the result of centuries-long Western refusal—dating back to Pogodin—to recognize that peace requires negotiating Russia’s legitimate security needs.
The tragedy of Europe’s denial is self-perpetuating. Dismissing Russian security concerns lowers Russian incentives for diplomacy and encourages unilateral actions, which Europe misinterprets as confirmation of distrust. This cycle reduces diplomatic options until war appears inevitable—not out of immutable hostility but due to Europe’s persistent refusal to acknowledge genuine fears, even when uncomfortable.
Europe has repeatedly suffered heavily for this stance: in the Crimean War, early twentieth-century catastrophes, the Cold War’s division, and now again. Russophobia has failed to enhance Europe’s safety; instead, it has left it poorer, divided, militarized, and dependent.
Ironically, while structural Russophobia has not diminished Russia’s long-term strength, it has weakened Europe by generating the instability it fears and imposing escalating costs in lives, resources, sovereignty, and unity. These cycles consistently end with the belated realization that peace demands negotiation—after vast damage has already occurred. Europe’s unlearned lesson is that recognizing Russian security interests is essential not as a concession but as a preventative of conflict.
The historical record—etched in blood over two centuries—is clear: trust in Russia need not be unconditional, but its security concerns must be taken seriously. Repeated rejection of peace did not arise from absence of opportunity but from wrongly denying the legitimacy of Russia’s security needs. Until this reflex ends, Europe will remain trapped in self-defeating confrontation, forsaking peace when possible and bearing the attendant costs indefinitely.
Original article: www.cirsd.org
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