Publication

This paper focuses on the unique challenges posed by the near-frozen Ukraine crisis and the divisions that exist between Europe and the US on how to interpret and respond to the problem. Washington, for example, views Russian actions in Ukraine within a broader global perspective and seeks to contain and isolate what it sees as a rogue regime. Most European governments, in contrast, want to quarantine the Ukraine problem while also engaging with Moscow. Russia, in turn, remains convinced that the West poses a threat to its vital national interests, but it also (and paradoxically) continues to pursue policies that aggravate its increasingly painful self-isolation. Finally, if Ukraine hopes to sustain its sovereignty and stop being a proxy battlefield between the West and Russia, it will have to reform its failed and corrupt institutions. Transatlantic unity, which may fragment anyway, depends on it.