ASIA
04 October 2025
Russia’s eternal post-Cold War grudge
Russia’s post-Cold War grudge against the West and America planted the seed for Russia’s calamitous invasion of Ukraine.
Our understanding of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and Russia’s behaviour more generally, is mired in false and partial interpretations of history, along with lots of propaganda and quite frankly much anti-Americanism.
For my money, the most convincing evidence on the issue is presented in Stephan Kieninger’s new book, Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War, As detailed by Kieninger, a nonresident fellow at the American-German Institute details, when Bill Clinton came to the US presidency in 1991, Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia, and there was much hope for Russia’s transition to a market economy and democracy. And Clinton invested himself deeply in Yeltsin's Russia. But when Clinton left the presidency in 2001, Russia was led by Vladimir Putin and the country was set on a different trajectory.
Leading Clinton’s efforts was Strobe Talbott, a close buddy from the time when they were both Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University, and who Clinton appointed deputy secretary of state. Kieninger’s insightful research on the Clinton administration’s to bring security to Europe draws on recently declassified government documents from this period, along with Talbott’s personal diaries.
The Berlin Wall had fallen in November 1989. East Germany reunified with the West from November 1989 to October 1990. Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland regained their independence in 1989. The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and broke into 15 sovereign states, including Ukraine and the Baltic states. The Russian Federation became the main successor state of the former Soviet Union with Boris Yeltsin as its president. Thus, there were great hopes for democracy and market economics in the former communist world.
But Europe was never really secure after the end of the Cold War. There was never really a consensus on the rules of the game with Russia. And Russia was never really comfortable with Europe’s institution-based security system.
As Clinton said, “The cold war had been won, but in many ways, Europe was still divided, between the haves and have-nots, between the secure and insecure, between members of NATO and the EU and those who were not members of either body and felt left out in the cold.…And so we set out to do for the Eastern half of Europe what we helped to do for the Western half after World War II”.
Clinton and Yeltsin met some 18 times during 8 years. That's more than all of the US/Soviet summits during the whole Cold War. Against the advice of his advisors, but with the support of Talbott, Clinto met with Yeltsin in Vancouver in April 1993. Clinton's gut feeling was that he should have such an early summit to help the reform process in Russia when the entire reform project in Russia was in crisis and Yeltsin was desperate for a meeting.
They had a second meeting uh at the World Economic Summit in Tokyo in July 1993, when Clinton succeeded in convincing Yelin to stop Russian missile support for India. But during the remainder of Clinton’s presidency, various shocks and setbacks led to a downward spiral in US/Russia relations. Russia’s financial collapse in 1998 destroyed Yeltsin’s reform project and led to the disintegration of his presidency. The Kosovo War of 1999 led to a nationalist groundswell in Russia. Finally, starting in 1999, the second Chechen War catapulted Vladimir Putin into the president’s office.
Non-proliferation was a huge issue because the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus inherited massive numbers of Soviet nuclear weapons. All three countries agreed to abandon their nuclear weapons in return for continuing economic assistance and security guarantees which prohibited Russia, the US and the UK from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against them, codified in the “Budapest Memorandum”.
But these security guarantees did not contain a mechanism to enforce them. They would depend in particular on Russia’s goodwill, notably the goodwill of Russian presidents after Yeltsin. The Ukrainians pushed for Article 5/NATO security guarantees, but the Americans would not agree to that. In sum, these countries were left in a situation of strategic vulnerability – a vulnerability that was only confirmed by Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine starting in 2022.
Clinton recently expressed his regrets for having Ukraine give up nuclear weapons. He knew that President Putin did not support the agreement President Yeltsin made to never interfere with Ukraine’s territorial boundaries. Moreover, he believes that a bigger NATO, including Ukraine, would have deterred and not provoked Russia.
It was in fact Central European leaders, Polish President Lech Wałęsa and Czech President Václav Havel, who pushed for NATO enlargement due to their fear of a revival of Russian imperialism and nationalism. Thus, the Clinton administration reluctantly accepted NATO membership for Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, which joined NATO in March 1999. The opening up of NATO was a gradual, slow and deliberate process. It took ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall for NATO to admit its first new members.
In a similar vein, there was little US or European enthusiasm for NATO membership by the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). But some analysts at the US-based Rand Corporation and Denmark pushed for Baltic NATO membership. All three became NATO members in March 2004, and joined the EU in May 2004.
In fact, Russia was even offered NATO membership. But Yeltsin rejected this in 1997, because Russia was just too big and would not subordinate its forces under NATO's command. Later on then in 2000, Putin revived the idea of Russia's potential NATO membership in an interview at the beginning of his presidency.
In March 1997 at their Helsinki summit, Yeltsin requested a firm commitment from Clinton to not admit the Baltic states into NATO. Clinton rejected this, insisting Russia does not have a veto over NATO's decisions or the decisions of Baltic policy makers.
But NATO still sought ways to address Russian concerns. Although NATO reaffirmed the extension of its nuclear umbrella to the new members in the East, the alliance pledged that it had “no intention, no plan, and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new member states.” It also renounced the right to permanently deploy troops in Eastern Europe.
Despite his initial reservations about expanding NATO membership, by 1995 Talbott increasingly saw NATO enlargement as a hedge against uncertainty and a potential revival of imperialism in Russia.
In reality, this discussion took place in the context of East Germany’s reunification with West Germany which took place later in 1990. And the meaning was that NATO would not move its forces into East Germany if East Germany was allowed to reunify with West Germany. The question of possible NATO expansion to the former Warsaw Pact was not even on the agenda at the time. Moreover, there was no way that President Bush or Secretary Baker could have committed their successors to a self-abnegating act on the question of NATO enlargement.
In this context, the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act established a framework for cooperation and consultation between NATO and Russia in the post-Cold War era, aiming to build lasting peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area. The Act created the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council for dialogue and cooperation on security issues, but it did not grant Russia any voting rights within NATO.
But the Russians made a calculated choice not to use the Founding Act. They wanted a veto over NATO’s decisions and future membership. The Russians wanted to make future NATO enlargement as painful as a root candle treatment!
Fundamentally, Russia and NATO members had different conceptions of European security. For Russia, European security should be dictated by great powers and that Russia was entitled to have a “sphere of influence” over its bordering countries. These bordering countries should have limited sovereignty and not be able to conduct independent foreign and defence policies.
This 19th century approach to security was at odds with the postwar approach which is elaborated through institutions, notably NATO and the EU, which respects all countries’ sovereignty and based on consensus decisionmaking. For Russia, security issues should be managed through bilateral deals between great powers. Russian policymakers increasingly saw the emergence of an integrated Europe as a threat.
In sum, Russian imperial thinking was always there, even before Putin ascended to the presidency
Talbott was extremely wary of Putin who he first met in June 1999 when Putin told Talbott lies about Russia's intervention in Kosovo. He was then concerned when Putin escalated the war in Chechnya.
Talbott saw Putin as a liar and paranoid counter-espionage guy. He was also concerned about Putin's KGB entourage and advisors. He saw that Putin was there to revive the Soviet Union and to bury since Yeltsin’s reforms.
Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shared these assessments. Talbott's advice for Clinton was to keep a distance from Putin, to deny him the kind of warm relationship that Clinton had with Yeltsin.
But western European policy makers did not share Talbott's assessment. A lot of European political leaders – notably Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder – were keen to accommodate and do business with Putin who they saw as a moderniser. No Europeans had the guts to confront Putin over the 2000 Chechnya war. This encouraged Putin to believe that the West would be divided in response to anything he did. Talbott observed that Putin was always testing the limits of how far he could confront the US.
At the end of his term, Talbott was disillusioned and disenchanted about Russia. But he was not alone. In a conversation in January 2000, Estonian president Lennart Georg Meri compared Putin to Hitler.
Despite much triumphalism about the end of the European Cold War, the European security system was always contested, never stable. There were wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya (twice), Georgia and Ukraine.
The US did not want to defeat Russia. Everyone was eager to help Russia and integrate it into North Atlantic security systems. But Russia could never accept its new position in European security. There is no basis for the Russian grievance narrative of broken promises not to enlarge NATO.
The end of the European Cold War did not resolve the underlying security issues, and brought tons of new problems. In retrospect, the European Cold War was “quite convenient” in that it brought a degree of clarity, about the rules of the game/engagement. Today, we have lost this clarity, making the world more dangerous.
The quest for security has no easy solutions or fixes, no finish line. It is an eternal task.
For my money, the most convincing evidence on the issue is presented in Stephan Kieninger’s new book, Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War, As detailed by Kieninger, a nonresident fellow at the American-German Institute details, when Bill Clinton came to the US presidency in 1991, Boris Yeltsin was president of Russia, and there was much hope for Russia’s transition to a market economy and democracy. And Clinton invested himself deeply in Yeltsin's Russia. But when Clinton left the presidency in 2001, Russia was led by Vladimir Putin and the country was set on a different trajectory.
Leading Clinton’s efforts was Strobe Talbott, a close buddy from the time when they were both Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University, and who Clinton appointed deputy secretary of state. Kieninger’s insightful research on the Clinton administration’s to bring security to Europe draws on recently declassified government documents from this period, along with Talbott’s personal diaries.
High hopes and big efforts for Russia
When Bill Clinton moved into the White House in January 1993, the West’s “victory” in the European Cold War might have seemed definitive.The Berlin Wall had fallen in November 1989. East Germany reunified with the West from November 1989 to October 1990. Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland regained their independence in 1989. The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and broke into 15 sovereign states, including Ukraine and the Baltic states. The Russian Federation became the main successor state of the former Soviet Union with Boris Yeltsin as its president. Thus, there were great hopes for democracy and market economics in the former communist world.
But Europe was never really secure after the end of the Cold War. There was never really a consensus on the rules of the game with Russia. And Russia was never really comfortable with Europe’s institution-based security system.
As Clinton said, “The cold war had been won, but in many ways, Europe was still divided, between the haves and have-nots, between the secure and insecure, between members of NATO and the EU and those who were not members of either body and felt left out in the cold.…And so we set out to do for the Eastern half of Europe what we helped to do for the Western half after World War II”.
The Bill and Boris show
Today, Russians are wont to criticise America’s treatment of their country following the end of the Cold War. But many seem to have forgotten the “Bill and Boris show”, which was a feature of President Clinton’s term of office, from 1993 to 2001. Clinton did his best to support Russia’s reform programme and its integration into world order, and also to support Yeltsin’s presidency.Clinton and Yeltsin met some 18 times during 8 years. That's more than all of the US/Soviet summits during the whole Cold War. Against the advice of his advisors, but with the support of Talbott, Clinto met with Yeltsin in Vancouver in April 1993. Clinton's gut feeling was that he should have such an early summit to help the reform process in Russia when the entire reform project in Russia was in crisis and Yeltsin was desperate for a meeting.
They had a second meeting uh at the World Economic Summit in Tokyo in July 1993, when Clinton succeeded in convincing Yelin to stop Russian missile support for India. But during the remainder of Clinton’s presidency, various shocks and setbacks led to a downward spiral in US/Russia relations. Russia’s financial collapse in 1998 destroyed Yeltsin’s reform project and led to the disintegration of his presidency. The Kosovo War of 1999 led to a nationalist groundswell in Russia. Finally, starting in 1999, the second Chechen War catapulted Vladimir Putin into the president’s office.
Post Cold War non-proliferation issues
America’s nuclear non-proliferation concerns ultimately led to Ukraine’s betrayal by Russia.Non-proliferation was a huge issue because the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus inherited massive numbers of Soviet nuclear weapons. All three countries agreed to abandon their nuclear weapons in return for continuing economic assistance and security guarantees which prohibited Russia, the US and the UK from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against them, codified in the “Budapest Memorandum”.
But these security guarantees did not contain a mechanism to enforce them. They would depend in particular on Russia’s goodwill, notably the goodwill of Russian presidents after Yeltsin. The Ukrainians pushed for Article 5/NATO security guarantees, but the Americans would not agree to that. In sum, these countries were left in a situation of strategic vulnerability – a vulnerability that was only confirmed by Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian territory in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine starting in 2022.
Clinton recently expressed his regrets for having Ukraine give up nuclear weapons. He knew that President Putin did not support the agreement President Yeltsin made to never interfere with Ukraine’s territorial boundaries. Moreover, he believes that a bigger NATO, including Ukraine, would have deterred and not provoked Russia.
Former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics join NATO
Contrary to current Russian propaganda, the George H.W.Bush and Clinton US administrations were not seeking to enlarge NATO by admitting central and eastern European countries as members. The NATO bureaucracy was also cautious because nobody wanted to enter into new security commitments. The Partnership for Peace programme was created aimed at creating trust and cooperation between NATO states and post-Soviet states.It was in fact Central European leaders, Polish President Lech Wałęsa and Czech President Václav Havel, who pushed for NATO enlargement due to their fear of a revival of Russian imperialism and nationalism. Thus, the Clinton administration reluctantly accepted NATO membership for Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, which joined NATO in March 1999. The opening up of NATO was a gradual, slow and deliberate process. It took ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall for NATO to admit its first new members.
In a similar vein, there was little US or European enthusiasm for NATO membership by the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). But some analysts at the US-based Rand Corporation and Denmark pushed for Baltic NATO membership. All three became NATO members in March 2004, and joined the EU in May 2004.
In fact, Russia was even offered NATO membership. But Yeltsin rejected this in 1997, because Russia was just too big and would not subordinate its forces under NATO's command. Later on then in 2000, Putin revived the idea of Russia's potential NATO membership in an interview at the beginning of his presidency.
Russian resistance to NATO expansion
Russia was never happy about NATO membership by former Warsaw Pact members and former Soviet Republics. But Russia could not stop it, due to its strategic weakness at the time. In his speech at the December 1994 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, President Yeltsin said that a US-led plan to expand NATO threatens to plunge Europe “into a cold peace.”In March 1997 at their Helsinki summit, Yeltsin requested a firm commitment from Clinton to not admit the Baltic states into NATO. Clinton rejected this, insisting Russia does not have a veto over NATO's decisions or the decisions of Baltic policy makers.
But NATO still sought ways to address Russian concerns. Although NATO reaffirmed the extension of its nuclear umbrella to the new members in the East, the alliance pledged that it had “no intention, no plan, and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new member states.” It also renounced the right to permanently deploy troops in Eastern Europe.
Despite his initial reservations about expanding NATO membership, by 1995 Talbott increasingly saw NATO enlargement as a hedge against uncertainty and a potential revival of imperialism in Russia.
NATO broken promises?
The Russians argue that George H.W.Bush's Secretary of State, James Baker, promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not be extended “one inch further” to the east, meaning that NATO membership would not be offered to former Warsaw Pact members or former Soviet republics.In reality, this discussion took place in the context of East Germany’s reunification with West Germany which took place later in 1990. And the meaning was that NATO would not move its forces into East Germany if East Germany was allowed to reunify with West Germany. The question of possible NATO expansion to the former Warsaw Pact was not even on the agenda at the time. Moreover, there was no way that President Bush or Secretary Baker could have committed their successors to a self-abnegating act on the question of NATO enlargement.
NATO-Russia Founding Act
NATO and the US in particular worked hard to assuage Russia’s concerns about NATO membership, and to not be triumphalist.In this context, the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act established a framework for cooperation and consultation between NATO and Russia in the post-Cold War era, aiming to build lasting peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area. The Act created the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council for dialogue and cooperation on security issues, but it did not grant Russia any voting rights within NATO.
But the Russians made a calculated choice not to use the Founding Act. They wanted a veto over NATO’s decisions and future membership. The Russians wanted to make future NATO enlargement as painful as a root candle treatment!
Fundamentally, Russia and NATO members had different conceptions of European security. For Russia, European security should be dictated by great powers and that Russia was entitled to have a “sphere of influence” over its bordering countries. These bordering countries should have limited sovereignty and not be able to conduct independent foreign and defence policies.
This 19th century approach to security was at odds with the postwar approach which is elaborated through institutions, notably NATO and the EU, which respects all countries’ sovereignty and based on consensus decisionmaking. For Russia, security issues should be managed through bilateral deals between great powers. Russian policymakers increasingly saw the emergence of an integrated Europe as a threat.
In sum, Russian imperial thinking was always there, even before Putin ascended to the presidency
Advent of Vladimir Putin
Russian President Boris Yeltsin chose as his presidential successor Vladimir Putin, who agreed to protect Yeltsin and his family. Putin served as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000, and then became president.Talbott was extremely wary of Putin who he first met in June 1999 when Putin told Talbott lies about Russia's intervention in Kosovo. He was then concerned when Putin escalated the war in Chechnya.
Talbott saw Putin as a liar and paranoid counter-espionage guy. He was also concerned about Putin's KGB entourage and advisors. He saw that Putin was there to revive the Soviet Union and to bury since Yeltsin’s reforms.
Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shared these assessments. Talbott's advice for Clinton was to keep a distance from Putin, to deny him the kind of warm relationship that Clinton had with Yeltsin.
But western European policy makers did not share Talbott's assessment. A lot of European political leaders – notably Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder – were keen to accommodate and do business with Putin who they saw as a moderniser. No Europeans had the guts to confront Putin over the 2000 Chechnya war. This encouraged Putin to believe that the West would be divided in response to anything he did. Talbott observed that Putin was always testing the limits of how far he could confront the US.
At the end of his term, Talbott was disillusioned and disenchanted about Russia. But he was not alone. In a conversation in January 2000, Estonian president Lennart Georg Meri compared Putin to Hitler.
Conclusion
All together, Kieninger’s analysis is very sobering.Despite much triumphalism about the end of the European Cold War, the European security system was always contested, never stable. There were wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya (twice), Georgia and Ukraine.
The US did not want to defeat Russia. Everyone was eager to help Russia and integrate it into North Atlantic security systems. But Russia could never accept its new position in European security. There is no basis for the Russian grievance narrative of broken promises not to enlarge NATO.
The end of the European Cold War did not resolve the underlying security issues, and brought tons of new problems. In retrospect, the European Cold War was “quite convenient” in that it brought a degree of clarity, about the rules of the game/engagement. Today, we have lost this clarity, making the world more dangerous.
The quest for security has no easy solutions or fixes, no finish line. It is an eternal task.