Collisions

January 29, 2024
In this arresting deep dive, historian Kimmage (The Conservative Turn) explores decades of international relations leading up to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Delineating a tangle of political inactions and missteps by the U.S. and Europe that in his view led to the deadly conflict, Kimmage first contends that Western ambivalence over Vladimir Putin’s earlier aggressions—including his 2008 invasion of Georgia, when he ousted its pro-Western leader, and his backing of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in that country’s civil war—served to goad rather than becalm the Russian leader. Then, in 2014, after Russia first invaded Ukraine, Kimmage argues that the West “overpromised and underdelivered,” sending mixed messages of support to Kyiv that riled both sides. Kimmage does an admirable job explaining Russia’s justifications for its actions; he somewhat overreaches, however, when arguing the conflict was most directly ignited by Western action—namely President Donald Trump’s promise of “lethal military assistance” to Ukraine, which Kimmage claims dashed any chance that Russia could back down. Also difficult to square is the suggestion that the West should have instead taken Putin’s national security concerns seriously, which runs counter to Kimmage’s description of those concerns as the “marginal” whims of an “eccentric” dictator. By and large, however, the commentary is elucidating and the fine-grained narrative keeps the pages turning. This deserves to be reckoned with.

January 1, 2024

Kimmage (history, Catholic Univ. of America; The Abandonment of the West) served on the U.S. State Department's Policy Planning Staff, specializing in policy toward Ukraine. His excellent book contains qualities seldom present in narrating an ongoing conflict. He finds the origins of Russia's invasion in Putin's contempt for Europe and democracy, in a gross underestimation of Zelensky's Ukraine, and in a conflation of projected success with past conflict in the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Moldova. He faults the West for ineffective deterrence and cites Europe's fecklessness in the ill-framed Minsk agreements following the 2014 war over Crimea and the Donbas. Kimmage argues that Washington's error consisted in refusing Kyiv lethal military aid after 2014, leaving a line of ineffective policy through the 2022 war. His book asserts that the Biden administration's quest for "guardrails" in relations with Russia could hardly succeed after the confusion of the Trump presidency and the absence of a a coordinated Western response to Russian belligerence before 2022. VERDICT A compelling and detailed account that reveals some little known facts and a deeply sobering analysis of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, its consequences for Russia, and the many assumptions about European security.--Zachary Irwin

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2024
The background to one of the most dangerous geopolitical clashes of the post-Cold War era. Kimmage, a history professor and author of Abandonment of the West, admits that he is not an expert on Ukraine. As a scholar in political science, however, he provides well-informed and realistic, if bleak, context for current events. Russia's 2022 invasion, writes the author, marked the end of "three of the most peaceful, most promising, most prosperous decades in European history." Upon Ukrainian independence in 1991, U.S. officials treated the new nation lazily, overpromising (dangling but refusing NATO membership in 2008) and then refusing to arm it after Russia's takeover of Crimea in 2014. With no nostalgia for communism but yearning (along with most Russians) to make his nation powerful again on the global stage, Putin noted that NATO had also declined to admit Georgia in 2008. A few months later, his army invaded Georgia, and America and its NATO allies expressed outrage but took no action. In 2014, the Russian army occupied Crimea and other areas in eastern Ukraine. Most Russians were pleased, while the U.S. and other powers expressed outrage and imposed sanctions but failed to take real action. Putin regularly proclaims that the U.S. is an empire in decline. Kimmage admits that this is a reasonable impression, observing that 21st-century America has stumbled badly through two stalemated wars, a depression, and a disastrous presidency. Having triumphed in two earlier wars, Putin had no doubt he was on a roll, but matters did not work out so well in his third. In a fitting conclusion to his well-researched book, the author expresses mild approval of Biden's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but he knows too much history to predict a satisfying outcome. Political maneuvering rarely begets a page-turner, but Kimmage's insightful account is just that.

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