The New International Order: NATO and Eastern Expansion

The American ambassador to Russia, Sandy Vershbow, described U.S. involvement in the 2004 Ukrainian elections — a decade before the Maidan events — as the “turning point” in U.S., NATO, and Russian relations. He notably remarked:

 “[…] I now reflect on when Putin began to feel that all the West’s rhetoric about cooperation was nothing more than a smokescreen for a cynical plan to undermine Russia — aimed at depriving it of its rightful sovereignty over its neighbors, [and] at fomenting color revolutions throughout the former Soviet space, including within Russia itself, and ultimately at toppling the Putin regime.”¹

Secondly, on December 22, 2022, Angela Merkel clarified what had transpired in Ukraine in the recent past during an interview with the newspaper Die Zeit, stating, among other things:

“The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. It used that time to become stronger […]”.²

Thirdly, according to OSCE Daily Report 41/2022 (February 22, 2022):

 “The Mission recorded 703 and 1,224 ceasefire violations in Donetsk and Luhansk respectively, including hundreds of explosions. On February 20, an OSCE UAV spotted 28 anti-tank mines in Travneve, reportedly belonging to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”.³

The outbreak of the largest war in Europe since World War II ultimately occurred for the reason highlighted by former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas:

“The West had committed that NATO would not expand to the gates of Russia.”.⁴

U.S. foreign policy is based on the premise that American stability is ensured by its ability to manage the challenges of the Eurasian space. Zbigniew Brzezinski articulated this position, stating that the U.S. is involved in the area of the Global Balkans:

“The Global Balkans stretch east of Suez, west of Xinjiang, south of the new Russian borders north of Kazakhstan, down to the Indian Ocean. They cover an area of approximately 550–600 million people […] Sovereignty means the ability to manage; involvement is not the same thing. Personally, I believe we have overdone it in terms of military intervention, but I believe in our ability to manage the conflicting interests and forces in this vast Eurasian continent [which] is critical to our stability and security”.⁵

This geopolitical region contains vast reserves of natural gas, oil, and valuable minerals. The American President’s refusal to adopt the Franco-British positions, along with the recent retreat of the European Commission — and ultimately the European Union — on the issue of tariffs, underscores Europe’s marginalization. The U.S. strategic pivot toward the Indo-Pacific indicates that Washington’s main geopolitical rival is not Russia, but China. It remains unclear whether this strategic objective will alter Washington’s proxy involvement in Ukraine.

The new international system is being shaped by three major powers: the United States, China, and Russia. The potential transition from NATO to a different collective security architecture raises questions about the strategic course the European Union should follow in this new geopolitical landscape. The inability to adapt to the changing environment, combined with an ahistorical rhetoric such as “we belong to the right side of history,” keeps Europeans trapped in a Cold War mindset.  In contrast to these views, it is useful to recall the recent warnings of Henry Kissinger, who knew European history better than the entire spectrum of contemporary political representatives of the Euro-Atlantic world.

“Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them. […]

The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709 , were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.

The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating Ukraine’s relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a crisis. Foreign policy is the art of establishing priorities”.⁶

Published by Diplomatic Front — YouTube channel & editorial platform for strategic and geopolitical analysis.
Editor: Diplomatic Front

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¹ Rühe, “Opening NATO’s Door”, in Open Door.

² https://www.zeit.de/2022/53/angela-merkel-russland-krieg-wladimir-putin (Retrieved August 5, 2025).

³ https://www.osce.org/files/2022-02-22%20Daily%20Report_ENG.pdf?itok=63057 (Retrieved August 5, 2025).

⁴ https://solidariteetprogres.fr/spip.php?article16037 (Retrieved August 5, 2025).

⁵ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfikRg2jE6o&t=671s (Retrieved August 5, 2025).

⁶ Henry Kissinger, “To Settle the Ukraine Crisis, Start at the End,” The Washington Post, March 5, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html. (Retrieved August 5, 2025)