The war in Ukraine can seem fairly simple when viewed from only one direction. Russia invaded Ukraine, an independent country, and Ukraine has every right to defend itself. From that perspective, the central issue appears straightforward.
But Russia tells a different story. For years, Russian leaders warned that the eastward movement of NATO—a military alliance originally created to contain the Soviet Union—was bringing Western military power steadily closer to Russia’s borders. When the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact disappeared but NATO remained and expanded, Russia increasingly saw that expansion as a threat.
I have long thought that Russian concern deserved to be taken seriously. I still do. But recently I began looking more closely at Poland, and Poland forced me to walk around to the other side of the argument.
Ukraine itself presents the first difficulty. If Ukraine is an independent country, why should Russia determine which countries it associates with or which alliances it may someday join? Then consider Poland. Poland strongly supported joining NATO and today remains deeply suspicious of Russian power. Why?
To understand that, we have to leave the present conflict for a while.
The History Behind the Fear
The division between Russia and much of Europe did not begin with communism or NATO. For centuries Europe developed around different centers of religion, culture and political power. Western Christianity became centered on Rome, while Eastern Christianity became centered on Constantinople. The formal break between what became the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches came in 1054, although the separation had been developing for centuries.
Poland became strongly associated with the Catholic, Latin-influenced world of Central and Western Europe. Russia developed largely within the Eastern Orthodox tradition inherited from Byzantium. This was never a solid wall between two civilizations. People traded, migrated, fought, intermarried and influenced one another, and religion was only one part of a much larger story. But an East-West cultural division existed long before NATO, communism or the Soviet Union.
Go back about four hundred years and the map becomes even more surprising. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of Europe’s largest and most important states. It included much of the territory that today forms Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was growing too, and the two powers competed for territory and influence. During the turmoil in Russia in the early 1600s, Polish forces even entered Moscow and occupied the Kremlin for a time.
So this is not simply an ancient story of powerful Russia threatening helpless Poland. Poland-Lithuania was once a formidable power itself. But power changes. Russia grew stronger while the Commonwealth weakened, and by the late eighteenth century something extraordinary happened.
Russia, Prussia and Austria gradually divided the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth among themselves. In the first partition, in 1772, all three took portions of its territory. In 1793, Russia and Prussia seized still more. In 1795, the three powers divided what remained.
Poland disappeared from the map.
The Polish people, of course, did not disappear. They suddenly found themselves living under Russian, Prussian or Austrian rule. Nor were these territories populated only by Poles. The old Commonwealth had contained Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Germans and others. Political boundaries could be redrawn with ink on a map, but populations could not be rearranged so neatly.
Napoleon briefly changed the arrangement by creating the Duchy of Warsaw. After his defeat, the great powers divided the Polish lands again. During the nineteenth century, Poles therefore lived under several different governments, and those governments treated them differently. Russian authorities increasingly attempted to Russify portions of the population, particularly after Polish uprisings against Russian rule. Prussian and later German authorities pursued Germanization in western Polish territories. Austrian-controlled Galicia eventually allowed Poles considerably greater cultural and political freedom.
Yet Polish identity survived. The language survived. The culture survived. Catholicism remained especially important to Polish identity. Families continued thinking of themselves as Polish even though there was no independent Poland. Major uprisings against Russian rule in 1830–31 and 1863–64 failed. Generations were born, lived and died without ever seeing an independent Polish state.
Only after World War I, in 1918, did Poland regain its independence.
If a people have once watched their country literally disappear, independence is unlikely ever again to feel like an abstract political principle.
And independence did not bring lasting security. In 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west. Soon afterward the Soviet Union invaded from the east under the secret arrangements accompanying the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Poland was once again divided by powerful neighbors, and millions of Polish citizens died during the war.
When Nazi Germany was finally defeated, Poland survived as a country, but it did not emerge with the political freedom many Poles had hoped for. The Soviet Union established overwhelming influence throughout much of Eastern and Central Europe. Communist governments took power in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and East Germany.
These countries did not become parts of the Soviet Union. They remained formally separate states, but Moscow exercised enormous influence over their governments, military policies and foreign relations. They eventually became members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The Baltic countries—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—had a different experience: they were incorporated directly into the Soviet Union.
There were several reasons Moscow wanted this belt of friendly or controlled countries. Communist ideology mattered. Power mattered. But security mattered too. Russia had repeatedly experienced devastating attacks from the west. From Moscow’s perspective, controlling territory between Russia and Western military powers provided strategic depth.
And there, I think, we encounter one of the central problems that has followed us into the present: Russia increased its own security by reducing the freedom of the countries around it.
What looked like protection from Moscow looked like domination from Warsaw and Budapest.
Eastern Europeans repeatedly resisted. In 1956 Hungarians rose against their communist government and Soviet domination. Soviet forces crushed the uprising. Western countries condemned what happened but did not intervene militarily.
I remember those days for a personal reason. I later served in the United States Army with a Hungarian soldier who was still furious about what had happened. His complaint was essentially, “You encouraged us to revolt. We revolted. Why didn’t you come and save us?”
I have never forgotten him.
In 1968 Czechoslovakia attempted political reforms during the Prague Spring, only to have Warsaw Pact forces invade and stop them. Later Poland became one of the great centers of resistance. The Solidarity movement emerged under Lech Wałęsa. Pope John Paul II, himself Polish, became an enormous moral influence. Communist authority gradually weakened.
Eventually Moscow stopped using overwhelming military force to hold the Eastern European system together. Communist governments fell. The Berlin Wall came down. The Warsaw Pact disappeared, and then the Soviet Union itself collapsed.
For millions of Eastern Europeans, this was not merely a political rearrangement. It represented liberation from foreign domination.
But political systems can disappear much faster than the human arrangements they leave behind. Decades of Soviet rule had produced migration, intermarriage, industrial communities and substantial Russian-speaking populations in several Soviet republics. When the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, millions of people did not move. The borders changed around them.
A person who had been a Soviet citizen could suddenly find himself a Russian-speaking resident of independent Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine or another newly independent country. Meanwhile, people in those countries could regard independence as the recovery of a national identity and culture that Soviet rule had suppressed.
One person might therefore be thinking, “At last, we have our country back,” while a neighbor was thinking, “What happened to my country? I have lived here all my life.”
Neither had moved.
History had changed the political world around them.
This helps explain why language, ethnicity, citizenship and national identity remain sensitive issues throughout parts of the former Soviet world. Empires disappear much faster than the populations, institutions and memories they leave behind.
Now return to Poland in the 1990s. Its country had once disappeared completely. It had been divided among neighboring powers, invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union, and then spent decades within a political and military system dominated by Moscow. Suddenly Poland could choose its own direction.
To many Poles, joining NATO did not mean, “Let’s threaten Russia.”
It meant, “Let’s make sure this never happens to us again.”
That makes sense.
But now we have to walk around to the other side again.
Russia remembers another history. Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The Nazi invasion was catastrophic, and the Soviet Union lost tens of millions of people during World War II. After the war Moscow controlled much of Eastern Europe. We can condemn that domination while still understanding one reason Soviet leaders wanted it: distance mattered.
Then the Soviet Union collapsed. The Warsaw Pact disappeared. Russia became much weaker. But NATO remained and began moving east. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined. More countries followed, including the Baltic states.
From Poland’s perspective, “We finally have protection.”
From Russia’s perspective, “The Western military alliance is getting closer.”
Same map. Same NATO expansion. Two entirely different meanings.
And Ukraine stands directly inside this collision of histories. Russia can say that a Western military alliance in Ukraine could threaten Russian security. Ukraine can answer that it is an independent country and Russia has no right to determine its future. Poland can look at Russian demands concerning Ukraine and remember what happened when Moscow decided what its neighbors were permitted to do. Russia can look at NATO’s movement eastward and remember what happened when military threats approached from the west.
Now everybody’s fear begins feeding everybody else’s fear.
Poland fears Russia, so Poland wants a stronger NATO. Russia sees NATO becoming stronger and feels threatened, so Russia strengthens its military. Poland sees Russia becoming stronger and becomes still more frightened. Ukraine seeks protection. Russia sees Ukraine moving toward the West and becomes still more alarmed.
Around and around it goes.
Political scientists call this a security dilemma, but the idea is simpler than the terminology: what I do because I am afraid of you can make you more afraid of me.
Then you respond, and your response confirms my original fear.
Neither side has to be irrational. Neither side even has to want war. The relationship itself can help push both toward conflict.
More Than History Is at Work
But history still doesn’t give us the whole picture, because not everyone who enters a conflict carries the history of the people who live there.
Powerful nations have interests of their own.
For centuries Britain became involved in struggles thousands of miles from Britain because their outcomes affected British power, commerce and security. After World War II, the United States became the dominant Western power, and developments almost anywhere in the world could become matters of American strategic interest. China today increasingly has economic and strategic interests far beyond East Asia.
This is part of what happens when nations become great powers. The world becomes part of their sphere of concern.
Some countries become involved in conflicts because history has placed them there. Others enter because their interests bring them there. Sometimes both are true.
Ukraine illustrates the difference. The United States does not carry Poland’s historical memory of Russian domination or Russia’s historical memory of invasion from the west. But Ukraine’s political direction mattered to American interests.
When political upheaval shook Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, Ukrainians had reasons of their own for taking to the streets. The United States did not create those grievances, but it quickly recognized that the outcome mattered to American and Western interests and became actively involved politically. Russia had interests and attempted to influence events from its side. European countries had interests. Ukrainians themselves had competing interests.
We are therefore no longer dealing merely with Russia and Ukraine, or even Russia, Ukraine and Poland. We are dealing with outside powers whose money, weapons, alliances, economic strength and political influence can change what happens. Their interests may not be identical to the interests of the people actually living there.
And there is another uncomfortable complication. People can have legitimate fears, and other people can take advantage of them.
Governments can use genuine security concerns to pursue additional power or influence. Political leaders can sometimes strengthen themselves when their populations are frightened. Military industries can profit when nations buy more weapons. Economic interests can benefit from particular international arrangements. Ideological movements can see crises as opportunities to advance objectives they already favored.
This does not mean that every international event is a conspiracy. It means something much more ordinary and, perhaps, more important: legitimate concerns and self-interest can exist at the same time.
So when any government tells us that something must be done for national security, perhaps we should ask: What is the legitimate concern? Whose interests are also being served? And what does the situation look like from the other side?
We No Longer Live in Separate Worlds
There is one more complication, and it may eventually prove larger than all the others.
The world itself is becoming increasingly interconnected.
Money crosses borders. Goods cross borders. Information crosses borders almost instantly. Supply chains stretch around the planet. Diseases, pollution and financial crises cross borders. Nuclear consequences cross borders. Climate change recognizes no national boundary. Artificial intelligence will not remain neatly inside whichever country develops it.
We can still call ourselves American, Russian, Chinese, Polish or Ukrainian. Those identities matter. Nations matter. Cultures matter.
But increasingly, what happens in one part of the world affects people elsewhere.
A nation can become more nationalistic. It can withdraw from agreements. It can build walls and declare, “We will look after ourselves.” For a time, some of that may work.
But no country can declare, “What happens outside our borders will no longer affect us.”
The world has become too interconnected.
We can resist that development. We can slow it. We can pretend it isn’t happening. But we cannot escape it indefinitely. Whether we like it or not, we increasingly occupy the same global sphere.
And we have entered that interconnected world carrying our histories with us.
The people who partitioned Poland are dead. Napoleon is dead. Hitler and Stalin are dead. The British Empire is gone. The Soviet Union is gone.
Yet their consequences remain.
They remain in borders, populations, languages, religions, institutions and alliances. They remain in national memories and in what people have learned to fear. The past doesn’t even have to be consciously remembered to continue affecting us.
History lives—not merely in what we remember, but in what the past has made the present become.
Understanding Is Only the Beginning
None of this tells us how the war in Ukraine should end. That was not the purpose.
I began with the belief that Russia had legitimate reasons to worry about NATO expansion. I still believe that. But Poland forced me to recognize something else. Poland has legitimate reasons to fear Russia. Ukraine has legitimate concerns about its independence. Russia has legitimate concerns about its security. Outside powers have interests of their own.
All of those things can be true at the same time.
Our problem is that reality arrives as a whole, while we can understand it only in pieces. We separate Russia’s history from Poland’s, Ukraine’s interests from Russia’s, legitimate fears from the exploitation of those fears, and local participants from outside powers. We do this because otherwise the complexity becomes almost impossible to grasp.
But eventually we have to put the pieces back together.
Understanding doesn’t solve the conflict. It merely gives us a better picture of the problem we are trying to solve.
And once we understand what Russia fears, what Poland fears, what Ukraine fears, and what the outside powers want, perhaps we can begin asking a better question:
What would have to change so that one country’s security no longer requires another country’s insecurity?
The answer might involve treaties, limits on weapons and where they can be placed, guarantees of independence, inspection and verification, neutral institutions, or arrangements we haven’t thought of yet.
I don’t know.
But perhaps we have spent too much time asking how our side can win and too little time asking what kind of arrangement would make it unnecessary for either side to win at the other’s expense.
Understanding is only the beginning.
The next question is whether we can change the arrangements themselves.
A forthcoming article will ask what institutions, agreements and safeguards might make reciprocal security possible.