Speculating on Russia’s goals in its neighborhood

The stolidly-establishment Council on Foreign Relations recently published an analysis by Thomas Graham, author of Getting Russia Right (2023). He writes:

Three historical impulses provide insight into Putin’s ultimate goals: the impulse to expand control to enhance security, to return to … Russia state lands that were lost for various reasons, and to reunite the three branches of the greater Russian nation. Putin has used elements of all three narratives in his rhetoric since before he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (1)

What he refers to as the “three branches” means Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Belarus is certainly in a close alliance with Belarus. As to how much of a “vassal state” it is, opinions may vary. It’s worth remembering that the “vassal state” is a feudal concept:

In feudal times, a “vassal” (from the medieval Latin vassallus, a servant) was not a low-born serf, but one who held land on condition of allegiance to a prince or king. ...

But “vassal” very quickly came to mean anyone in a subordinate position of power to another. Shakespeare calls himself a “vassal” to his lover as well as a “slave” in Sonnet 58, and Pope Pius V testily declared Elizabeth I a “vassal of iniquity”.

In the old language of international affairs, a “vassal state” was often obliged to pay money to its superior, and usually expected to provide military assistance on demand. (2)

To borrow from John Mearsheimer, who describes his version of “offense realism” in foreign policy as based on the observation that great powers are particularly sensitive to another great power acquiring power and influence in what they consider their neighboring area. As an example, just this year, the Trump 2.0 regime has threatened military against Mexico and Panama, and implicitly against Canada. It’s also demanded that Brazil flush its rule of law down the drain when it comes to prosecuting the attempted insurrection that their authoritarian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro incited. And, as Mearsheimer often points out, the US has still never forgiven Cuba for the 1962 Missile Crisis. (Though Obama did ease sanctions on Cuba when he was President.)

So, yes, Russia does pay attention to what goes on with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and – oh, yeah – China and Japan. Feigning surprise about that is popular among hawkish types. But it’s also more than a little silly.

The non-Soviet members of the Warsaw Pact were often referred to as vassal states of the Soviet Union. And the USSR did dominate their internal politics in a major way. But if by “vassal” state we mean that vassals pay financial tribute to the dominant country, it’s dubious if they qualified. A major reason for the collapse of the USSR was that it was a great financial burden for them to subsidize the other Warsaw Pact nations.

Graham goes to one of those broad historical generalizations about Russia in a formulation suggesting the kind of historical essentialism that so often clouds Western thinking:

Even after [Putin] annexed four Ukrainian oblasts—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia - in the fall of 2022, he continued to insist his goal was not territorial conquest but security. That is disingenuous, for territory and security have been inextricably intertwined in Russian strategic thinking for centuries. The question is how much territory Putin believes Russia has to dominate in order to feel secure. [my emphasis]

It's not as though strategic considerations from earlier centuries are fully irrelevant today. The Monroe Doctrine which still governs US strategic thinking about Latin America was first adopted by the John Quincy Adams Administration of 1825-1829. And while that framework is still used by the US, American policy has varied considerably over those two centuries. It’s been nearly 180 years since the US forcibly annexed one-third of Mexico’s territory in what Americans call the Mexican War of 1846-1848. And the US has meddled in Mexican politics way more than it should have since then – including military intervention during the Mexican Revolution of 1810-1821. But that doesn’t mean that the US is still looking to annex Mexican territory. But since Trump 2.0 is threatening to seize territory from Panama, Canada, and even Denmark (Greenland), the longer history is relevant to understanding the current strategic picture.

The same is true of Russia and China. The fact that Ukraine was once part of the Russian Empire and then of the Soviet Union does not tell us that Russia’s current goal is the physical conquest of all of Ukraine. In fact, Graham describes Russia’s likely goal in the war at the moment in much the way Mearsheimer does, i.e., keeping immediate control of at least four eastern Ukraine provinces and the Crimean Peninsula (which is still legally part of Ukraine) and installing a friendly government in Kiev. Graham:

For the moment, the limits of Putin’s ambitions are difficult to discern. To be sure, he has been clear from the beginning that he wishes to subjugate Ukraine. How much of the country he wants to formally annex is uncertain, but he would strip any part of Ukraine that lies beyond Russia’s direct control of genuine independence and sovereignty, reducing it to a vassal state, such as Belarus is today. [my emphasis]

Russia is not occupying or annexing any part of Belarus. We can speculate about whether Russia’s supposed Grand Vision Of History means that is what obtuse Russian-nationalist publicists want. But that’s not what Russia is doing right now.

Beyond Ukraine, Putin has denied any aggressive intent or designs on any state’s territory. But his repeated threats of dire consequences for European states that step up their support to Ukraine, as well as his escalating campaign of disinformation and sabotage across Europe, have understandably raised concern. Prevalent among Western commentators is the view that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will undoubtedly turn his sights on other states of the former Soviet Union, such as the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all of which are NATO members. At the extreme, some believe he even intends to restore the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in eastern Europe through covert operations or direct military assault on former Soviet Bloc countries, such as Poland. [my emphasis]

Phrases like “some believe” and “raised concern” generally require closer scrutiny. Among Trumpistas in America, “some believe” in Alex Jones’ claim that there are lizard people from outer space walking around disguised as Earthlings. But while it may be a fact that “some believe” that, it doesn’t make the claim any kind of accurate description of reality.

That wording is also disingenuous when it comes to the Baltic states. Both the NATO and EU treaties include them, and both treaties include a mutual-defense clause. Foreign policy realists like George Kennan warned in the 1990s that the further east NATO expanded, the more likely it would be that Russia would regard that as a security threat. We can quibble as to whether that is rational or nice for Russia to react that way. But if we picture Mexico, Canada, and Cuba joining a military alliance with China that includes a mutual-defense clause, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture the freakout even the most stiffly establishment foreign-policy analysts and policymakers would have. (I.e., they would lose their minds.)

As Kaarel Pürimäe reminded us last year:

Arguing against [Bill] Clinton’s decision [to expand NATO] was the last significant thing Kennan did in his life. In October 1996, at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, Kennan reacted to a talk by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, calling the plan of NATO enlargement a ‘strategic blunder of epic proportions’. In an article in the New York Times the following year, he famously argued that it ‘would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. Kennan expected that NATO expansion would give rise to undemocratic and anti-Western forces in Russia and would lead to another Cold War, but was certain that official Washington would persist. He was right: it proved easy for Clinton to ignore not only Kennan, whose credibility was undermined by his long-standing opposition to NATO, but, more remarkably, the majority of the U.S. foreign policy and scholarly establishments.

Kennan’s warnings are cited as prophetic by scholars who view NATO expansion as a fateful miscalculation. Intellectual sources of the criticism vary, but most tend to point out the anachronism of preserving a Cold-War institution made to contain an adversary that no longer existed. It is argued that by expanding NATO, which in Russia was viewed as a threat to its status, if not security, the United States betrayed the West’s most ardent supporters and gave ammunition to anti-Western, nationalist, and neo-imperialist voices in that country. [my emphasis] (3)

In the case of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania – which were part of the Soviet Union - every European policymaker knows what it would mean in a very practical way if Russia actually started seizing territory there (Estonia is currently cited as the most likely candidate) and what that would do to the ever-treasured Credibility of both alliances if their Western allies didn’t respond militarily in an active way.

By the way, it’s also a safe presumption that any Russian civilian or military strategist who doesn’t spend 12 hours a day every day toking joints also realizes that the Western powers see things that way.

Graham’s concluding recommendations for four policy measures and general strategic considerations are pretty much safe and bland generalizations. Like: “In the best-case scenario, Russian rulers could even reinterpret Russian history to develop a new narrative for Russia’s greatness and global mission that appears less threatening to its immediate neighbors.”

Notes:

(1) Graham, Thomas (20258): The Limits of Putin’s Ambitions. Council on Foreign Relations 06/20/2025. <https://www.cfr.org/article/limits-putins-ambitions> (Accessed: 2025-24-07).

(2) Poole, Stephen (2018): What is a 'vassal state'? Jacob Rees-Mogg's mid-Brexit vision explained. Guardian 02/02/2018. <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/02/word-of-the-week-steven-poole-vassal> (Accessed: 2025-24-07).

Pürimäe, Kaarel (2024): ‘Geopolitics of Sympathy’: George F. Kennan and NATO Enlargement. Diplomacy & Statecraft 35:1. <https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2024.2303860>