# Europe–Russia–Ukraine: how the post-Cold War security system became a war system **Evidence cutoff: 20 September 2026.** The post-Cold War European security order moved from attempted institutional accommodation to a durable structure of war, deterrence and rearmament. The reconstruction below distinguishes legal responsibility, historical sequence, actor perceptions, material capacity and competing explanations. The present confrontation emerged from the accumulation of several distinct processes: Ukraine consolidated itself as an independent state and increasingly sought integration with Western institutions; NATO enlarged while maintaining that sovereign states could choose their alignments; Russian governments increasingly treated the post-Cold War settlement and NATO's eastern movement as adverse to Russian security and status; the cooperative NATO–Russia framework lost credibility; the 2014 rupture converted institutional disagreement into territorial conflict; and Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 transformed European security, Ukrainian identity, military planning, fiscal priorities and industrial policy. Legal and causal questions must remain separate. The UN General Assembly adopted Resolution ES-11/1 in March 2022 under the title *Aggression against Ukraine*, by 141 votes to 5 with 35 abstentions. Explaining the historical conditions that preceded the invasion does not transfer responsibility for the decision to use force to the countries, institutions or populations that formed part of that history. ## The system did not begin in 2022 Ukraine re-established independence in 1991 and established formal relations with NATO that same year. In 1994 it joined Partnership for Peace. Also in 1994, Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These arrangements belonged to a moment when post-Soviet security still appeared capable of being built around overlapping institutions rather than fixed hostile blocs. In 1997, NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security. The text stated that they did not consider one another adversaries and committed them to an inclusive Euro-Atlantic peace. It also preserved the independent decision-making of both sides and did not give Russia a veto over NATO decisions or future membership. The combination of sovereign alignment choice and the absence of a Russian veto produced a structural tension. The emerging order simultaneously defended the sovereign right of states to choose security arrangements and attempted to integrate Russia without granting it control over the alignments of neighboring states. For many Central and Eastern European countries, NATO membership was a response to their own histories and security preferences. For Russian leaders, enlargement increasingly came to symbolize a settlement in which Moscow had less influence over the European security environment than it expected after the Cold War. The tension became explicit at NATO's Bucharest Summit in 2008. Allies agreed that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO, while not granting a Membership Action Plan at that meeting. In 2010, NATO explicitly respected Ukraine's then policy of non-bloc status while keeping the Bucharest decision and its open-door principle in place. This produced an unusual intermediate condition: membership was politically promised in principle but not operationally scheduled, while Ukraine itself moved between non-alignment and Euro-Atlantic integration as domestic politics changed. | Turning point | Observable institutional change | Why it matters to the system | |---|---|---| | 1991 | Ukrainian independence and formal NATO relations | Ukraine becomes an autonomous security actor rather than a Soviet administrative unit | | 1994 | Partnership for Peace and Budapest Memorandum | Nuclear disarmament and security assurances become part of the post-Soviet settlement | | 1997 | NATO–Russia Founding Act | Cooperation and sovereign choice are institutionalized simultaneously | | 2008 | Bucharest declaration | NATO states that Ukraine and Georgia will become members, without a timetable | | 2010 | Ukraine's non-bloc policy is respected | Alignment remains politically reversible while NATO's door stays open | | 2014 | Crimea annexed by Russia and war begins in Donbas | Competition over order becomes territorial and military | | 2022 | Russia launches full-scale invasion | European security shifts from contested order to sustained high-intensity war | | 2025–2026 | NATO and EU members raise long-run defence commitments | War becomes embedded in fiscal, industrial and infrastructure planning | ## Ukrainian agency and alignment choices Analyses centered only on Washington and Moscow can erase Ukrainian agency. Ukraine's security orientation has been shaped by domestic political competition, regional differences, institutional reform, experiences of coercion and war, and changing public assessments of which external arrangements can protect sovereignty. The 2010 non-bloc position shows that Ukrainian alignment was not mechanically fixed after independence. The later shift cannot be understood only as an external project: Russia's seizure of Crimea and the armed conflict beginning in 2014 changed the perceived costs of neutrality and the meaning of security guarantees inside Ukraine. The 2022 invasion intensified that process. The same institutional movement carried different meanings for the actors involved. NATO can understand enlargement as voluntary accession by sovereign states; Russian policymakers can interpret the same institutional movement as deterioration in their security environment; Ukrainians can interpret integration as protection from coercion. These perceptions are not logically equivalent and do not settle the legal status of military action, but all can influence behavior. ## Russia and the post-Cold War European security order Russia's conflict with the European security architecture cannot be reduced to a single reaction to one summit declaration. The dispute concerns the distribution of influence after the Soviet collapse, the status of Russia as a great power, the military geography of Europe, the political orientation of neighboring post-Soviet states and the rules determining who may shape those choices. The 1997 Founding Act demonstrates that confrontation was not predetermined: NATO and Russia formalized a cooperative framework. The later breakdown followed changes in expectations, actions and institutions rather than permanent institutional hostility from the beginning of the period. **Security** and **control over the surrounding security environment** are analytically distinct. A state may seek protection against military threats; it may also seek influence over the external alignment of neighboring states. The two can overlap in political argument but they are analytically different. The Founding Act protected the independence of NATO and Russia and affirmed principles of sovereignty. Subsequent disputes increasingly exposed the incompatibility between an open-membership alliance system and a Russian conception of security that attached high importance to the strategic orientation of nearby states. ## Divergent security preferences within the Western alliance system "The West" conceals important differences. The United States, Germany, France, Poland, the Baltic states and the United Kingdom do not have identical historical memories, geographic exposure, military capabilities, economic relationships with Russia or preferences about European strategic autonomy. For Poland and the Baltic region, historical experience and geographical proximity make Russian military power a more immediate national-security variable. Germany entered the crisis with deeper energy and commercial connections to Russia and a post-war strategic culture that had placed stronger limits on military power. France has long combined NATO membership with an interest in European strategic capacity. The United States provides capabilities that remain difficult for European states to reproduce quickly, while also pressing Europe to assume more of the defence burden. Differences among allies shape sanctions, energy policy, arms production, force posture, fiscal rules and the political durability of support to Ukraine. ## Competing interpretations of the post-Cold War breakdown Five interpretive families explain different dimensions of the same historical trajectory and produce partially overlapping causal accounts. | Interpretive lens | What it helps explain | What it can miss if used alone | |---|---|---| | Sovereignty and legal order | Why territorial integrity, non-use of force and freedom of alignment are central to Ukraine and NATO states | Why actors may still perceive formally lawful institutional change as threatening | | Security dilemma / realist | How enlargement, military geography and uncertainty can produce reciprocal threat perceptions | Ukrainian agency, international law and domestic political change | | Sphere-of-influence / status politics | Why Russian policy places unusual weight on neighboring states and great-power recognition | Security concerns that are not reducible to prestige or imperial preference | | Institutional and path-dependent history | How contingent choices in the 1990s and 2000s accumulated into a less cooperative order | Immediate military decisions and ideology at moments of rupture | | Nation-building and social identity | Why war can alter Ukrainian and Russian public identities, threat perceptions and willingness to bear costs | Material constraints such as ammunition, finance, demographics and industrial capacity | M. E. Sarotte's *Not One Inch* is particularly useful for the fourth lens because it reconstructs the 1990s from archival material and interviews, showing how the United States, NATO and Russia moved from potential partnership toward stalemate. Its value is not that it supplies a single verdict, but that it makes the sequencing of choices harder to compress into slogans. Henry Kissinger's position on Ukraine changed materially over the course of the conflict. In a 2014 Washington Post essay, he argued that Ukraine should function as a bridge rather than an outpost of either side and opposed Ukrainian NATO membership. By January 2023, after the full-scale invasion, he publicly said that Ukrainian NATO membership had become an appropriate outcome because a neutral Ukraine was no longer meaningful in the same way. The shift followed a material change in the strategic environment: the full-scale invasion reduced the political and military viability of the neutrality Kissinger had defended in 2014. Kissinger's *World Order* provides a broader lens. One of its central concerns is the coexistence of different conceptions of legitimate order and the need for some compatibility between the distribution of power and accepted rules. In European security, this lens directs attention to the conflict among sovereignty, expectations of regional influence and competing views about legitimate authority over security arrangements. ## Political psychology: collective perceptions and measurable attitudes Conflict changes the population that experiences it. It also changes what societies regard as plausible, threatening or tolerable. The relevant psychological layer is therefore collective and observable: threat perception, historical memory, identity, trust, expectations and tolerance for costs. The 2026 survey evidence reveals combinations of attitudes that do not fit binary categories such as "pro-war" and "pro-peace". KIIS surveyed 974 adults living in Ukrainian government-controlled territory from 20 July to 3 August 2026. The institute explicitly notes that the sample excludes people living in territories outside government control and citizens who left abroad after 24 February 2022. Sixty percent considered withdrawal from the remaining Ukrainian-controlled Donbas in exchange for U.S. and European security guarantees categorically unacceptable. Yet 59% said they could approve a ceasefire on the current front line if occupied territories were not internationally recognized as Russian and Ukraine received substantial financial and military support. Sixty-one percent said they were prepared to endure the war as long as necessary. Levada Center's May 2026 Russian survey, conducted with 1,607 adults across 137 settlements, found 74% support for the actions of Russian armed forces in Ukraine. At the same time, roughly six in ten favored moving to peace negotiations and 30% favored continuing military operations. Fifty-four percent considered it possible that the situation could develop into an armed conflict between Russia and NATO countries. The findings describe different populations, sampling frames and political environments and are therefore not directly combinable in a single index. They nevertheless show that support for one's own side, preference for negotiation, rejection of territorial concessions and fear of wider escalation can coexist within the same society. | Measured attitude | Ukraine — KIIS, Jul–Aug 2026 | Russia — Levada, May 2026 | Methodological caution | |---|---:|---:|---| | Support own side / continued resistance | 61% ready to endure as long as necessary | 74% support actions of Russian armed forces | Questions are not equivalent | | Preference for negotiated stopping mechanism | 59% could accept current-line ceasefire with security support | about 60% favor moving to negotiations | Proposed terms differ | | Wider security concern | security guarantees central to both tested settlement scenarios | 54% see Russia–NATO armed conflict as possible | Measures different concepts | | Territorial concession sensitivity | 60% reject withdrawal from remaining controlled Donbas | not measured in cited survey | No valid cross-country comparison | ```mindmap Collective perception in a prolonged conflict - Historical memory - Soviet dissolution - earlier wars and occupations - post-Cold War expectations - Identity - sovereignty - national belonging - relationship to Europe and Russia - Threat perception - military proximity - territorial loss - alliance expansion - fear of wider war - Cost tolerance - casualties - displacement - inflation and taxation - mobilisation - Information environment - official narratives - independent media and social media - wartime censorship and propaganda - Settlement legitimacy - territory - security guarantees - recognition - future alliance status ``` There is no unitary national psychology. What can be observed are distributions of threat perception, identity, trust, expectations and tolerance for costs, with variation across social groups and over time. ## War has reorganized European political economy By 2026, the conflict is no longer only a foreign-policy issue. It is embedded in European budgets, industrial policy, energy systems, infrastructure and labor allocation. European Defence Agency data show EU defence expenditure rising from €343 billion in 2024 to €418 billion in 2025, with €454 billion projected for 2026. NATO's 2025 Hague commitment goes further: Allies committed to a path toward 5% of GDP by 2035, with at least 3.5% for core defence requirements and up to 1.5% for broader defence- and security-related investment such as critical infrastructure, resilience and the defence industrial base. ```chart type: bar title: EU-27 defence expenditure unit: EUR billion 2024 | 343 2025 | 418 2026 projected | 454 ``` The economic effect is not simply "more military spending." Resources move among uses. Defence procurement can raise industrial capacity, R&D and employment, but it also competes for fiscal space, skilled labor, metals, electronics, energy, transport infrastructure and capital. The effect depends on whether equipment is produced domestically or imported, whether spending is debt-financed or tax-financed, and whether new production capacity has civilian spillovers. The IMF's April 2026 World Economic Outlook devotes separate chapters to defence spending and the macroeconomics of conflict and recovery. Its cross-country analysis emphasizes that wars create persistent output losses where fighting occurs and spillovers elsewhere, while the macroeconomic consequences of defence spending vary with financing and allocation. In Europe, security expenditure functions simultaneously as a strategic input and a political-economic reallocation. ## Ukrainian reconstruction and displacement as European structural variables The World Bank, the Government of Ukraine, the European Commission and the United Nations estimated in February 2026 that Ukraine's reconstruction and recovery needs, measured through 31 December 2025, were almost $588 billion over the following decade—nearly three times estimated Ukrainian nominal GDP for 2025. Displacement is equally structural. Eurostat reported 4.43 million non-EU citizens who had fled Ukraine and held temporary-protection status in the EU at the end of July 2026. Germany hosted about 1.29 million and Poland about 953,000. Almost 29.4% of beneficiaries were minors. Ukrainian displacement affects more than humanitarian budgets: it reaches labor supply, schools, housing, municipal finance, language services, integration policy, remittances, demographics and the future conditions of return and reconstruction. The domestic social systems of Germany and Poland form part of the war's transmission mechanism through labor markets, housing, education, municipal finance and integration policy. ```flow Full-scale war → destruction and insecurity → displacement + reconstruction needs → European housing, schools, labor markets and fiscal systems → political and social adaptation War + perceived long-run threat → higher defence commitments → procurement + infrastructure + R&D demand → industrial capacity and labor reallocation → new fiscal and political trade-offs Sanctions + energy-security response → altered trade and sourcing → investment in substitution, storage, infrastructure and suppliers → new dependencies and cost structures ``` ## From cooperative security to deterrence The most consequential transformation is institutional. In 1997, the declared objective was a NATO–Russia relationship in which neither side considered the other an adversary. By 2025–2026, NATO's planning and spending architecture explicitly treats the security environment as requiring far larger long-term defence capacity, while Russia remains engaged in the war in Ukraine. The transition exhibits strong path dependence. Once governments build forces, factories, logistics corridors, stockpiles and fiscal commitments around a long-horizon threat, those investments create constituencies, capabilities and expectations that survive individual diplomatic episodes. The same applies to sanctions adaptation, Ukrainian military institutions and Russian wartime production. A ceasefire could stop particular forms of combat without automatically restoring the institutional conditions of the 1990s. Escalation is not inevitable, but de-escalation depends on changes extending beyond battlefield dynamics, including strategic expectations, institutions and security mechanisms. ## Escalation pathways and containment mechanisms A single countdown or percentage probability without an empirical model does not adequately describe the risk of NATO–Russia confrontation. Escalation can instead be decomposed into observable mechanisms that move the system toward or away from direct conflict. ```flow Military incident involving Russian and NATO forces → attribution and initial response → alliance consultation + force protection → retaliation decision → containment OR reciprocal escalation Ceasefire or negotiated arrangement → monitoring and compliance mechanisms → reduced operational contact → restoration of military communication → lower miscalculation risk Long-run rearmament → larger forces + stocks + infrastructure → stronger deterrence but more military proximity → outcome depends on doctrine, communication, deployment and crisis management ``` Individual indicators may produce opposing effects. Additional military capacity can increase deterrence by raising the cost of attack, but deployments and exercises can also increase proximity, ambiguity and opportunities for incidents. Escalation assessment can be disaggregated into conventional posture, nuclear signalling, alliance consultation, diplomatic communication, arms control, cyber and space incidents, industrial mobilisation and public expectations. ## Conditions that would alter the current assessment Several observations would require revising the current interpretation of a durable militarized security order: - a sustained political settlement with credible implementation and monitoring that materially reduces Russia–NATO operational contact; - restoration of durable arms-control and military risk-reduction mechanisms; - a sustained reversal of defence-industrial and force-planning assumptions across major European states; - significant changes in Russian and Ukrainian public threat perceptions supported by comparable longitudinal evidence; - an institutional arrangement that reconciles Ukrainian sovereignty and security with a stable wider European security framework. Conversely, direct incidents that bypass containment mechanisms, further erosion of arms-control arrangements, expansion of operations across recognized alliance territory or additional institutionalization of long-term war production would strengthen the assessment that the conflict has become embedded in the European system. ## Structural questions that remain open The durability of Europe's new rearmament cycle will depend on financing, industrial capacity, skilled labor, stockpiles, infrastructure and political continuity. A ceasefire by itself would not determine whether these investments are reversed or embedded permanently in defence planning. The legitimacy of any settlement inside Ukraine will remain conditioned by territory, security guarantees, reconstruction, the return of displaced citizens and expectations about future relations with Russia and Euro-Atlantic institutions. In Russia, changes in threat perception, economic costs and expectations about NATO will continue to shape the political space for accommodation or prolonged confrontation. The third axis remains institutional: without durable military communication, arms-control, verification and incident-management mechanisms, lower battlefield intensity can coexist with a still-militarized strategic environment vulnerable to renewed crises. ## Sources and methodological notes Primary and institutional sources: - [United Nations Treaty Collection — Budapest Memorandum (5 December 1994)](https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000280401fbb) - [NATO — Relations with Ukraine: timeline](https://nato.int/en/what-we-do/partnerships-and-cooperation/relations-with-ukraine) - [NATO — Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security with Russia (1997)](https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25470.htm?selectedLocale=en) - [NATO — Bucharest Summit Declaration (2008)](https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/official-texts-and-resources/official-texts/2008/04/03/bucharest-summit-declaration) - [NATO — Lisbon Summit Declaration (2010)](https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/official-texts-and-resources/official-texts/2010/11/20/lisbon-summit-declaration) - [UN General Assembly — ES-11/1, Aggression against Ukraine](https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3965290/) - [European Defence Agency — Defence spending 2025–2026](https://eda.europa.eu/news-and-events/news/2026/07/16/eu-defence-spending---418-billion-in-2025--projected-to--454-billion-in-2026) - [NATO — Defence investment and the 5% commitment](https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/defence-expenditures-and-natos-5-commitment) - [World Bank — Ukraine RDNA5, February 2026](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2026/02/23/updated-ukraine-recovery-and-reconstruction-needs-assessment-released) - [Eurostat — 4.43 million people under temporary protection in July 2026](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20260910-1) - [IMF — World Economic Outlook, April 2026](https://www.imf.org/en/publications/weo/issues/2026/04/14/world-economic-outlook-april-2026) Public-opinion sources are not treated as interchangeable: - [Kyiv International Institute of Sociology — war and peace attitudes, July–August 2026](https://www.kiis.com.ua/?cat=reports&id=1626&lang=eng&page=1) - [Levada Center — conflict with Ukraine, May 2026](https://www.levada.ru/2026/06/09/konflikt-s-ukrainoi-v-mae-2026-goda/) Interpretive sources: - [Henry Kissinger — “How the Ukraine crisis ends,” Washington Post, 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) - [Henry Kissinger — *World Order*, publisher description](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316669/world-order-by-henry-kissinger/) - [M. E. Sarotte — *Not One Inch*, Yale University Press](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300263350/not-one-inch/) - [Kissinger's 2023 Davos position on Ukrainian NATO membership, contemporaneous report](https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2023/jan/17/davos-day-1-pessimistic-mood-wef-von-der-leyen-liu-he-energy-climate-business-live) The empirical base is strongest for dated institutional decisions, public expenditure and survey results. The relative causal weight of NATO enlargement, Russian status and security preferences, Ukrainian domestic agency, post-Soviet institutional failure and other long-run factors remains contested in the literature and depends on historical analysis.