Ukraine Can Be Summed Up in 1 Word: Misperception
Key Points and Summary on Ukraine War Crisis – Europe treated NATO enlargement after 1991 as a “zone of peace” project—locking in democracy and deterring instability.
Tu-95. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-Moscow read the same moves as encroachment by a military bloc edging toward Russia’s borders.
-Those narratives accumulated, shaping how the Kremlin interpreted Ukraine’s westward drift as a closing window, not normal diplomacy.
-None of this excuses Russia’s invasion or its crimes. But it clarifies how strategic misperception—intentions divorced from perceptions—made war thinkable.
-The lesson is not to deny small-state agency, but to build security orders that acknowledge power realities and manage rival red lines before they harden into violence.
The Strategic Misperception Behind the Ukraine War
Europe spent the 1990s congratulating itself. The Cold War had ended without catastrophe, borders were opening, liberal institutions were globalizing, and war between major powers seemed not just unlikely but obsolete. NATO’s steady eastward enlargement was framed as the natural extension of that triumph—a benign process that would lock in democracy, prosperity, and peace.
Moscow saw something else entirely. Not reconciliation, but encroachment. Not a “zone of peace,” but a military alliance—once built to contain the Soviet Union—moving ever closer to Russia’s borders. That disconnect was not a footnote to post–Cold War history. It was a structural misperception that accumulated over decades. And while it was not the sole cause of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it was one of the conditions that made war thinkable.
The tragedy of Ukraine is not that one side lied and the other told the truth. It is that each side acted rationally within its own strategic narrative—and failed to grasp how profoundly the other disagreed.
Two Stories, One Expanding Alliance
From Washington, Brussels, and Berlin, NATO expansion was framed as not being about Russia. It was about Europe’s unfinished business. States emerging from Soviet domination wanted hard security guarantees, not vague assurances. NATO offered credibility, predictability, and the institutional glue needed to anchor fragile democracies. Enlargement was defensive, voluntary, and stabilizing.
Russian leaders—and the broader Russian population—consistently rejected that framing. They understood NATO less as a values-based club than as a military bloc whose history and capabilities mattered more than its rhetoric. Each new member shifted the balance of proximity, warning time, and perceived vulnerability. What NATO saw as reassurance, Russia described as erosion.
Neither interpretation was delusional. But each understanding was mutually incompatible. And because NATO largely treated Russian objections as politically motivated or ultimately surmountable, the alliance focused on consultation rather than accommodation—building mechanisms for dialogue while proceeding on the assumption that enlargement itself was non-negotiable.
Spheres of Influence Never Died
Much of the post–Cold War debate rested on a comforting illusion: that spheres of influence were relics of a darker age. Rules, not power, would govern Europe; consent, not coercion. In that world, no state had the right to veto another’s alliances.
Yet international politics never quite got the memo. Great powers still care intensely about what happens along their borders. They still draw informal red lines. And when those lines are crossed repeatedly, they eventually respond—not always wisely, but often forcefully.
Russia’s conception of its “near abroad” was never purely ideological. It was strategic. Ukraine, in particular, mattered because of geography, history, military depth, and symbolism. The question was never whether Ukrainians had agency—they do—but whether their choices could be insulated from the reactions of a neighboring great power that viewed those choices as altering the regional balance.
Ignoring that dynamic did not make it disappear. It merely delayed the reckoning.
Misperception as a Pathway to War
Wars are rarely caused by a single decision or grievance. They are over-determined—produced by converging pressures that narrow options and harden preferences. In Russia’s case, NATO expansion interacted with several other forces: domestic authoritarian consolidation, imperial nostalgia, fear of democratic contagion, misjudgments about Western resolve, and Vladimir Putin’s own worldview.
But NATO expansion mattered because it shaped how those other factors were interpreted. Russian officials increasingly described Ukraine’s deepening ties to Western institutions—military, political, and economic—as evidence that time was working against Moscow. What Western capitals framed as gradual integration was portrayed in Moscow as a closing strategic window.
Misperception is not simply misunderstanding. It is the failure to appreciate how one’s actions are interpreted by others operating under different assumptions. NATO believed it was reducing insecurity. Russia insisted that insecurity was being produced.
That gap widened for years. Eventually, it snapped.
Responsibility Without Moral Equivalence
Acknowledging NATO’s role in shaping the strategic environment does not excuse Russia’s invasion. Nothing justifies the widespread killing of civilians, the destruction of cities, or the attempt to erase a sovereign state by force. Moral responsibility for the war rests squarely with the Kremlin.
But strategic responsibility is a different question. If the goal is to understand how Europe arrived at its most violent conflict since 1945—and how to avoid repeating it—then uncomfortable truths matter. One of those truths is that NATO assumed Russian objections could be managed through dialogue rather than through limits. Another is that the alliance mistook prolonged restraint for acceptance.
Russia’s response was brutal and criminal. It was also, in its own logic, reactive rather than aggressive. That distinction does not absolve Moscow. It simply clarifies the pathway to war.
What This Means Going Forward
The lesson of Ukraine is not that NATO expansion was wrong in principle or that small states must defer to large neighbors. It is that durable security orders require more than moral certainty. They require sustained efforts to align intentions with perceptions—and to manage spheres of influence rather than deny their existence.
Tu-95 Bear Bomber. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
That reality is beginning to reassert itself even amid the fighting. Quiet discussions about security guarantees, neutrality formulas, and limits on alliance expansion—once dismissed as taboo—have re-entered diplomatic space. This is not capitulation. It is an acknowledgment that power realities cannot be willed away.
Multipolar worlds are less forgiving than unipolar ones. They punish strategic complacency. As power diffuses and competition intensifies, ignoring how rivals define their core interests becomes a recipe for escalation.
Europe is now living with the consequences of a long series of choices made in good faith but without sufficient strategic empathy. The task ahead is not to rewrite the past, but to absorb its lessons. Peace does not emerge from denying power realities. It emerges from engaging them before misperception hardens into catastrophe.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
