Russia Has Grand Designs For the International Order

... “admission fee” for joining the Western club: accepting U.S. leadership. Relations became progressively more strained. Georgia was a warning shot. Ukraine marked a final break with past unrealistic assumptions and dispelled unfulfilled ambitions. Western integration on terms acceptable to Russia, until now a central pillar of Russia’s post-Soviet foreign policy, came crushing down. Ironically, the alternative to that course, re-integration of former Soviet borderlands around Russia did not survive the Ukraine crisis either. Just as Moscow could not accept U.S. tutelage, neither could its ...