Sumantra Maitra. The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? (Lanham, Lexington Books) 234 pp., $110.00, Hardcover. $45.00, Ebook.   

Ten years ago, the borders of Eastern Europe shifted for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine saw its pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, ousted from power, shortly followed by the takeover of Crimea by the Russian Federation. These events also started the war in the Donbas, which, in February 2022, escalated into an all-out war on Ukraine. 

In the United States, this slow-burn regional escalation characterized Russian president Vladimir Putin as a latter-day Adolf Hitler who was attempting to reunite all of the exclave Russian populations under one banner. Dr. Sumantra Maitra’s The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power? offers better causal explanations than allowing politicians to relive fantasies of  WWII.  

In the weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden declared, “For God’s sake [Putin] cannot remain in power.” There is a certain comfort in believing that Russian foreign policy is predicated on the psychology of one individual. No doubt Putin has immense control over foreign policy, but to suggest that a different Russian leader would change Russian key strategic interests is contradicted by history. In 2008, diplomat William Burns, in an email to Condoleezza Rice, stated that “Ukraine in NATO remains the ‘brightest of all red lines.’” Despite the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations throughout the 2010s, Ukraine’s entrance into NATO was still being promoted, even as pressure built. Ten years later, hundreds of thousands are dead, millions more have been displaced, and the threat of nuclear war grows with each new expansion of the war in Ukraine. 

Maitra’s book challenges analyses that explain Russian behavior by infantilizing the Russian people and ignoring the concerns of successive occupants of the Kremlin. His balanced and compelling look into recent Russian history investigates when aggression is used by Russia, under which circumstances, and to what ends.

Much analysis of the origins of the Ukraine War boils down to optimism about international law as a tool for peace. In this view, Russia has nothing to fear from the Western liberal world order and hence should not worry about NATO and the European Union expansion on its doorstep. Maitra takes a more pessimistic view of the international world order. Realists argue that the world is devoid of order, and military power establishes the only genuine guarantee of present and future security. The Sources of Russian Aggression demonstrates that Russia’s behavior is explained by Russia’s national interests. However, the fantasy of Vladimir Putin as a senseless madman leader seems to be an intoxicating trope that the mainstream media will not abandon. 

Even critics of the mainstream media, like Tucker Carlson, fall into this trap. His interview with the Russian potentate ended up dwelling on Putin’s thoughts about 8th-century Slavic history. Such statements reinforce the case that Putin cannot be reasoned with. Realists don’t conduct foreign policy by psychological profile. Realists understand that Russia cannot afford to take NATO’s “defensive mandate” at face value. Realists understand that Russia, like the United States and every other country, faces an anarchic world devoid of overarching authority.

The 2014 annexation of Crimea instilled a sense of dread and fear in a world that believed history had ended with the Cold War. Russia took Crimea with barely a shot fired and forced Ukraine into a perpetual counterinsurgency operation in the Donbas. Russia’s inability to force Ukraine to the negotiating table in February of 2022 was a blow to its image as a military superpower. Russia has had to recalibrate its strategy and is now geared up for the long haul. As Barack Obama famously said, Russia possesses “escalation dominance” in the region. Now that the wheels are in motion, we see just how far Russia is willing to go to secure its interests. Russia’s desire to double down in Ukraine rather than retreat despite high casualty rates shows that its interest in this region vastly exceeds America’s own.  

Maitra makes an important case about Russian intentions through a rigorous analysis of its aggression in Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia in 2008. Maitra rejects attempts to explain these events in terms of Putin’s domestic popularity as some scholars attempt to propagate. He points out that there is no reliable correlation between falling poll numbers and an increase in Russian aggression. Putin did not need Crimea to help win an election or “shore up” support at home.   

Realists argue that motivations are external to states, not internal. The Sources of Russian Aggression supports the superior explanation that the path to the current war is better explained through the timeline of America’s insistence that Ukraine will someday join NATO. At the 2008 NATO summit, leaders presented Georgia and Ukraine’s accession as inevitable. At the time, Russia relied on an increasingly reluctant Ukraine for cooperation on their lease of the naval base at Sevastopol. If Kyiv were admitted into NATO, the vital Black Sea Fleet would assuredly be sent packing. Taking this off the geopolitical chessboard would have disastrous consequences for Russian interests not only in the Black Sea but also in the Middle East and beyond. 

Georgia is where the dynamic of overt power-balancing is even more apparent. One of the pervasive myths around Georgia in 2008 is that had it not been for U.S. threats, Putin would have gobbled up the whole country. However, as Maitra argues, from the beginning, it appears that Russia had neither the will nor the local firepower necessary for a full annexation. Russia gained de facto independence for Russian exclave regions and created a situation in which Georgia would be unable to join NATO. Russia gained what it wanted in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, leaving Georgia to contend with adversaries in its backyard and stunting NATO ambitions in the Caucasus region.  

Through the examples of 2008 in Georgia and 2014 in Ukraine, Maitra argues that Russia was deadly serious about threats tied to neighboring countries—a realist demand, not an ideological crusade. Georgian or Ukrainian accession into NATO would strain Russia’s military posture across the entire Rostov Oblast, much in the same way that the Suwałski Gap puts NATO forces at a perceived disadvantage against the Russians.

However, one problem with the book that sticks out is how it deals with the counterarguments to Russian aggression. This is the common objection of whether a different leader in Russia would have reacted in the same way given U.S. actions in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, more broadly. This is a point of criticism that Maitra briefly touches on, but it would have been helpful to give it more space, as it is one of the primary objections to the realist framing of this conflict. Maitra doesn’t address this because it falls under a disagreement on first principles. Realists do not put much weight on the contingencies and personalities of leadership in foreign policy.  

Maitra’s book shows that Russia’s actions on the world stage, much like some of America’s own, have motives extending from rational calculations of interest. Analysts of Russia need not conjure up the specter of World War II but rather that of nineteenth-century Europe. Then, the central concern was balancing the strategic interests of the great powers in Europe. To any reader who wants to get a deeper understanding of Russian aggression, its causes, and its consequences, this is the place to start.

Matthew Bryant graduated with a B.A. in Global Affairs from George Mason University. He has also studied as a joint Graduate student at the University of Trento & the Higher School of Economics. He researches and writes about the post-Soviet area as well as United States-Russia relations. He has been published in Law and Liberty, The National Interest, and The Realist Review. Follow him on X @Realmofmatt. 

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