The Introduction poses the question of how we should best understand the military conflict that began in 2014, showing why the prevailing explanations are insufficient. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many analysts believed that the problems of security in central Europe had disappeared. Security challenges did not disappear in 1991 and resurface later, but rather persisted. This chapter uses three concepts in international relations theory – the security dilemma, loss aversion, and the democratic peace – that will be used throughout the book to show why the new conflicts could not easily be managed.

Chapter 5 concentrates on Streit’s efforts as a political lobbyist, primarily with the Atlantic Union Committee (AUC), a Washington lobby group and vocal proponent of Atlanticism during the 1950s and into the 1960s. If Streit’s federal union project represented one version of Atlanticism, the AUC’s extended give-and-take with Congress acted as a midwife to the emergence in the early 1960s of an opposing version. Imagined as a community of transatlantic elites centered in and on the United States, this Atlanticism continues to dominate Washington politics today.

Under Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine became increasingly autocratic. His concentration of political power and economic assets engendered opposition, but Ukraine seemed stable. While Yanukovych turned Ukraine toward Russia, making significant concessions in return for cheaper energy, he resisted the economic integration that Putin sought, hoping instead for a more popular Association Agreement with the EU. His efforts to play Russia and the EU against one another made Ukraine’s status a zero-sum game internationally. By 2013, it looked like Russia was primed to finally achieve the goal of reeling Ukraine back in, as Yanukovych succumbed to Russian pressure and delayed signing the EU Association Agreement.

Chapter 3 examines Streit’s wartime activities on behalf of Federal Union, which included efforts to build a national movement with local chapters. The difficulties encountered offer another perspective on grassroots political mobilization, one that calls into question arguments that surge local activism at the time. The chapter also considers Streit’s involvement with the Commission to Study the Organization of the Peace (CSOP), a semi-official grouping that played a key role in designing and championing the UNO as a pillar of postwar US internationalism. Streit’s unwillingness to collaborate meaningfully with the CSOP left him with inadequate means either to promote his own project or to counter the appropriation of federalism for other ends.

As Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s borders in late 2021, few believed that Russia would actually carry out a full-scale invasion. On February 24, 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine along four axes. Contrary to expectations, Ukraine put up a spirited response and Russia’s attack stalled. The West enacted extensive sanctions and provided arms to Ukraine. By the summer of 2022 the war bogged down, with Russia in control of roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory. Both sides appeared committed to pursuing success on the battlefield rather than the bargaining table. The war was turning into a contest of logistics, resupply, and endurance.

This chapter focuses on Union Now, Streit’s first and best-known book, published in 1939, spotlighting the interaction of two factors to explain its visibility on. One factor is Streit’s energetic promotional campaign. Streit proved remarkably resourceful in attracting attention, exploiting the possibilities offered by newspapers, radio, public lectures, and the emerging practice of celebrity endorsements. The chapter highlights Streit’s first promotional strategy, that of courting a select group of opinion-makers, through case studies of several influential figures: Henry Luce, John Foster Dulles, Thomas Lamont, Dorothy Thompson, and Russell Davenport. The second factor is the cult of the US Constitution and its federal system during the interwar years but which began in the post-Civil War period. This cult provided fertile ground for Streit’s Atlantic federal union project modeled on the US Constitution.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered any remaining illusions about order in post-Cold War Europe. What caused the conflict? The grounds for conflict were deeply rooted and multiple factors interacted. From the outset, the actors’ goals were incompatible, even if that was obscured by the euphoria that accompanied the fall of communism. All the causes of the conflict remain in place, exacerbated by the war and responses to it. Understanding the deep causes of the conflict forces us to confront the likelihood that simple solutions, like Putin’s passing, are unlikely to solve it.

After 1999, Ukraine and Russia both slid toward autocracy. As Leonid Kuchma’s autocracy made him a less fit partner for the West, he moved closer to Russia, and Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election looked set to solidify Russia’s position in Ukraine. The overturning of that rigged election via the Orange Revolution shocked the Russian leadership. In addition to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Ukraine, revolution now appeared to threaten the Putin regime. By merging the Ukraine–Russia conflict with the growing Russia–West conflict, this episode made both harder to solve.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (Springfield, IL)

Writing to a British acquaintance in March 1951, Walter Lippmann, then at the height of his fame as a foreign affairs commentator, described Clarence Streit as “an old friend” who “has built his whole crusade on an hysterical illusion” – that the federal union of the thirteen American states forged in Philadelphia in 1787 offered a model for the countries of the North Atlantic in the mid-twentieth century. “I regard the campaign as on the whole well-meaning,” Lippmann explained in regard to Streit’s activities, “but very misguided. Its effect is to miseducate rather than to educate American opinion, at least. But I never attack it or criticize it publicly because there are so many worse things abroad.”1

The Orange Revolution initially appeared as a victory for democracy in Ukraine and as a geopolitical victory for the West. Those two ideas – democratic revolution and geopolitics – became tightly linked in the eyes of Russian leaders, but whereas western thinkers saw democracy as fostering peace, Russia saw it as a weapon. The Orange Revolution also made Ukraine appear to be the fulcrum of security dilemma politics in central Europe. Both Russia and the West saw the other’s designs on Ukraine as threatening their security and as undermining the status quo. Meanwhile, the Orange Revolution fizzled, Viktor Yanukovych made a remarkable comeback, and Russia reasserted itself, bolstered by Putin’s popularity and by booming energy prices.

As communism collapsed, disagreements emerged that endured until 2014. Russia struggled unsuccessfully to keep Ukraine in a new Moscow-led union and disagreement over the Black Sea Fleet and its base in Crimea proved unresolvable. Meanwhile, Russia and the West advanced different visions for post-Cold War Europe. Pressured by both Russia and the US, Ukraine agreed to surrender its nuclear weapons in return for security assurances. Already in 1993, the prospect that a “red–brown” coalition of communists and fascists would come to power in Moscow prompted many countries to look for ways to guard against Russian reassertion, exacerbating the security dilemma.