Beyond the Black Box: Why Offensive Realism Falls Short in Explaining Russia’s War Against Ukraine
Beyond the Black Box: Why Offensive Realism Falls Short in Explaining Russia’s War Against Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: Offensive realism explains state behavior by treating states as unitary “black boxes” responding to systemic power pressures. This article argues that such structural logic cannot account for Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Based on a structured comparison of Russian responses to several NATO-related developments in the post-Cold War period, the study shows that Moscow did not react uniformly to comparable external developments. NATO enlargement in Eastern Europe (1999–2004), the NATO accession of Finland and Sweden (2022–2023), and U.S./NATO-linked cooperation with Central Asian states (2002–2022) generated limited or conditional Russian opposition. By contrast, developments involving Ukraine resulted in a full-scale war in 2022. I argue that this divergence is best explained by ideational content inside the Russian state, specifically the imperial–civilizational doctrine of “Russkiy Mir,” which frames Ukraine as indispensable to the historical and cultural unity of the “triune Russian people.” The central research question guiding this work is: Why did Russia respond militarily to Ukraine but not to other NATO-related developments? Addressing this question requires integrating both structural pressures and ideational influences to fully understand Russian foreign policy behavior.

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