什么原因导致了乌克兰战争？
Joseph Nye 名誉教授和哈佛肯尼迪政府学院前院长
2022年10月4日
在关于导致俄罗斯于 2022 年 2 月 24 日入侵乌克兰的因素的激烈辩论中，它有助于区分深层、中间和直接原因。 但是，虽然每个人都以自己的方式发挥作用，但即使他们都在场，也不必认为战争是不可避免的。
坎布里奇——俄罗斯在乌克兰的战争是欧洲自 1945 年以来最具破坏性的冲突。虽然西方许多人认为俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京选择了一场战争，但他说北约 2008 年支持乌克兰最终加入的决定带来了生存威胁 到俄罗斯的边界，还有一些人将冲突追溯到冷战结束以及苏联解体后西方未能充分支持俄罗斯。 我们如何辨别一场可能持续数年的战争的起源？
第一次世界大战发生在一个多世纪前，但历史学家仍在撰写书籍讨论其起因。 是因为塞尔维亚恐怖分子在 1914 年暗杀了奥地利大公，还是与崛起的德国势力挑战英国，或整个欧洲民族主义高涨有关？ 答案是“以上所有，再加上更多”。 但直到 1914 年 8 月战争真正爆发，战争才不可避免。 即便如此，接下来的四年大屠杀也并非不可避免。
为了解决问题，它有助于区分深层原因、中间原因和直接原因。 想想生一堆篝火：把原木堆起来是深因； 添加火种和纸张是中间原因； 划火柴是诱发因素。 但即便如此，篝火也并非不可避免。 大风吹灭了火柴，突如其来的暴雨浸湿了木头。 正如历史学家克里斯托弗·克拉克 (Christopher Clark) 在 1914 年关于第一次世界大战起源的著作《梦游者》(The Sleepwalkers) 中指出的那样，“未来仍然是开放的——只是。” 错误的政策选择是灾难的关键原因。
在乌克兰，毫无疑问，普京在 2 月 24 日命令俄罗斯军队入侵时点燃了火柴。就像 1914 年的大国领导人一样，他可能认为这将是一场短暂而激烈的战争，并会迅速取得胜利， 有点像苏联在 1956 年接管布达佩斯或 1968 年接管布拉格。空降部队将占领机场，前进的坦克将占领基辅，推翻乌克兰总统沃洛德米尔·泽伦斯基并建立傀儡政府。
普京告诉俄罗斯人民，他正在进行一项“特殊军事行动”，以“消除”乌克兰的纳粹化，并阻止北约向俄罗斯边境扩张。 但考虑到他失算的严重程度，我们必须问问他到底在想什么。 我们从普京自己的著作以及菲利普·肖特等传记作家那里得知，中间原因是拒绝将乌克兰视为合法国家。
普京曾担任克格勃官员，对苏联解体表示遗憾，而且由于乌克兰和俄罗斯在文化上的密切联系，他认为乌克兰是一个虚假国家。 此外，乌克兰忘恩负义，在 2014 年发动独立广场起义推翻了亲俄政府，并加深了与欧盟的贸易关系，从而激怒了俄罗斯。
普京想要恢复他所谓的“俄罗斯世界”，在他年近 70 岁之际，他一直在思考自己的遗产。 早期的领导人，如彼得大帝，在他们自己的时代扩大了俄罗斯的实力。 鉴于 2014 年俄罗斯入侵乌克兰并吞并克里米亚半岛后西方制裁力度减弱，普京似乎在问自己：为什么不走得更远？
北约东扩的前景是次要的中间原因。 虽然西方确实成立了北约-俄罗斯委员会，俄罗斯军官可以通过该委员会参加一些北约会议，但俄罗斯对这种关系抱有更多期望。 尽管美国国务卿詹姆斯·贝克在 1990 年代初告诉他的俄罗斯外长，北约不会扩大，但像玛丽·萨罗特这样的历史学家已经表明，贝克迅速推翻了他的口头保证，而该口头保证背后从未有过书面协议。
当美国总统比尔克林顿在 1990 年代与俄罗斯总统鲍里斯叶利钦讨论此事时，俄罗斯勉强接受北约的一些扩张，但双方的期望不同。 北约在 2008 年布加勒斯特峰会上决定将乌克兰（和格鲁吉亚）纳入潜在的未来成员，这证实了普京对西方的最坏预期。
尽管如此，尽管北约在 2008 年的决定可能被误导了，但普京的态度转变早于此。 他曾在 2001 年 9 月 11 日的袭击事件后帮助美国，但他在 2007 年慕尼黑安全会议上的讲话表明，他在布加勒斯特峰会之前就已经对西方产生了厌恶。 因此，北约扩张的可能性只是几个中间原因之一——在法国和德国宣布他们将否决乌克兰加入北约的布加勒斯特峰会后不久，这一原因就变得不那么突出了。
此外，经过七十年的中央计划，突然转变成繁荣的市场经济是不可能的。 强行通过如此迅速的变化的努力必然会产生巨大的破坏、腐败和极端不平等。 虽然一些寡头和政客因国有资产的快速私有化而暴富，但大多数俄罗斯人的生活水平却下降了。
1997 年 2 月在达沃斯，下诺夫哥罗德州长鲍里斯·涅姆佐夫（后来被暗杀）报告说，俄罗斯没有人纳税，政府拖欠工资。 然后，在次年 9 月，自由派议员格里戈里·亚夫林斯基在哈佛大学肯尼迪学院的一次晚宴上说：“俄罗斯完全腐败，叶利钦没有远见。” 由于无法应对经济状况恶化带来的政治后果，当时健康状况每况愈下的叶利钦求助于普京这位名不见经传的前克格勃特工，以帮助他恢复秩序。
这些都不意味着乌克兰战争不可避免。 但随着时间的推移，这种可能性确实越来越大。 2022年2月24日，普京失算点燃了燃起大火的火柴。 很难看到他把它拿出来。
What Caused the Ukraine War?
Oct 4, 2022 JOSEPH S. NYE, JR.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/what-caused-russia-ukraine-war-by-joseph-s-nye-2022-10
Amid heated debates about the factors that led Russia to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, it helps to distinguish between deep, intermediate, and immediate causes. But while each can matter in their own ways, war need not be considered inevitable even when they are all present.
CAMBRIDGE – Russia’s war in Ukraine is the most disruptive conflict that Europe has seen since 1945. While many in the West see a war of choice by Russian President Vladimir Putin, he says that NATO’s 2008 decision in favor of eventual Ukrainian membership brought an existential threat to Russia’s borders, and still others trace the conflict back to the Cold War’s end and the failure of the West to support Russia adequately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. How can we discern the origins of a war that may last for years?
World War I occurred over a century ago, yet historians still write books debating what caused it. Did it start because a Serbian terrorist assassinated an Austrian archduke in 1914, or did it have more to do with ascendant German power challenging Britain, or rising nationalism throughout Europe? The answer is “all of the above, plus more.” But war was not inevitable until it actually broke out in August 1914; and even then, it was not inevitable that four years of carnage had to follow.
To sort things out, it helps to distinguish between deep, intermediate, and immediate causes. Think of building a bonfire: piling up the logs is a deep cause; adding kindling and paper is an intermediate cause; and striking a match is a precipitating cause. But even then, a bonfire is not inevitable. A strong wind may extinguish the match, or a sudden rainstorm may have soaked the wood. As historian Christopher Clark notes in his book about the origins of WWI, The Sleepwalkers, in 1914, “the future was still open – just.” Poor policy choices were a crucial cause of the catastrophe.
In Ukraine, there is no question that Putin lit the match when he ordered Russian troops to invade on February 24. Like the leaders of the great powers in 1914, he probably believed that it would be a short, sharp war with a quick victory, somewhat like the Soviet Union’s takeover of Budapest in 1956 or Prague in 1968. Airborne troops would capture the airport and advancing tanks would seize Kyiv, removing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and installing a puppet government.
Putin told the Russian people that he was conducting a “special military operation” to “denazify” Ukraine and prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s borders. But given how seriously he miscalculated, we must ask what he was really thinking. We know from Putin’s own writings, and from various biographers like Philip Short, that the intermediate cause was a refusal to see Ukraine as a legitimate state.
Putin lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union, which he had served as a KGB officer, and, owing to Ukraine and Russia’s close cultural affinities, he considered Ukraine a phony state. Moreover, Ukraine had been ungrateful, offending Russia with its 2014 Maidan uprising, which removed a pro-Russian government, and its deepening of trade relations with the European Union.
Putin wants to restore what he calls the “Russian world,” and, as he has approached the age of 70, he has been thinking about his legacy. Earlier leaders, like Peter the Great, had expanded Russian power in their own time. Given the weakness of the Western sanctions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Putin seems to have asked himself: Why not go further?
The prospect of NATO enlargement was a lesser intermediate cause. While the West did create a NATO-Russia Council through which Russian military officers could attend some NATO meetings, Russia expected more from the relationship. And while US Secretary of State James Baker had told his Russian counterpart, in the early 1990s, that NATO would not expand, historians like Mary Sarotte have shown that Baker quickly reversed his verbal assurance, which never did have a written agreement behind it.
When US President Bill Clinton discussed the matter with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, there was grudging Russian acceptance of some NATO expansion, but expectations on both sides differed. NATO’s decision at its 2008 summit in Bucharest to include Ukraine (and Georgia) as potential future members simply confirmed Putin’s worst expectations about the West.
Still, while NATO’s decision in 2008 may have been misguided, Putin’s change of attitude predated it. He had helped the United States following the September 11, 2001, attacks, but his 2007 Munich Security Conference speech shows that he had already soured on the West before the Bucharest summit. The possibility of NATO expansion thus was merely one of several intermediate causes – one made less salient soon after the Bucharest summit by France and Germany's announcements that they would veto Ukraine's NATO membership.
Behind all this were the remote or deep causes that followed the end of the Cold War. Initially, there was a great deal of optimism, in both Russia and the West, that the Soviet Union’s collapse would allow for the rise of democracy and a market economy in Russia. In the early years, Clinton and Yeltsin made a serious effort to develop good relations. But while the US provided loans and economic assistance to Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar’s government, Russians expected much more.
Moreover, after seven decades of central planning, a sudden transformation into a flourishing market economy was impossible. Efforts to force through such rapid changes could not fail to produce enormous disruptions, corruption, and extreme inequality. While some oligarchs and politicians became wildly rich from the rapid privatization of state-owned assets, most Russians' standard of living declined.
At Davos in February 1997, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Boris Nemtsov (later assassinated), reported that no one in Russia was paying taxes, and that the government was behind on paying wages. Then, in September of that next year, the liberal parliamentarian Grigory Yavlinsky told a dinner at the Harvard Kennedy School that “Russia is completely corrupt and Yeltsin has no vision.” Unable to cope with the political fallout of deteriorating economic conditions, Yeltsin, then in declining health, turned to Putin, the unknown ex-KGB agent, to help him restore order.
None of this means that the Ukraine war was inevitable. But it did become increasingly probable over time. On February 24, 2022, Putin miscalculated and lit the match that started the conflagration. It is hard to see him putting it out.
