A provocative title as politically Ukraine is in Eastern Europe, though geographically you might say Central Europe as the European plane sweeps from the Ural Mountains in Russia across northern Europe, to the Pyrenees on the French-Spanish border. The plane is broken notably by the Carpathian mountains, which might offer a partial natural defensive border to the Rus, except it is in Romania!
The trouble is the only voice speaking for Europe to Putin was Emmanuel Macron and he failed. Strikes me there was no one listening to Moscow's severest warnings since 2008, no concerted diplomacy, or what there was - at Minsk - was ignored at the whim of Kiev.
Macron's efforts weren't exactly helped by NATO and America.
At the breakup of the old communist Soviet Union, NATO promised Russia that it would leave its near-abroad neutral, in particular East Germany, but instead it pushed its tanks right up to Russia's border and now what is happening in Crimea and Ukraine, with the West piling in wmd, just confirms Moscow's greatest fears.
I don't think Moscow is bluffing when it says military imports are legitimate targets...what will the next leg in the escalation look like?
Russian aggression, caused by its insecurity, has been met with the policy of Containment. The story starts from Woodrow Wilson in 1916 setting the goal of American foreign policy; to a more specific strategy fed from Mackinder's Heartlands of 1904, see also Peter Zeihan, as well as the Domino theory, fed to George Kennan and thence to Harry Truman in 1947.
The end of WW2 meant the liberation of much of continental Europe, but instead of restoring the sovereignty of states in Russia's security zone, its near-abroad if you prefer, they became incorporated into Soviet Russia. Hence the Cold War that pitted America and NATO against the USSR and its Warsaw Pact.
As a dentist might begin by anesthetising the patient, so America weakened Russian communism with an arms race and then Gorbachev came to believe in a free market economy with Perestroika and Glasnost.
The move in Russia from a communist monopoly of power, to a system that permitted opposition, created a chaos wherein the Union broke up and Yeltsin, Russian president, took over.
At this point, the dentist set to work, pulling out the former soviet provinces and throwing them into NATO in a number of waves ... 1999, 2004...
To me, The Domino Theory is a political misreading of history. It's not wrong as all govts try to foment dissent in their neighbours, but it led to Viernam, Central America and Grenada and it doesn't explain pre-Communist Russian misbehaviour.
I would go for an explanation based in the unfortunate hand geography dealt the Rus.
What structures and drives this? It is almost a contest between the competing emotions of Fear and Love.
John J Mearsheimer brilliantly offers a political-structuralist explanation for security conflicts. He teaches how these are resolved through balance-of-power arms races, which can break down eventually into the selfishness of war.
Or we have a structuralist-geographist kind of explanation, that can encourage sympathy from understanding the weaknesses of your neighbours, and accomodating them in Peace Treaties.
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