Conflict in Ukraine : the unwinding of the post-Cold War order /

Menon (Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair in Political Science, City Coll. of New York; The End of Alliances) and Rumer (director and senior associate, Russia and Eurasia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Russian Foreign Policy Beyond Putin) have accomplished the difficult task of convincingly identifying the enduring factors in an ongoing crisis. The authors believe that Ukraine's likely fate is to be locked in a "frozen conflict," similar to others involving Russia in the post-Soviet world. More precisely, a deeply divided Ukraine confronts a weakened and isolated Russia, having forfeited influence over Kyiv by annexing Crimea. A more interesting assertion is that the situation was not deliberately Kremlin designed but occurred through events in Ukraine and Russia "well beyond [Putin's] control." The collapse of the -Viktor Yanukovych regime and the downing of the Malaysian airliner fall into this category, but they do not lessen structural conflict between Russian "Eurasianism" and the quest of the broader EU. Also, as we are reminded, Ukraine borders four EU states. Whether the crisis can be compared with Europe prior to World War I may be problematic, but the strongest case for the conflict's significance lies in its contrasting impact on Russian and European assumptions regarding national security, political and commercial relations, and public opinion formed since the 1990s. VERDICT A careful treatment of a serious and intractable international problem undermining the notion of "post-conflict Europe." [See "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/15/15, p. 33.]-Zachary Irwin, Behrend Coll., Pennsylvania State Erie © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.