The New Slavic States: Our Early 1990s Analysis for the Pentagon Predicted Today’s Crisis

In the early 1990s, as the Soviet Union collapsed and new nations emerged from its ruins, a critical question faced Western policymakers: how should the United States and Europe deal with the newly independent states of Ukraine and Belarus? These nations, born from the wreckage of communist empire, occupied a precarious position between an uncertain Russian future and an expanding Western order.

Susan Clark and my study for the Department of Defense’s Net Assessment office during this period focused on what we termed “the new Slavic states” – specifically Ukraine and Belarus – and their potential impact on European security. Our analysis, now archived in the Defense Technical Information Center, reached conclusions that have proven remarkably prescient in light of today’s ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

The central finding was stark: these states did not fit comfortably into either the Western or Russian spheres of influence. They represented something more dangerous than mere neutral territory – they constituted potential flashpoints for future European conflict. Ukraine and Belarus existed in a geopolitical limbo that made long-term stability unlikely.

During our field research in the early 1990s, traveling through Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow, we witnessed societies in upheaval. The immediate Western priority was nuclear security – ensuring that Soviet nuclear weapons abandoned in Ukrainian territory came under proper control. But beyond this urgent task lay deeper questions about the future orientation of these nascent states.

The challenge facing Western policymakers was profound uncertainty about how to integrate these “awkward states” into the post-Cold War order. While there was much discussion about the broader fate of Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Belarus presented unique complications. They were neither clearly European in orientation nor willing satellites of Russia.

The West’s response was predictably institutional: fall back on default structures like NATO and the European Union as the primary vehicles for managing the new European landscape. This approach worked reasonably well for countries like Poland, Hungary, and Romania, which had clearer Western aspirations. But it left the fundamental question of Ukraine and Belarus unresolved.

Our analysis recognized that any European settlement would ultimately require dealing with Russia, which “throughout modern European history has challenged or troubled a settled European order.” Russian leaders viewed Ukraine and Belarus not as truly independent states but as buffer zones essential to their own security perimeter.

This perspective created an inevitable collision course. As NATO and the European Union expanded eastward over the subsequent decades, they did so without incorporating Ukraine and Belarus. These two states remained suspended between a resurgent Russia and the new European order built after 1991, serving as an unstable buffer zone that we had identified as potentially dangerous to future European stability.

The prescience of our 1990s analysis becomes clear when examining Vladimir Putin’s objectives today. Putin’s disputes with President George W. Bush during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004-2005 revealed his fundamental goal: to ensure that Ukraine remains like Belarus – dominated by leaders willing to serve as loyal Russian allies rather than pursue Western integration.

Putin’s July 2021 essay on “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” and Russia’s new military doctrine declaring permanent cultural and political conflict with the West represent the fulfillment of dynamics we identified three decades ago. The current war in Ukraine is not simply about Ukrainian sovereignty – it is about the stability of the entire post-Cold War European order.

The Russian threat to Ukrainian sovereignty validates our early assessment that these buffer states would become focal points of European instability. Putin’s vision of a unified Slavic empire encompassing Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine directly challenges the Western assumption that these nations would naturally evolve toward European integration.

Our early research highlighted the concentration of ethnic Russians within Ukraine and the country’s historical oscillation between European and Russian orientation. These internal divisions, identified in the 1990s, continue to complicate Ukraine’s path toward consolidated statehood and Western alignment.

Today’s crisis demonstrates that the post-Cold War European order remains fundamentally incomplete. The expansion of NATO and the EU, while successful in integrating much of Eastern Europe, left critical questions unresolved about the space between Russia and the West. The vision of a Europe “whole and free” – the catchphrase from Washington in the 1990s – proved more aspirational than achievable.

The current conflict represents not an aberration but the playing out of structural tensions identified decades ago. Ukraine and Belarus were always going to be contested spaces because they occupy territory that both Russia and the West consider strategically vital.

Understanding today’s crisis through the lens of 1990s analysis reveals several key insights:

• First, the current war transcends Ukraine itself. It represents a fundamental challenge to the post-Cold War settlement and the broader question of whether Europe can achieve lasting stability with Russia as a disruptive power.
• Second, the West’s institutional approach to managing post-communist transitions, while successful in many cases, proved inadequate for the unique challenges posed by the buffer zone states.
• Third, Putin’s actions, rather than representing opportunistic aggression, follow a strategic logic aimed at protecting what Russian leaders see as their essential security zone.

The validation of our 1990s analysis offers sobering lessons for contemporary policymakers. The assumption that historical forces inevitably favor democratic development and Western integration has proven naive. Geography, ethnicity, and great power competition remain potent forces in shaping political outcomes.

Resolving the current crisis will require acknowledging the structural nature of the problem we identified thirty years ago. This is not simply a matter of deterring Russian aggression or supporting Ukrainian sovereignty, though both remain important. It requires crafting a new European security architecture that addresses the fundamental incompatibility between Russian and Western visions for the region between them.

The tragedy is that these dynamics were visible and analyzable in the early 1990s. The failure to adequately address the buffer zone problem then has led to the much more dangerous and costly confrontation we face today. Sometimes, the most valuable strategic analysis is that which forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about problems we would prefer to ignore.

The new Slavic states were never going to fit neatly into anyone’s preferred world order. Recognizing this reality earlier might have prevented the current catastrophe.