Portside

To explain is not to excuse; to understand causes is the first step to preventing repetition. This essay does not seek to excuse or sanitize Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian mass killing, territorial seizure, and repression are real and indefensible. Nor does it deny that ideology, nationalism, and imperial narratives play important roles in how wars are justified and sustained. The issue here is analytical causation. Andriy Movchan’s  Counterpunch essay “The Russian Idée Fixe” treats attention to NATO expansion, U.S. militarism, and security dilemmas as apologetics, while treating ideology as a sufficient explanation for war rather than as a historically conditioned response to shifting material and geopolitical pressures.

This framing collapses the distinction between why wars begin and how they are later rationalized. By reducing structural explanations to “mechanical Marxism” or cynical realism, Movchan replaces one caricature with another, mistaking analysis of constraints for denial of agency. The result is a moralized account that substitutes ideological diagnosis for causal explanation. This essay challenges that substitution by examining how security dynamics, military integration, and great-power competition shaped Russian decision-making, while recognizing ideology as a powerful but secondary force in legitimizing and prosecuting the war.

Movchan’s approach is often labeled as a critique of “Eastsplaining,” a term implying Western outsiders lecture Eastern Europeans whose first-hand knowledge is ignored. But this framing assumes Western actions played no role in Ukraine’s militarization. If Eastsplaining ignores Eastern agency, its mirror image is Westsplaining, which ignores Western responsibility. This discursive tactic does not merely defend Eastern agency; it actively constructs a narrative of Western innocence. In doing so, it replicates the very error it purports to critique: it privileges one set of experiences (Eastern European historical trauma) while rendering another set of actions (Western military-strategic choices) as neutral, inevitable, or analytically irrelevant.  Increasingly, the entire “splaining” discourse, like accusations of “whataboutism,” functions to shut down debate rather than clarify causation.

I examine ten strawman arguments deployed by Movchan. Identifying these flaws does not diminish Russian responsibility, nor does it exculpate Ukrainian nationalists, the Biden administration, or the U.S. security establishment. Throughout, the distinction is between causation and legitimation: between conditions that make war likely and narratives through which war is justified and administered.

Strawman I: Defensive versus Offensive War

Movchan debunks the idea of a “defensive war against NATO expansion” in a way that implies NATO expansion played no meaningful role in Russia’s decision to invade. This forecloses a crucial possibility: Russia’s war can be offensive in form while motivated by defensive strategic concerns. Acknowledging Russia’s offensive methods does not preclude defensive calculations. Russia can act aggressively while still responding to perceived threats. To deny Russia any strategic interests in Ukraine is analytically untenable.

Strawman II: Putin’s Discourse

Movchan centers his argument on Putin denying “any danger of a NATO attack on Russia,” privileging leader statements as evidence of motivation. This is methodologically flawed. Leaders routinely use different rhetoric for different audiences. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy publicly emphasized offensive weapons threatening American security.  He privately admitted to advisors (to paraphrase): “I don’t think there is a military problem here...This is a domestic, political problem.” Yet Kennedy brought the world to the brink of nuclear war over missiles that posed no additional strategic threat. Speech is often a poor proxy for intentions. George W. Bush offered multiple, shifting explanations for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, few of which reliably reveal the underlying strategic motives.  

Putin can honestly deny fearing an imminent U.S. surprise attack while still viewing NATO expansion as a long-term strategic threat. The distinction between immediate military danger and broader security deterioration matters. Moreover, Putin’s December 2021 treaty demands—made before the invasion—explicitly focused on NATO expansion, demanding the U.S. “prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” These formal diplomatic demands reveal strategic priorities more reliably than propaganda interviews.

Strawman III: Finland, Sweden, and Ukraine

Movchan argues that NATO expansion could not have motivated Russia because Finland and Sweden joined NATO without provoking war. This ignores geography and strategic history. Ukraine is an open plain historically used as an invasion route into Russia—the same path used by Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany. It has functioned as a critical buffer zone in Russian security thinking for centuries. Finland’s dense forests and difficult terrain pose no comparable strategic risk.

Additionally, Crimea has housed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol since 1783, providing Russia’s sole warm-water naval access to the Mediterranean and Middle East. Finland offers no such strategic asset. NATO expansion is not measured in kilometers alone but in perceived threat, geography, military usability, and historical experience. Finland and Sweden’s accession was an unintended but strategically secondary consequence of the Ukraine war, not a comparable red line.

Strawman IV: Preempting Ukrainian NATO Membership

Movchan argues Ukraine’s NATO entry was implausible, making Russian fears irrational. This misses the point. Between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine became deeply integrated into U.S. and NATO military and intelligence structures, making formal membership almost irrelevant. According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. provided approximately $2.7-2.8 billion in security assistance from 2014-2021, including NATO-interoperable training at Yavoriv and large-scale modernization of Ukraine’s forces. The shift to lethal aid in December 2017 introduced Javelin anti-tank missiles, counter-artillery radars, and secure communications systems designed specifically to counter Russian military doctrine.

Even more consequential was intelligence integration. A major February 25, 2024 New York Times investigation by Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz reported that the CIA began building a network of intelligence facilities in Ukraine as early as 2015, expanding sharply by 2016 when it helped train Unit 2245 to capture Russian drones and communications gear. The investigation describes CIA-supported forward operating sites along the Russian border constructed between 2016 and 2021 that enabled real-time surveillance of Russian troop movements. These bases were staffed by Ukrainians but funded, equipped, and guided by the CIA, effectively giving the U.S. a forward intelligence presence directly on Russia’s frontier.

By late November 2021, CIA and MI6 were warning Kyiv of an imminent Russian invasion. In January 2022, CIA Director William Burns traveled to Kyiv to brief President Zelensky on Russian attack plans. Russian intelligence chiefs told Vladimir Putin in December 2021 that the CIA and MI6 were “controlling” Ukraine and turning it into a platform for operations against Russia. Ukraine’s February 7, 2019 constitutional amendment enshrining NATO and EU membership as strategic goals reinforced these perceptions.

The strategic reality by 2021 was not that Ukraine was seeking a NATO umbrella, but that it had already become, in function if not in form, a forward operating platform for the most powerful intelligence and military alliance in history, directly abutting Russia’s core. To dismiss Russia’s perception of this as paranoia is to ignore the fundamental tenet of realism: states assess capabilities, not intentions.

In this context, Russia viewed Ukraine not as a neutral buffer but as a rapidly Westernizing military partner hosting U.S. intelligence infrastructure. The threat was not the absence of a NATO treaty.  Rather, it was the practical integration that made the treaty almost irrelevant. Moscow engaged in a preemptive strike against what they saw as future possibilities, just as the U.S. nearly triggered nuclear war over Cuban missiles that posed no additional strategic threat. Recognizing that Russian leaders acted on perceived security threats does not imply that those perceptions were accurate, proportional, or morally defensible.

Strawman V: The Carlson Interview

Movchan treats Putin’s Tucker Carlson interview as revealing his true motivations because Putin emphasized historical narratives over NATO concerns. But propaganda interviews serve different purposes than diplomatic negotiations. By February 2024, two years into the war, Russians needed moral justification for sacrifices, not geopolitical lectures. Historical rhetoric about Ukrainian-Russian unity serves domestic legitimation while Putin’s formal December 2021 treaty demands—made before the invasion—explicitly centered on NATO expansion.

Moreover, Carlson specifically asked about a “surprise attack,” inviting Putin to deny a strawman claim nobody seriously made. A more productive question would have been: “Did NATO expansion into Ukraine motivate this war?” But that wasn’t asked. Putin’s 30 years of consistent warnings about NATO expansion don’t disappear because he gave a historical lecture to Tucker Carlson.

Strawman VI: The Israel Comparison

Movchan argues that leftists critical of Israel but defensive of Russia operate with a double standard. This comparison fails because the analytic frameworks are different. Critiquing Israeli policy in Gaza does not require accepting maximalist Palestinian nationalist claims. Similarly, arguing that NATO expansion provoked Russia does not require endorsing Russian irredentism. Structural analysis explains how security competition produces violent outcomes without endorsing either side’s ideology.

The comparison also ignores power asymmetries. Israel receives billions in U.S. military aid and diplomatic protection while occupying Palestinian territories. Russia faces NATO expansion and Western military integration of Ukraine  (despite Russia’s own status as a major military power).

Movchan says leftists are hypocrites for blaming NATO for Ukraine but blaming Israeli ideology for Gaza. But structural analysis works for both: NATO expansion threatened Russia; Israeli occupation and Iranian proxy support via Hamas fuel Gaza conflict. Explaining why wars happen doesn’t mean excusing how they're fought. Condemning the violence doesn't require ignoring the structural causes. Both Russia and Israel commit mass killing, and both respond to perceived security threats—we can recognize both facts simultaneously. The comparisons involving Israel, Hamas, Iran, Russia and Ukraine do not equate moral responsibility, military scale, or legal status of each conflict, but highlight a recurring structural pattern in asymmetric conflicts involving external patrons.

Strawman VII: NATO’s Alleged Absence in Negotiations

Movchan claims Putin’s de-emphasis of NATO in potential Trump negotiations proves NATO was never his real concern. This misreads tactical adaptation as ideological revelation. Before the 2022 invasion, Russia explicitly demanded NATO halt its eastward expansion. By 2025, discussing NATO in broad terms serves less tactical purpose in talks with Trump, who cannot control NATO policy requiring consensus from all member states.

Ukraine has already integrated deeply with NATO through weapons, training, and intelligence cooperation. Raising NATO expansion in sweeping terms would only highlight Russia’s strategic failure: the war drove Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, strengthened NATO unity, and increased Western military presence. Yet NATO remains central in narrower form. Russia demands bans on Ukrainian membership, limits on NATO forces, and security guarantees short of membership. Putin negotiates over what Trump can influence: aid levels, pressure on Kyiv, and security arrangements. This is pragmatism, not ideological retreat.

Putin negotiating with Trump over aid and guarantees, rather than lecturing him on NATO’s founding charter, demonstrates not a change in strategic diagnosis, but a change in tactical prescription. A surgeon does not keep describing the disease once the operation is underway; he asks for the specific tools he needs in the moment.

Strawman VIII: Nationalism and Erasing Ukraine

Movchan treats post-invasion repression as proof of original war aims. But propaganda, cultural repression, and forced assimilation commonly emerge during occupations as tools of control. Their existence does not establish original motive. Once adopted, such ideologies can harden policy and narrow diplomatic exits, but they do not explain why the war began.

The same evidence used to claim Putin is driven by ideological “reactionary utopia” can be explained more simply: Russia’s policies radicalized under wartime pressure and security threats. Ideological campaigns markedly intensified from 2020-2021 as Russia’s conflict with the West deepened and Ukraine’s military integration with NATO accelerated. This timing suggests these campaigns responded to security concerns, not a sudden embrace of primordial identity politics.

Similarly, harsh occupation measures documented by the UN, including cultural repression, forced reeducation of children, and the militarization of youth, resemble the standard methods occupying powers use to consolidate control. These practices fit logically with a strategic objective: preventing Ukraine from becoming a permanently armed, Western-aligned state on Russia’s border. Ideology explains how the war is conducted and justified to Russian audiences, not why it began. The distinction matters because security imperatives can drive a conflict even when ideology shapes its execution.  The harsh occupation measures tell us how the war has been radicalized, not why it was launched when it was, where it was, and against whom. The brutality of an occupation reveals the radicalizing logic of the war itself, not its original strategic catalyst.

Strawmen IX-X: Mechanical Marxism and Leveraging Anti-Zionism

Movchan attacks “mechanical Marxism” only to replace it with voluntaristic idealism. He argues that Putin’s subjectivity matters in a state where the supreme leader’s views are decisive. But in Search for a Method, Jean-Paul Sartre also reminds us that subjectivity is shaped by objective conditions. Putin’s ideas evolved as conditions changed. Subjectivity explains how leaders interpret circumstances, not why specific geopolitical confrontations emerge. Putin’s worldview cannot explain why Ukraine became a Western military platform on Russia’s border.

Movchan makes the same error with Zionism, treating ideology as a near-total explanation for Israeli state behavior. Ideology matters, but operates within strategic contexts. As scholars from Stephen Walt to Robert Jervis to Antonio Gramsci have shown, ideas gain power when aligned with material pressures and strategic interests. Walt’s work on threat perception, Jervis on security dilemmas, and Gramsci on hegemony all demonstrate that ideologies function as legitimating and mobilizing frameworks rather than autonomous causal engines. Treating ideology as autonomous mistakes justification for causation. Security dilemmas create the conditions in which ideologies become actionable; They can transform historical grievance into present-day casus belli.

Conclusion

Emphasizing NATO expansion and U.S. militarism does not excuse Russian aggression; it explains it.  Recognizing that Russian leaders acted on perceived security threats does not imply that those perceptions were accurate, proportional, or morally defensible.

To conflate explanation with justification is to foreclose debate and ensure repetition. Movchan will likely respond that emphasizing NATO expansion and U.S. militarism risks minimizing the autonomy of ideology or treating Russian aggression as an unfortunate but predictable reaction. But acknowledging structural causes does not absolve responsibility; it clarifies it. States can act brutally and unlawfully in pursuit of perceived security interests, and understanding those interests is a prerequisite for preventing future wars, not excusing past ones.

He may also argue that occupation policies, ethnic repression, and eliminationist rhetoric prove that ideology is not merely justificatory but foundational. Yet this reverses temporal logic. These practices emerged and intensified after the invasion, under conditions of war, resistance, and international isolation. Focusing on this subsequent radicalization tells us about the logic of occupation, but not the catalyst for invasion. Ideology operates as a tool of mobilization, control, and legitimation under pressure, not as an independent motor of geopolitical conflict.

To insist that ideology alone explains Russia’s actions is to ignore why similar ideological narratives lay dormant for decades before becoming operational. Putin referenced historical unity between Russians and Ukrainians throughout the 2000s and 2010s without invading. What changed was not the ideology but Ukraine’s accelerating military integration with NATO and the construction of CIA intelligence facilities on Russia’s border. Ideology hardened because of this strategic threat; it did not generate the threat itself. Structural pressures activated ideological justifications, not the reverse.

Movchan’s framework ultimately substitutes psychology for geopolitics. It seeks to explain a large-scale international conflict primarily through the purported fixed ideas of a leader or a state, while treating the encircling movement of a hostile military alliance as mere background noise. True historical understanding requires listening to both frequencies: the loud, moralizing broadcast of ideology and the steady, strategic hum of material pressure. The analytical failure to distinguish cause from justification does more than distort history; it perpetuates the very political stalemate that makes conflict intractable, locking both sides into a dialogue of mutual moral condemnation devoid of strategic understanding.

This analytical failure has direct strategic consequences. The refusal to distinguish between the causes of a conflict and its justifications perpetuates a dangerous feedback loop: by dismissing security dilemmas as mere apologetics, Western policy can inadvertently validate the very nationalist ideologies it seeks to counter. A stance that treats Russian aggression as solely ideologically driven logically leads to policies of maximal pressure, which in turn empower hardliners and deepen the structural insecurities that fueled the conflict initially. If the goal is to reduce imperial violence, a clear-eyed analysis of its causes, even when they implicate Western power, is not concession to aggression but the foundational step toward any realistic strategy for containing it.

Finally, Movchan may claim that structural explanations drain politics of moral clarity. The opposite is true. Moral clarity without causal analysis produces indignation, not understanding. Wars are not prevented by identifying villains alone, but by recognizing the conditions under which power, fear, and ambition converge. To confuse explanation with justification is to foreclose debate and ensure repetition. A left that fails to analyze the causal role of Western militarism, even when analyzing the crimes of its adversaries, risks becoming a moralizing appendage to the very power structures it claims to oppose. If the left is serious about opposing imperial violence, it must be willing to analyze its causes even when those causes implicate Western power as well as its adversaries.

Thanks to the author for submitting this to Portside

Jonathan Michael Feldman is a founder of the Global Teach-In (www.globalteachin.com) and can be reached at @globalteachin on Twitter.