The Folly Of Realism

When do you decide that a long‑used strategy at work—or in life—isn’t delivering, and that sticking with it is quietly making the problem worse? In The Folly of Realism, Alexander Vindman argues the United States faces exactly that moment in foreign policy. His core contention: three decades of a Russia‑first, crisis‑averse “realist” approach—shared by both parties—didn’t tame Moscow, it enabled it. By consistently privileging short‑term deals, avoiding hard choices, and overestimating the benefits of appeasing a nuclear‑armed power, Washington deceived itself about Russia and, in the process, betrayed Ukraine.

Vindman contends that the West’s deference to Russian exceptionalism—from denuclearization terms that funneled Ukraine’s deterrent into Moscow’s hands (1992–1996), to a NATO decision in Bucharest that promised membership to Ukraine and Georgia while denying the very first step (2008), to incremental, delayed support after Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea—has taught the Kremlin a ruinous lesson: bold aggression meets Western hesitation. He proposes an alternative he calls “neo‑idealism,” drawing on the work of Benjamin Tallis: a tough‑minded, values‑anchored strategy that treats democratic self‑determination, rule of law, and human dignity not as nice‑to‑haves but as the United States’ most durable interests.

What This Book Covers

You’ll first see why Ukraine matters far beyond today’s headlines. Vindman walks you through a millennium of shared—and fiercely contested—identity, from Kyivan Rus’ to the Cossacks, the Holodomor, Soviet Russification, and Chernobyl’s searing lesson about governance and risk. He shows how Ukrainian statehood in 1991 didn’t spring from nowhere; it rested on a deep, resilient national tradition (for a complementary long view, see Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe).

Next, you’ll meet the Washington team that quietly set much of U.S. policy: the 1989 National Security Council “Ungroup” (Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Robert Blackwill, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric Edelman, Robert Zoellick, Dennis Ross). Tasked with gaming out the end of the USSR, they elevated one overriding objective—secure Soviet nukes under a strong center in Moscow—above all else. That logic made Ukrainian sovereignty contingent and framed the 1990s “Russia‑first” reflex that lingered for decades.

Vindman then reconstructs, step‑by‑step, how a series of decisions compounded: the Lisbon Protocol and Budapest Memorandum (1992–1994), which removed Ukraine’s nuclear deterrent in exchange for security “assurances,” not guarantees; the Clinton team’s trilateral diplomacy that secured disarmament but underinvested in Ukraine’s democratic and economic resilience; the West’s non‑response to Russia’s growing authoritarianism at home and coercion abroad; the 2004 Orange Revolution where Washington condemned fraud but tiptoed around Kremlin interference; Bucharest 2008’s muddled half‑promise; and the echoed consequence—Russia’s invasion of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014, 2022).

Why It Matters to You

If you care about whether democracies can safely choose their futures—your own included—Vindman’s story is a manual in how not to manage authoritarian challengers. The lesson isn’t that values are naïve; it’s that ignoring values is naïve. Realism, as practiced, promised stability; in reality, it delivered drift, self‑deterrence, and wider war. Vindman, drawing on his service in Kyiv and Moscow and later at the Pentagon and the National Security Council, shows from the inside how bureaucratic habits (“avoid escalation,” “don’t spook Moscow,” “wait for allies”) can harden into an alibi for inaction that invites aggression.

The book’s thesis in one line

“In selling out our values for short-term calm, we’ve undermined our interests—and taught deterrable autocrats that they can act with impunity.”

What You’ll Learn in This Summary

• How centuries of history make Ukraine the crux of Russia’s imperial identity—and why that shapes today’s war.
• How the late‑Cold War “Ungroup” locked in a Russia‑centric, nuclear‑first reflex that sidelined Ukraine.
• Why denuclearization without hard security guarantees (Budapest, 1994) created a fatal credibility gap.
• Where U.S. administrations—Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Trump, Biden—repeated the same pattern: hope, hedge, hesitate.
• What “neo‑idealism” means in practice: values as interests, early action over late reaction, and concrete steps to anchor Ukraine in the West.

How to Read This Moment

Vindman doesn’t ask you to choose between starry‑eyed idealism and hard‑nosed interests. He argues the two converge when you deal with autocrats who test red lines: equip partners early, set bright‑line consequences, and back words with means. His critique extends to neoconservative overreach after 9/11 (which tried to nation‑build by force while bartering with Moscow) and to liberal institutionalism that trusted process to tame power without building leverage (compare to Robert Kagan’s argument in The Jungle Grows Back).

In short: if you want a durable peace in Europe, you don’t center your diplomacy on the aggressor’s self‑image or your own fear of escalation. You center it on the agency of threatened democracies—and give them the tools and alliances that make aggression unprofitable. That’s the pivot this book argues for, with Ukraine as the test case that will either revitalize the liberal order or confirm its decline.

Vindman begins by asking you to see Ukraine not as an appendage of Russia but as an old polity with its own arc. That history matters because Vladimir Putin’s worldview rests on the opposite claim: that Russia inherits Kyivan Rus, and thus Ukraine, as its civilizational core. If you grasp how Ukrainians narrate their story, you understand why they resist—and why Moscow is so determined to negate them.

From Kyivan Rus to Cossack Autonomy

Both Russians and Ukrainians root origins in Kyivan Rus, the medieval polity centered in Kyiv that Christianized under Prince Volodymyr. But Vindman highlights a crucial fork: after Mongol invasions fragmented Rus, Muscovy grew eastward while Ukrainian lands—especially Galicia and Volhynia—interacted more with Central Europe. The 1654 Pereiaslav agreement, in which Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky sought protection from the tsar, was understood by Cossacks as conditional autonomy. The tsars read it as permanent subordination—a divergence that seeded centuries of conflict.

Over the 18th–19th centuries, imperial Russia consolidated rule, annexing Crimea (1783) and Russifying Ukraine’s cities and institutions. Yet a vibrant Ukrainian language and literature—epitomized by poet Taras Shevchenko—nourished a national consciousness distinct from “Little Russia” stereotypes (see also Roman Szporluk’s Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union). That identity survived even as the modern state remained unrealized.

Scars That Hardened Identity

Vindman points to two traumas that forged post‑imperial resolve. First, Stalin’s Holodomor (1932–33)—a man‑made famine that killed millions of Ukrainian peasants—burned into memory how Moscow’s extractive control could turn murderous. Second, Chernobyl (1986) made visible the costs of Soviet secrecy and misrule inside Ukraine’s borders. As Kyiv residents watched the state conceal a nuclear catastrophe, the case for sovereignty became more than romantic nationalism; it became survival logic.

The Soviet era also sowed regional complexity. Eastern industrial basins (Donbas), Crimea’s naval hub (Sevastopol), and Russified urban elites created a mosaic of identities. Yet when Ukraine voted for independence on December 1, 1991, 92.3% supported it nationwide—Crimea was the outlier with a far lower “no,” but still didn’t block the outcome. Independence wasn’t an accident; it reflected broad national will.

Why Kyiv Is Existential for Moscow

This backstory clarifies Putin’s rhetoric. In his 2005 address to the Duma, he called the USSR’s collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” framing millions of ethnic Russians as stranded in hostile states. If Ukraine integrates with the EU and NATO as a thriving Slavic democracy, the myth of a single Russian people anchored in Kyiv crumbles. That’s why, Vindman argues, Ukraine is not “just another neighbor” for the Kremlin; it’s the keystone of imperial identity (Zbigniew Brzezinski made the same point decades earlier).

The 1954 Crimea Transfer and Today

One misconception Vindman corrects: transferring Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 was an internal Soviet administrative move under Nikita Khrushchev, not a freely revocable deed. After 1991, Russia recognized Ukraine’s borders—then and again in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. The fact that Russia kept the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol under treaty did not negate Ukrainian sovereignty. When “little green men” seized Crimean buildings in February 2014 and staged a sham referendum, that was raw coercion draped in invented history.

Why this lens matters

If you accept Moscow’s inheritance claim, you will forever treat Ukraine’s agency as negotiable. If you accept Kyiv’s history, you see why “no Ukraine, no empire” is a Kremlin doctrine—and why deterrence must be real, not rhetorical.

A Nation that Keeps Choosing Itself

From the 2004 Orange Revolution to the 2013–14 Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainians have repeatedly risked their lives for clean elections, rule of law, and a European future. Vindman, who walked Kyiv’s streets as a U.S. attaché and later briefed senior leaders in Washington, wants you to see agency where punditry sometimes sees only proxy war. That shift—from talking “about” Ukraine to dealing “with” Ukraine as a partner—is the moral and strategic hinge of his book.

(Context: Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom and The Making of Modern Ukraine reaches similar conclusions—Ukraine’s plural, civic identity is Moscow’s ideological nemesis.)

In summer 1989, as the Berlin Wall tottered, President George H. W. Bush asked National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and his deputy Robert Gates to quietly plan for the unthinkable—the collapse of the USSR. The result was the National Security Council’s informal “Ungroup,” a small cell (Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Robert Blackwill, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric Edelman, Robert Zoellick, Dennis Ross) that would profoundly shape U.S. reflexes toward the region. Vindman shows how their logic—reasonable amid nuclear anxiety—hardened into habits that later betrayed Ukraine.

One Goal to Rule Them All: Secure the Nukes

The Ungroup prioritized preventing nuclear proliferation and “loose nukes.” That meant: keep a strong center in Moscow to command Soviet strategic forces; avoid balkanization chaos; and, after the breakup, consolidate all former Soviet nuclear weapons in Russia. As Gates later summarized, the key was “to maintain a strong central government in Moscow… essential to maintaining control of the nuclear weapons.” Support for the independence of republics like Ukraine was conditional on those states not retaining nukes or even influencing arms-control talks.

This lens made perfect sense at the time. But Vindman argues it also entrenched a hierarchy: Russia equals indispensable partner; Ukraine equals derivative problem. That hierarchy would echo in the 1991 “Chicken Kyiv” speech, where Bush warned the Rada against “suicidal nationalism,” and in early 1990s cables telling Kyiv that efforts to control “nukes on their territory would be politically costly.”

Denuclearization on Moscow’s Terms

The path was set: the 1992 Lisbon Protocol named Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as START successors—but committed the three non‑Russian states to join the Non‑Proliferation Treaty as non‑nuclear weapons states “in the shortest possible time.” In 1994, the Trilateral Statement (Clinton–Yeltsin–Kravchuk) and the Budapest Memorandum promised Ukraine security “assurances” and compensation for highly enriched uranium—while all strategic warheads shipped to Russia. The critical nuance: assurances are not guarantees (no Article 5). When Moscow later violated those assurances (Crimea 2014), the gap between words and means became lethal.

Vindman doesn’t romanticize a nuclear Ukraine. Kyiv lacked the command‑and‑control, technical capacity, and money to operate warheads designed to be controlled from Moscow. Ukrainian leaders like Volodymyr Horbulin concluded retention was impractical. Kyiv instead sought robust security guarantees and serious integration with Western institutions. What it received were statements of intent and modest aid, shaped by a Washington still centered on its Moscow relationship.

Chicken Kyiv, Then Coup, Then… Collapse

When hardliners staged their August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, Yeltsin rallied resistance, communism crumbled, and Ukraine declared independence. The White House still searched for ways to keep the “center” relevant and stability intact. Even after Ukraine’s December referendum delivered a 93% vote for independence, Washington dragged its feet, worrying about a “Yugoslavia with nukes” scenario. The Ungroup logic—stability through Moscow—was fully in charge.

The lasting effect

A template was set: in crises, center on Russia; with Ukraine, link help to denuclearization or reforms first, integration later—maybe.

Clinton: Same Priorities, Softer Tone

Bill Clinton criticized Bush’s “stability over freedom” but largely continued Russia‑first execution early on. His team did broaden ties (the “Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasian Affairs” bureau label mattered symbolically), and the Trilateral Statement and Budapest were diplomatic achievements. But as Vindman recounts through interviews with Nicholas Burns, Strobe Talbott, and William Perry, even advocates of a deeper Ukraine partnership ran into the same hierarchy: Yeltsin’s Russia took most of the mindshare, money, and meetings. When Russian revanchism surfaced (Chechnya, 1994; Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalists, 1993), Washington doubled down on hedging with Moscow rather than conditioning cooperation.

(Context: This was not uniquely “realist”—it was bipartisanship around a flawed assumption: that Russian reform equals regional reform, and that values can be sequenced after interests. Vindman’s critique rhymes with Anne Applebaum’s—and differs from John Mearsheimer’s, who blames NATO enlargement more than Russian imperial identity.)

From the mid‑1990s through the 2010s, Vindman shows a repeating U.S. pattern across five administrations: voice values, prioritize Russia, and self‑deter when tested. The episodes differ; the reflex stays the same. Seeing that pattern helps you avoid treating each crisis (Georgia 2008, Crimea 2014, the 2022 invasion) as an isolated surprise.

Orange Revolution (2004): Values Affirmed, Kremlin Tip‑Toed Around

When Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin and the presidential runoff was brazenly rigged for Viktor Yanukovych, hundreds of thousands filled Kyiv’s Maidan. The U.S. condemned fraud, backed a new vote (Yushchenko won), and spotlighted democratic process—the George W. Bush “Freedom Agenda” at its best. But even here, Vindman notes, Washington carefully avoided calling out Putin’s overt meddling (money, operatives like Gleb Pavlovsky, state media). The goal: defend democracy without endangering counterterrorism ties and arms control with Moscow. Signal received in the Kremlin: push hard, face rhetoric—rarely consequences.

Bucharest (2008): Promise Without Path

At NATO’s Bucharest Summit, the Alliance declared Ukraine and Georgia “will become members,” but denied them Membership Action Plans (MAPs), the very on‑ramp to get there. The United States publicly supported MAPs but failed to corral France and Germany; internally, key U.S. officials (e.g., Defense Secretary Robert Gates) feared provoking Russia and doubted Kyiv’s readiness. The communiqué created the worst of both worlds: a public end‑state that inflamed the Kremlin and a private hedge that offered no near‑term protection.

Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia after engineering a confrontation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Moscow learned a brutal lesson: If it used force to create territorial disputes, NATO would treat those disputes as disqualifying. Create a “frozen conflict,” block membership—that became a playbook later used in Ukraine’s Donbas.

From “Reset” to Crimea (2014)

Barack Obama’s reset with Dmitry Medvedev sought cooperation on Iran sanctions and Afghanistan supply lines. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin made clear in Munich (2007) that he saw NATO enlargement as a hostile act and announced a sphere‑of‑influence doctrine. In 2010, Yanukovych—rebranded by U.S. consultant Paul Manafort as a “balancer”—won Ukraine’s presidency and promptly extended Russia’s Black Sea Fleet lease, rolled back NATO aspirations, and jailed Yulia Tymoshenko.

When Ukrainians erupted in late 2013 after Yanukovych torpedoed an EU association agreement in Vilnius under Kremlin pressure, the Revolution of Dignity crescendoed, snipers killed more than 100 protesters, and Yanukovych fled. Within days, unmarked Russian troops (the “little green men”) seized Crimea and staged a referendum. Vindman recounts sitting on the Russian side of the border as a U.S. military attaché and photographing Russian convoys crossing into separatist‑held Ukraine; his reports went to the top. Even then, Washington and European leaders urged Kyiv not to resist in Crimea to avoid “escalation.”

Consequences of restraint

A state that surrendered nukes for security was told not to fight for its own territory—by the very guarantors of its sovereignty. Deterrence eroded.

Minsk Without Leverage

The Minsk I/II agreements (2014–2015), negotiated by France and Germany without the United States at the table, froze lines while embedding political concessions that Moscow could exploit. Russia kept escalating (the shoot‑down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17; regular troops in Donbas) while the West sanctioned cautiously and withheld lethal aid. Vindman’s bottom line: process replaced power; hopes replaced hardware.

(Compare to Robert Kagan and Anne Applebaum’s critique of “self‑deterrence”: fear of escalation can be rational at the tactical level but catastrophic at the strategic level if it teaches an aggressor that force pays.)

Vindman’s vantage point shifts from the field to the engine room. In 2015 he joined the Joint Staff and helped craft a new National Military Strategy (NMS) and Global Campaign Plan (GCP) that, for the first time since 9/11, re‑centered nation‑state competition and named Russia as the top decadal threat. He led cross‑agency teams analyzing how Russia fights: conventional force married to hybrid tools (disinformation, energy coercion, cyber, targeted assassinations) to fracture democracies and rewrite borders without tripping collective defense.

A Harder Strategy

The NMS/GCP—endorsed up the chain to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster—set clear objectives: counter Russian malign influence and deter aggression by hardening the periphery (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus), raising the price of coercion, and equipping partners early. Deliverables flowed: at last, a modest shipment of Javelin anti‑tank missiles to Ukraine. Policy was beginning to align with reality.

Vindman is candid about misjudgments too—like exploring a pause in U.S. sanctions on Belarus to wedge it from Moscow (a bet on dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka that events later disproved). But overall, the strategy marked a break with 25 years of hedging—a move toward what he would later call neo‑idealism: values plus leverage.

The Trump Detour

Then came 2019. Despite having signed the National Security Strategy that echoed the new Russia approach, President Donald Trump froze nearly $400 million in congressionally authorized security assistance to Ukraine. The purpose, Vindman testified in the first impeachment inquiry, was to coerce Kyiv into announcing investigations that would benefit Trump politically. In one stroke, aid that served U.S. strategy and bipartisan law became a bargaining chip—for personal gain.

Vindman’s account is not gossipy; it’s institutional. When rules are bent at the top, deterrence collapses at the seam. If Ukraine’s lifeline is conditional on domestic U.S. politics, Moscow concludes the West’s commitment is brittle. The damage persisted even after Congress restored funds: the episode broadcast disunity and taught Putin to discount U.S. resolve.

Biden’s Incrementalism

Joe Biden’s team repaired alliances and coordinated sanctions, intelligence sharing, and aid at historic scale after February 24, 2022. Vindman credits those gains but is scathing about the cadence: too slow, too conditional, too fearful of escalation. HIMARS arrived, but in dribs; ATACMS, F‑16s, and long‑range air defense dribbled after long debates; key maintenance hubs stayed outside Ukraine, forcing a thousand‑kilometer logistics loop. Washington often waited for Russia to escalate first before greenlighting systems Kyiv needed months earlier.

Strategic cost of delay

Every month of incrementalism is a month of adaptation for Russia, a month of attrition for Ukraine, and a message to Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang about Western stamina.

What Resolve Looks Like

Vindman’s point isn’t that escalation risks are imaginary. It’s that unmanaged risk has already delivered a continental war whose secondary effects—energy shocks, food insecurity from Black Sea blockades, emboldened autocrats—are global. Resolve, he argues, would have looked like pre‑invasion transfer of key systems, forward repair depots inside Ukraine, immediate sanctions on high‑tech inputs to Russia’s war machine, and, most of all, a political decision to close NATO’s open door behind Ukraine with a defined timeline.

(Note: This recommendation echoes calls from former NATO commanders and scholars like Hal Brands, who argue credible commitments deter best before the shooting starts.)

The heart of Vindman’s proposal is disarmingly simple: stop treating values and interests as trade‑offs. Treat them as the same thing. That’s neo‑idealism. It rejects two failed temptations: (1) the “realism” that cuts instrumental deals for short‑term calm while eroding long‑term security, and (2) a naïve idealism that relies on process and speeches without building leverage or accepting hard choices.

How It Differs from Past Schools

• Versus classic realism (Kissinger, Waltz): Neo‑idealism refuses to bracket human rights and self‑determination as optional in great‑power dealings; it treats the health of free societies as a key variable in power politics.
• Versus neoconservatism (post‑9/11): It rejects using large‑scale regime‑change wars to impose values; it advances them by empowering partners, conditioning access to Western systems, and punishing aggression early.
• Versus liberal institutionalism: It prizes institutions but assumes rules won’t bind predators unless backed by timely power and clear tripwires.

Principles You Can Apply

• Act before the avalanche: Early, visible commitments deter cheaper than late, incremental responses (HIMARS in month 1 is worth more than ATACMS in month 18).
• Condition engagement: Access to Western finance, tech, and prestige should be contingent on behavior (for Russia: sanctions snap‑backs tied to verifiable withdrawal; for swing states: reforms for deeper integration).
• Harden the periphery: Build resilience in frontline democracies (Ukraine, Moldova, Baltics) with air defense, energy security, cyber hygiene, and legal/anti‑corruption support that shrinks avenues for coercion.
• Close gray zones: Ambiguity invites probes. Where membership is not imminent, craft interim security architectures (bilateral defense pacts, long‑horizon funding, forward‑based training and sustainment inside partner territory).

What It Means for Ukraine Now

Vindman’s agenda is specific: move from “as long as it takes” to “as much as it takes, as fast as needed.” That includes full‑spectrum air/missile defense, long‑range strike to degrade Russian logistics, permission to hit legitimate military targets inside Russia, forward repair hubs in western/central Ukraine, and a pathway to EU and NATO with measurable benchmarks and dated milestones. The North Star is simple: make renewed aggression militarily unviable and politically self‑defeating for the Kremlin.

He also argues for a broader strategic reset: stop granting Russia lower standards than other neighbors. From Chechnya to Georgia to Ukraine, Moscow has been allowed to define “red lines” that fence in Western action while it violates basic norms. Neo‑idealism flips that script: the red line is sovereignty; cross it, and your access to Western technology, capital, and markets constricts—automatically.

Why This Is in Your Interest

If you prefer a world where smaller democracies can choose their alliances without being invaded, you’re already a stakeholder. A Russian victory would accelerate nuclear proliferation (Budapest’s lesson: never disarm), embolden copycats (think Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Middle East), and normalize conquest. A Ukrainian victory—anchored in institutions, not just arms—would do the opposite. It would demonstrate that autocracy is brittle, aggression is costly, and democratic alignment pays. That’s not idealism over interests; that’s interests through ideals.

(For a strategic parallel, see Hal Brands’ The Twilight Struggle argument: democracies win long competitions when they mobilize around values that translate into sustainable advantages.)