Ominously, in the 2007 edition of the Munich Conference on Security Policy, President Putin delivered a speech in which he outspokenly characterized the neoconservative crusade to enforce a unipolar world вЂ’and particularly, NATO expansion in Eastern Europe вЂ’ as dangerous for stability within the international system because said phenomenon could increase the likelihood of confrontation, diminish mutual understanding amongst great powers, and fuel military tensions. They were convinced that the end of the Cold War had not extinguished the validity of the geopolitical theories of Sir Halford Mackinder about the need of sea powers from the marginal crescent to control the most pivotal areas of the so-called Eurasian вЂheartland.вЂ™ Perhaps NATO was not eager to conquer Russia like Napoleon and Hitler did however, Moscow believed that, under suitable circumstances, such intentions might emerge in a foreseeable future. From their perspective, the Orange Revolution was little more than a regime change operation masterminded by the CIA and NGOs bankrolled by the State Department in order to aggressively encircle Russia. Back then, Vladimir Putin and his entourage вЂ’ in which the presence of former KGB spooks has always been prominent вЂ’ experienced a rude awakening. Considering that Russia was a mere shadow of the impressive power once held by the Soviet Union, Moscow was not being taken seriously anymore.ДЄll that changed in 2004. After all, conventional wisdom dictated that, in the post-Cold War era, Russia was rapidly fading into irrelevance so disregarding what it had to say or what it wanted was an affordable luxury.

Such gestures were seen in Washington and Brussels as a sign of weakness. Moscow offered flirtatious overtures to NATO, unilateral diplomatic concessions, and even support for the American military intervention in Afghanistan. Until then, Boris Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir Putin, had been seeking some sort of accommodation with the West. Needless to say, the shockwaves were powerfully felt in the Kremlin. This turning point was enthusiastically supported by the West as a meaningful ideological victory for liberal democracy and вЂ’ above all вЂ’ as a geopolitical milestone in the Eastward march of both NATO and the EU. The 2004 Orange Revolution, a wave of street protests that fueled the rise of a pro-Western government in Kiev, will likely be remembered by future historians as the very first modern episode in the drama that would eventually lead to the current Ukraine War.

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