Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 101

RUSSIA AS THREAT

(AP photo by RIA-Novosti, Presidential Press Service, Mikhail Klimentyev)

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a terrestrial globe 29 August 2014 with Russian territory colored pink, seemingly including Crimea,
presented to him as a gift during his meeting with participants in the youth educational forum at the Seliger youth camp near Lake Seliger, Russia.

Is a Greater Russia
Really So Bad?
George Michael, Ph.D.

T

he Russian military’s foray into the
Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in late
February 2014 set in motion a chain of
events that some observers fear threatens to dismantle the post-Cold War order presumed to be based
on global integration and the rule of international
MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2015

law.1 Such observations are overblown and bear
close, critical scrutiny. After such an analysis, one
may very well conclude that developing events
involving Russia and its bordering states are of grave
concern to the United States, but not for the reasons
one might first expect.
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