Hubris: The American Origins of Russia’s War Against Ukraine
By Jonathan Haslam
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2025
Traditionally, when something big and bad happens globally a number of factors – geographical isolation, emphasis on short term over long term thinking, distrust of diplomats and government experts (see State, Deep), lack of interest in history that isn’t hagiography and American exceptionalism – lead many Americans to seek easily digestible explanations that excuse the US from being even a small part of the causal problem, think Osama bin Laden ordered the 9/11 attacks because he hated our freedoms. We also gravitate towards simple solutions, think the US invades Iraq, overthrows Saddam Hussein, withdraws its troops and watches as Iraq peacefully turns into a liberal democracy and other Middle Eastern autocracies follow suit.
In the case of Russia’s current war with Ukraine, the generally accepted narrative is that this is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, sparked by his desire to reestablish the Soviet Union, conceptually not in name, with the US in the role (most of the time) of helping the Ukrainians defend their sovereignty. Some hope the combination of arms transfers and economic sanctions will force Russia to back down; others have placed their trust in President Trump’s self-promoted and as yet unrealized ability to quickly mediate a peace settlement.
The root causes of this war is the subject of Professor (Cambridge, Princeton) Jonathan Haslam’s “Hubris,” a comprehensively researched and well presented that would frustrate all sorts of Americans. It’s a complicated tale, taking the reader through key events in Germany, Iraq, the Balkans, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya Syria and (of course) Russia and Ukraine. It examined the actions of six, and the start of a seventh, US presidential administrations dating back to the 1980s. Haslam’s central theme is that post-Cold war American hubris led the US to ignore or downplay legitimate Russian concerns, most notably in pushing for the eastward expansion of the NATO military alliance.
Hubris is a broad term and Haslam presented it in many different forms. There’s George H.W. Bush’s non-triumphal post-Cold War hubris, his genuine belief that could act as a force for good, followed by Bill Clinton’s reactive hubris, shared to a degree by Barack Obama. These presidents were young, domestically focused, deemed illegitimate by domestic opposition forces and desirous of winning a second term. When, for example, Clinton took military action in the Balkans it seemed it was more to prove himself than to anger the Russians. George W. Bush’s was a more proactive, arrogant hubris, personified by Vice President Dick Cheney and (especially) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which led to the US blowing a post-war opportunity to partner with Russia in the war on terror and, by extension, in Europe. A source said that “Moscow’s objections to further (NATO) expansion would not deter the Bush people; they were more likely to encourage them” (122).
Haslam treated Donald Trump’s “only I can fix it” hubris in a balanced fashion. In the subchapter “The Conspiracy Against Trump” (228) he seemed sympathetic to Trump’s claims – “Russia, Russia, Russia” – that the Obama administration acted wrongly in accusing Russia of meddling in the 2016 election, calling the Steele Dossier "hearsay evidence from Washington, DC and marred by elementary errors that any Russianist could spot” (229). Haslam did not spare President Trump the usual criticisms, mainly that his business background, isolationist instincts and inconsistency towards Russia undermined any opportunity to work with Putin. By the time Joe Biden took office, the die was cast and the US couldn’t dissuade Russia from its path.
As a historian, Haslam did his readers three real services that many may not fully appreciate by showing that the US can make policy misjudgments, providing insight into the Russian point of view and extolling the virtues of government experts. Even a cursory understanding of modern Russia history would easily explain why NATO expansion into Ukraine would be a serious red flag for Moscow, regardless of the leader. Three of the five main axes of Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union came through Ukraine. Likewise, Russia’s insistence that it should have a great power sphere of influence in the “near abroad” seemed logical, and mirrored the US, itself a relatively poor, weak country at the time, proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine. Haslam also pointed out that Obama recognized a Chinese sphere in the western Pacific, just not Russia’s.
At the same time, one is tempted to argue that Haslam was a bit too gentle on Russia. “Hubris” included a shopping list of topics – Russia unwillingness or incapacity to police its sphere of influence, its toleration of ethnic cleansing, its corruption, autocracy, murder of political opponents and economic woes, Putin’s insistence on calling Ukraine a Nazi regime and his toxic blend of grandiosity and grievance – that were covered but perhaps downplayed a bit. So whether Russia truly deserved respect and consideration from the US got called into question.
Throughout “Hubris,” Haslam took the reader on a deep dive into the US foreign policymaking process. It was reminiscent of Strobe Talbott’s works on 1980s arms control, fitting as Talbott qualified (most of the time) as one of Haslam’s heroes. His larger point was that in every administration there were Russia experts who fully understood the danger of NATO expansion, including this from George Kennan, the father of Soviet containment policy:
Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking” (15).
When Kennan wrote this in 1997, Putin was still a government functionary in Moscow.
Public distrust of government bureaucrats and diplomats did not start with the “Deep State” fulminations of the MAGA right; many equate their knowledge of foreign histories, cultures and languages (friend and foe alike) as somehow un-American. What Haslam showed was their value being structurally undermined by regularity of US elections and the political needs of their bosses.
“Hubris” was a bit too dense in places even for this reviewer, a retired teacher who tries to stay informed on important current events. It will be eagerly discussed in academic and diplomatic circles, here and in Europe, but was not a book for public consumption. American exceptionalists may not appreciate that the US received blame for a war clearly started by Russia, others will get bogged down in its lengthy timespan and others may recoil at its celebration of thoughtful bureaucrats. This is a shame, because what the naysayers see as weaknesses were actually strengths and “Hubris” should be viewed as an important cautionary tale for the nation moving forward.