Having spent four formative years in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, I have followed Russia's changing fortunes with both intellectual and personal interest. I remember a country that, despite its contradictions and authoritarian institutions, regarded itself as a superpower equal to the US.
Few imagined that within a decade it would disappear, leaving behind 15 independent republics and unresolved questions of identity, sovereignty and security. Reading Munir Ahmed's 'Ukraine War: Beyond the Headlines' (Devcom, 2026), I was reminded how the consequences of that disintegration continue to haunt international politics.
Munir Ahmed, a Pakistani geopolitical analyst and journalist, challenges the dominant Western interpretation of the Ukraine conflict through essays examining North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion, Russian security concerns, American strategic interests, sanctions and the war's global economic consequences. The book's principal strength is its insistence that the conflict cannot be understood by beginning the story on 24 February 2022.
Its origins lie partly in the failure to construct an inclusive European security order after the Cold War. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Warsaw Pact had already disappeared.
NATO, established to contain Soviet power, nevertheless survived and expanded. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined in 1999; seven more countries, including the Baltic republics, followed in 2004.
Yet Moscow saw an alliance originally established against the Soviet Union advancing towards Russia's borders. The crucial issue was not merely NATO's geographical expansion.
It was the assumption that Western powers could determine Europe's security architecture without adequately accommodating Russian concerns. Washington celebrated the Cold War's conclusion as a victory; Moscow increasingly regarded the settlement as an unequal peace.
The NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008 marked a turning point. Under American pressure, the alliance declared that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members, although neither received a timetable or immediate security guarantees.
NATO thus raised expectations while aggravating Russian apprehensions and leaving both countries exposed. The dangers were foreseeable.
In February 2008, William Burns, then American ambassador to Moscow and later Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, warned Washington that Ukrainian NATO membership crossed a sensitive Russian security boundary. His diplomatic cable, titled 'Nyet Means Nyet', explained that opposition extended beyond Vladimir Putin and warned of potentially serious consequences for Ukraine.
Why, then, did Washington continue pursuing a policy whose dangers its own diplomats recognised? Munir Ahmed repeatedly challenges the assumption that American policy represented a disinterested defence of European security.
His chapters on Russia's rationale for military intervention, NATO and Western arms supplies locate Ukraine within a larger contest for geopolitical predominance. NATO enlargement can reasonably be interpreted as an extension of American strategic influence.
During my years in Moscow, rivalry between two superpowers dominated international relations. Each accused the other of expansionism and interference.
What strikes me today is that the disappearance of one superpower failed to produce the cooperative security settlement that might have prevented the current tragedy. Ultimately, Ahmed's work serves as a critical reminder that history is not merely a sequence of dates, but a complex web of perceptions and missed opportunities.
As the world watches the ongoing conflict, this book provides the necessary context to understand why the echoes of the Cold War remain so loud in the 21st century.