Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
Alexander J. Motyl: How Putin compelled NATO to help Ukraine
An Ukrainian serviceman gives food to an elderly woman in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on July 7, 2014.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is back, thanks in large part to Russian President Vladimir Putin. His invasion and annexation of Crimea and his sustained aggression against eastern Ukraine have revived NATO, imbuing the bloc with the sense of mission it had lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Ukraine is the primary beneficiary of this revival. In effect, Putin, an inveterate NATO opponent, has walked into a strategic trap of his own making.
