Report Launch: How the West Lost the Post-Cold War Era

Why It Matters

If accepted, Whitmore’s diagnosis demands sustained shifts in Western policy: tougher resilience to corruption and energy coercion, sharper Kremlin skepticism, and revised assumptions that could shape sanctions, security commitments, and support for vulnerable neighbors. These changes affect NATO posture, EU energy policy, and long‑term efforts to deter further Russian revisionism.

Summary

Brian Whitmore, in a new Atlantic Council report, argues the post–Cold War era was a 30‑year interregnum in which Western optimism and misreading of Russia’s enduring impulses produced strategic blind spots that helped enable Moscow’s return to aggression, culminating in the 2022 full‑scale invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on six core lessons — including Russia’s culture of illusion, persistent imperialism, and kleptocratic statecraft exported abroad — he traces how Western policymakers repeatedly underestimated Moscow’s motives and methods. Whitmore says these misconceptions were evident early in the 1990s in frozen conflicts, energy coercion, and large‑scale money‑laundering, and were compounded by naiveté about Russia’s internal political culture. The report is part memoir, part policy diagnosis urging a recalibration of Western understanding and strategy toward Russia.

Original Description

The latest Atlantic Council Eurasia Center report examines the lessons of the post-Cold War period and what the United States and its allies can do to counter Russian revanchism today.