Russia the Disruptor

Review: Stephen Kinzer's 'Boiling Point'; Jonathan Haslam's 'Hubris'; Hanna Notte's 'We Shall Outlast Them'

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Review: Russia the Disruptor

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Review

Russia the Disruptor

How Moscow broke with the West—and unleashed a more chaotic world.

October 30, 2026, 3:15 PM

By **Laura Mills**, a human rights researcher and writer based in New York.

!Russian President Vladimir Putin sits at a polished wooden desk with papers, flanked by flags in an office setting. The overall image has a motion-blur effect.

*Russian President Vladimir Putin sits at a polished wooden desk with papers, flanked by flags in an office setting. The overall image has a motion-blur effect.*

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government via a video conference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence, outside Moscow, on April 19, 2023. Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images

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In a famous scene from *Band of Brothers*, the HBO epic about a U.S. paratrooper regiment in World War II, a Nazi general surrenders to U.S. forces. The Americans, rather than humiliating him, allow him to deliver a stirring address to his troops after they lay down their arms; the soldiers from both camps are visibly moved.

That incident may be exaggerated or apocryphal, but it echoed a widely held sentiment among the Allies in 1945: “In victory, magnanimity,” as Winston Churchill once summarized. But over four decades later, as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, magnanimity was harder to come by: How much, if anything, was the United States willing to offer Russia in the wake of the Cold War?

In a famous scene from *Band of Brothers*, the HBO epic about a U.S. paratrooper regiment in World War II, a Nazi general surrenders to U.S. forces. The Americans, rather than humiliating him, allow him to deliver a stirring address to his troops after they lay down their arms; the soldiers from both camps are visibly moved.

That incident may be exaggerated or apocryphal, but it echoed a widely held sentiment among the Allies in 1945: “In victory, magnanimity,” as Winston Churchill once summarized. But over four decades later, as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, magnanimity was harder to come by: How much, if anything, was the United States willing to offer Russia in the wake of the Cold War?

That question is at the heart of two books, *Hubris: The American Origins of Russia’s War Against Ukraine* by British historian Jonathan Haslam and *Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine* by journalist Stephen Kinzer. Both authors question to what extent Russia’s war in Ukraine is a reaction to decades of arrogance by the United States, full of swagger as the last superpower standing amid the ashes of the Cold War.



***Hubris: The American Origins of Russia’s War Against Ukraine***, Jonathan Haslam, Belknap Press, 368 pp., $25.95, September 2026, paperback

Both accounts, though overeager to blame Washington for Moscow’s belligerent turn, serve as a helpful reminder of the paths not taken in the 1990s and early 2000s, when, rather than bringing Russia into the liberal world order as a true partner, the United States encouraged rapid NATO expansion and democratization in Eastern and Central Europe, antagonizing the country.

If those decisions partly drove Moscow to move toward a break with the West, a third book, *We Shall Outlast Them: Putin’s Global Campaign to Defeat the West* by international relations scholar Hanna Notte, documents the culmination of Russia’s effort, showing how, since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the country has leveraged ties with allies around the globe to evade sanctions and political pressure. Alienated from the West, Russia has turned to the rest of the world. The question now is whether the West, thrown into even greater chaos by U.S. President Donald Trump’s fractious impulses, will be able to adapt.

---

In February 1990, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met with Western diplomats over the question of German reunification. In a phrase that has come to haunt much of post-Soviet history, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev that NATO would move “not one inch” eastward if the Soviet Union withdrew from East Germany.

!A black-and-white outdoor scene showing a row of 12 international flags on high flagpoles flying above a small artillery gun on dirt ground. Uniformed personnel stand nearby, with a crowd and buildings visible in the background.

*A black-and-white outdoor scene showing a row of 12 international flags on high flagpoles flying above a small artillery gun on dirt ground. Uniformed personnel stand nearby, with a crowd and buildings visible in the background.*

The flags of NATO nations are pictured during the inauguration ceremony of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe near Paris on July 23, 1951. AFP via Getty Images

While much ink has been spilled about the meaning of that phrase—and Baker’s authorization to issue such assurances in the first place—this anticipated a pattern that would plague the U.S.-Russia relationship for 30 years. At each stage, the expansion of NATO’s membership and mission, partly at the behest of Central and Eastern European nations u