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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Realism and Idealism in the Ukraine War

Can the Narratives Be Reconciled?

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

1. Introduction: Two Stories of the Same War

The war in Ukraine—brutal, protracted, and globally consequential—has been interpreted through two opposing paradigms.

For realists, it is the foreseeable outcome of great-power insecurity and the West's failure to understand balance-of-power logic.

For idealists, it is a moral struggle between democracy and autocracy, freedom and coercion, right and might.

Both perspectives contain genuine insight but omit essential dimensions of the other. The tragedy of Ukraine is not only a clash of states but a collision of worldviews—between the realism of power and the idealism of principle. Understanding this conflict requires examining the roots, the tensions, and the possible synthesis between them.

2. The Realist Frame: Power, Security, and the Logic of Fear

For realists, the international system is an anarchy—no central authority guarantees safety. States must rely on their own power to survive.

As Thucydides, Morgenthau, and Mearsheimer have variously argued, moral rhetoric often conceals national interests.

After 1991, the Soviet collapse left Russia diminished and surrounded by newly independent states seeking protection from their former hegemon. NATO, originally a defensive Cold War alliance, expanded eastward in 1999 and 2004. Each round of enlargement reassured new members but eroded Russian confidence.

In this view, the 2022 invasion—though unjustifiable morally—was predictable structurally. It followed the logic of the security dilemma, where one side's defense looks like offense to the other. To realists, the war illustrates that ignoring balance-of-power dynamics in favor of moral ambition invites catastrophe.

3. The Idealist Frame: Sovereignty, Freedom, and the Moral Order

For idealists, realism's cynicism betrays the moral progress achieved since 1945. The UN Charter, the EU, and NATO's evolution represent attempts to transcend raw power politics.

Eastern European nations joined NATO not because of Western coercion but because of historical trauma. Having suffered Soviet domination, they sought integration into a community of law and liberty. For idealists, NATO expansion was a legitimate exercise of self-determination, not provocation.

Ukraine's westward turn in 2014, culminating in the Maidan Revolution, was a rejection of autocratic rule and a reaffirmation of national dignity. Russia's invasion, therefore, represents a return to imperialism and a direct assault on the moral order that has prevented major-power wars in Europe for seventy years.

Idealists hold that peace cannot rest on appeasement but on norms and values—sovereignty, democracy, and accountability.

4. Case Study: NATO Expansion as the Mirror of the Divide

NATO's eastward expansion is the most revealing lens through which to view the realist-idealist divide.

To realists, NATO's growth was reckless—an exercise in moral vanity that ignored the iron laws of geopolitics.

To idealists, stopping enlargement would betray smaller nations and reward intimidation.

The irony is that both positions reinforce each other: Russian aggression justifies NATO expansion, while NATO expansion fuels Russian aggression. The spiral persists because each side believes it is acting defensively.

5. Mutual Misperceptions: How Each Side Thinks the Other Is Misguided

The debate is not just about policies—it is about worldviews that delegitimize each other.

How Realists View Idealists

Realists often regard idealists as dangerously naïve.

They believe idealists mistake moral aspiration for political reality, promoting policies that feel good but destabilize the balance of power.

From the realist vantage point:

• Idealists underestimate the persistence of national interest and cultural memory.
• They universalize Western values as if they were globally self-evident.
• They moralize complex security dilemmas, turning negotiations into crusades.
• They fail to see how humanitarian interventions and democracy promotion can backfire, producing chaos from Iraq to Libya—and now, indirectly, in Ukraine.

To the realist, idealists pursue a world that ought to be rather than the world that is, often at the cost of blood and stability.

How Idealists View Realists

Idealists, by contrast, see realists as morally cynical and complacent.

They believe realists normalize aggression under the guise of “understanding it.”

From the idealist perspective:

• Realists excuse power politics instead of transforming it.
• They cloak indifference to suffering in the language of prudence.
• They treat smaller nations as pawns in great-power games.
• They ignore how moral norms, institutions, and public outrage now shape global behavior as much as armies do.

To the idealist, realism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—a doctrine that perpetuates the very anarchy it claims to describe.

Each side, in short, thinks the other is blind to reality: realists to moral evolution, idealists to human nature. The result is a dialogue of the deaf—a geopolitical tragedy of misunderstanding layered atop the physical one unfolding on the ground.

6. Toward a Synthesis: Moral Realism and Strategic Empathy

If neither paradigm suffices, the way forward is a synthesis—moral realism, or what might be called strategic empathy.

Recognize legitimate security interests on all sides. Russia's fear of NATO encirclement, though overstated, must be addressed through credible arms control and regional security frameworks.

Uphold moral boundaries without absolutism. Ukraine's sovereignty and survival are non-negotiable, but so is avoiding escalation that could devastate Europe.

Reform the liberal order to be inclusive, not triumphalist. Liberal democracy should inspire, not impose. A mature order must accommodate diversity without surrendering to authoritarian coercion.

Restore diplomacy as moral intelligence. Dialogue is not appeasement—it is a recognition that coexistence is the highest moral achievement in a plural world.

Accept the tragic structure of politics. As Reinhold Niebuhr warned, every power, even democratic, has a shadow. The task is not to abolish power politics but to humanize it through restraint, humility, and empathy.

7. Conclusion: From Cold War to Cold Wisdom

The Ukraine war is a crucible for the 21st century. It tests whether humanity can move beyond repeating the Cold War pattern of moral absolutism and strategic paranoia.

The realist must learn that security without justice breeds rebellion.

The idealist must learn that justice without security breeds collapse.

NATO expansion was the flashpoint—but it could become the seed of reform, if the alliance evolves from an instrument of containment to a guarantor of shared security.

The synthesis we need is not the victory of one worldview over the other but the reconciliation of power and principle.

Realism without idealism is blind; idealism without realism is brittle.

Only their union can yield what might finally be called cold wisdom—a peace grounded in both conscience and restraint.