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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).

Provocation Is Not Justification

Clarifying a Critical Distinction in the Ukraine War

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Introduction

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a recurring argument has surfaced in public debate: that Western actions—particularly NATO expansion, U.S. foreign policy, or Ukraine's geopolitical orientation—provoked Russia and therefore, implicitly or explicitly, justify its military response. This line of reasoning is common among realist analysts, contrarian commentators, and some critics of Western hegemony. While the concept of provocation deserves serious examination, conflating it with justification represents a fundamental analytical and moral error. This essay clarifies the distinction between provocation and justification, and explains why recognizing provocation does not absolve Russia of responsibility for its war of aggression.

What “Provocation” Means in International Relations

In international relations theory, provocation refers to actions that are perceived by a state as threatening its security, status, or sphere of influence, thereby increasing the likelihood of conflict. Provocations can be intentional or unintentional, rational or misguided, and may include:

• NATO's eastward expansion after the Cold War

• Western military aid and political support for Ukraine

• U.S. and EU promotion of liberal-democratic norms in post-Soviet states

• The erosion of Russia's post-imperial influence in Eastern Europe

To say that Russia felt provoked by these developments is, at a descriptive level, uncontroversial. Russian leaders have repeatedly articulated a worldview in which NATO expansion represents strategic encirclement and existential threat. Many Western policymakers underestimated or dismissed the intensity of these perceptions.

However, acknowledging provocation is an explanatory move, not a normative one. It addresses why a state might act, not whether it should act.

What “Justification” Entails—and Why It Is a Different Category

Justification operates in a different moral and legal register. To justify a war is to argue that it was:

• Necessary

• Proportionate

• Lawful (or at least morally defensible)

• A last resort

Under international law, the bar for justification is extremely high. The UN Charter permits the use of force only in cases of self-defense against an armed attack or when authorized by the UN Security Council. None of these conditions applied to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Moreover, justification requires more than grievance; it requires legitimacy. Historical resentments, security anxieties, or wounded national pride do not confer the right to wage war against a sovereign state—especially not a war involving territorial annexation, mass civilian casualties, and systematic violations of humanitarian law.

The Slippage from Explanation to Excuse

The most persistent error in public discourse is the slippage from explanation to excuse. This occurs when analysts move from statements such as:

“NATO expansion contributed to Russian insecurity”

to implied conclusions such as:

“Therefore, Russia's invasion was understandable, inevitable, or justified.”

This slippage often relies on rhetorical moves like:

• Treating great powers as if they operate under different moral rules

• Reducing agency by portraying Russia as “forced” to act

• Framing Ukraine as a mere pawn rather than a sovereign actor

• Equating Western hypocrisy with moral equivalence

Understanding Russia's motivations does not negate its agency. Russia was not compelled to invade Ukraine; it chose to do so among many alternatives, including diplomacy, arms control negotiations, or acceptance of Ukraine's sovereign choices.

Ukraine's Agency and the Erasure Problem

A further problem with justification-by-provocation narratives is that they routinely erase Ukrainian agency. Ukraine is treated not as a political community with its own history, aspirations, and rights, but as a buffer zone, chessboard square, or geopolitical irritant.

This perspective implicitly accepts a 19th-century logic of spheres of influence, where smaller nations exist at the pleasure of larger ones. Yet the very post-1945 international order that critics often invoke—however imperfectly applied—rests on the rejection of this logic.

Provocation arguments become morally suspect when they imply that Ukraine should have limited its sovereignty to avoid angering its neighbor.

Moral Asymmetry and Responsibility

One can simultaneously hold that:

• Western policy toward Russia was often arrogant, dismissive, or strategically short-sighted

• NATO expansion increased tensions and contributed to Russian resentment

• Russia nonetheless bears full responsibility for launching a war of aggression

These positions are not contradictory. Moral responsibility attaches to actions, not feelings. A state may feel threatened without being threatened; it may feel humiliated without being wronged; it may perceive loss without suffering injustice. War is not justified by insecurity alone—otherwise any powerful state could claim license to dominate weaker neighbors preemptively.

Conclusion: Clarity Without Capitulation

The distinction between provocation and justification is not a semantic quibble; it is essential for ethical clarity and political responsibility. Confusing the two undermines international law, normalizes aggression, and erodes the moral standing of small states in a world already tilted toward power politics.

A sober analysis of the Ukraine war should acknowledge Western misjudgments and geopolitical dynamics without collapsing into apologetics for imperial violence. Explanation is not exoneration. Understanding why Russia acted does not entail accepting that it was right to do so. In the end, the Ukraine war is not justified by what preceded it—because nothing justifies the deliberate invasion, subjugation, and attempted erasure of a sovereign nation.

Addendum: Review of Provoked by Scott Horton

Below is a critical evaluation of Scott Horton's Provoked, written to engage seriously with the book's thesis while clearly delineating its analytical limits. It is suitable as a rebuttal to the “800 pages proves NATO provoked Putin” claim.

Provoked: A Serious Indictment with a Fatal Overreach

Scott Horton's Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine is an impressive work by any formal measure. It is long, densely footnoted, and clearly the product of years of archival reading and libertarian skepticism toward American power. Horton's central claim—that U.S. and NATO policies after the Cold War contributed significantly to deteriorating relations with Russia—is not fringe. Versions of it have been advanced by George Kennan, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and other realist scholars.

However, the book's ambition exceeds its explanatory reach. While Provoked succeeds as a critique of Western policy failures, it fails as a convincing explanation—or justification—of Russia's war against Ukraine. Its core weakness lies in how it handles causality, agency, and moral responsibility.

1. Critique of Western policy ≠ explanation of Russian war

Horton documents, in exhaustive detail, the ways in which:

• NATO expanded eastward despite Russian objections,

• U.S. policymakers dismissed Russian security concerns,

• post-Cold War diplomacy often operated from a position of triumphalism.

These are real historical facts. But the book repeatedly slides from contribution to causation—from “Western policies worsened relations” to “Western policies produced the war.”

This is a crucial distinction. States are not billiard balls. They interpret pressures, choose responses, and weigh alternatives. Horton largely bypasses this decision-making layer. Russia appears less as an actor making contingent choices and more as a reactive organism pushed inexorably toward invasion.

That framing quietly evacuates responsibility.

2. The problem of Ukrainian erasure

Perhaps the book's most consequential omission is its treatment of Ukraine itself. Ukraine functions mainly as:

• a geopolitical buffer,

• a NATO chess square,

• a provocation vector.

What is largely missing is sustained engagement with Ukrainian political agency: elections, civil society, corruption backlash, Maidan, or the popular rejection of Russian tutelage. NATO did not “impose” itself on Ukraine; Ukraine repeatedly sought Western alignment after experiencing Russian coercion.

By centering great-power interaction while marginalizing Ukrainian choice, Provoked reproduces the very imperial logic it claims to diagnose: small states matter only insofar as they irritate larger ones.

3. Selective realism

Horton writes from a realist tradition, but it is a selective realism. He treats NATO expansion as an existential threat to Russia, yet treats Ukraine's security concerns as secondary or derivative. The same realist logic—states seeking survival—should apply symmetrically.

If Russia is entitled to security buffers, why is Ukraine not entitled to security guarantees? Horton never resolves this asymmetry; he simply assumes it.

4. International law as background noise

Another weakness is Horton's treatment of international law. He emphasizes Western violations—often correctly—but treats Russian violations as predictable outcomes rather than categorical breaches. The annexation of Crimea, the recognition of breakaway regions, and the full-scale invasion of 2022 are framed as escalatory steps within a provoked dynamic, not as decisive legal ruptures.

This framing implicitly demotes law from norm to inconvenience. Yet without law, “security concerns” become infinitely elastic—and any invasion can be rationalized retrospectively.

5. The determinism problem

At its deepest level, Provoked suffers from determinism bias. Once NATO expansion is identified as the master cause, everything else flows mechanically from it. This obscures:

• alternative Russian strategies (neutral Ukraine, diplomacy, economic integration),

• internal Russian political incentives (authoritarian consolidation, regime legitimacy),

• ideological factors (civilizational narratives, denial of Ukrainian nationhood).

Putin's own rhetoric—explicitly rejecting Ukrainian sovereignty—is difficult to square with Horton's portrayal of Russia as merely reacting to NATO maps.

6. Why the book persuades—and why it ultimately fails

Provoked is persuasive because it satisfies a powerful moral appetite: the desire to puncture Western self-righteousness. It offers Western critics a way to oppose the war without confronting the uncomfortable reality that Russia is waging an imperial war of choice.

But explanation becomes apology when it systematically minimizes agency on one side while magnifying it on the other.

Conclusion: Valuable critique, flawed conclusion

Provoked should be read—not as a definitive account of why the war happened, but as a forensic indictment of Western complacency and strategic blindness. Its documentation of NATO hubris is important. Its claim that this hubris caused the war is not.

The tragedy of Ukraine cannot be reduced to NATO expansion without erasing the choices of Ukrainians and the decisions of the Kremlin. A serious analysis must hold multiple truths simultaneously:

• Western policy was often arrogant and destabilizing.

• Russia faced real security anxieties.

• Ukraine is a sovereign actor with legitimate aspirations.

• The invasion was a conscious, avoidable choice.

Provoked illuminates the first two truths while systematically dimming the latter two. That imbalance is not accidental—it is the book's central limitation.

If the critic's argument is that 800 pages of documentation absolve Russia of responsibility, then the book has been misread—or overused. Length does not convert critique into causation, and footnotes do not substitute for moral and analytical balance.