Putin’s goal is clear: to dismember Ukraine in whole or in part as a means of restoring Russia to great power status. The West has few opportunities left to prevent Moscow from achieving its end game.

Andrew Michta recently sat down with Poland’s Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak for an extended discussion of the key security challenges facing Europe in the wake of the war in Ukraine. The conversation quickly moved to the larger questions of NATO, EU, Russia, and Polish defense policy.

Ukraine 2014 isn’t the Balkans 1914. The true historical parallels of Putinism aren’t to be found in the the Great War, but from World War II and the Cold War. The war in Ukraine is about the fundamentals of the post-Cold War order in Europe.

The West is treating the fighting in eastern Ukraine as a sui generis crisis, rather than what it is: part of Putin’s larger strategy.

President Obama and Europe’s leaders must take this opportunity to explain to their publics that Ukraine’s choice of a pro-Western orientation deserves our support simply because it is in our interest.

With Europe AWOL, can the Obama Administration lead NATO on Russia policy?

President Obama sounded the right notes in Warsaw last week when he reassured Central Europeans of America’s commitment to NATO. Now he needs to back that commitment by shoring up Europe’s northeast.

When it comes to responding to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Europe is caught between corporate interests, regional security differences, and thoroughly postmodern publics. But the United States can still help clear up the allies’ strategic confusion.

A fog of uncertainty has descended on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but there are still a few things that we do know (as well as a few things that we know we don’t know).

It’s time to restore Transatlantic security relations to their central place in U.S. national security strategy.