"The war in Ukraine is the agonizing outcome of Putin’s outrageous response to two errors on NATO’s part. The first of these was the alliance’s declaration, in 2008, that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join it. (In Ukraine’s case, a scheme for the country’s Finlandization would have been better, exchanging its neutrality in relations between Moscow and the West for the country’s independence and internal democracy.) Once the goal of NATO membership was declared, however, the second mistake was not accomplishing it right away and thus immediately establishing NATO’s deterrent guarantee. Given Putin’s view of NATO enlargement as a threat to Russia, this period of ambiguity created an incentive—and an opportunity—for him to carry out a preventive war."