1AC depictions of Russian behavior rely on single factor fallacy. Portraying Russia as inherently evil and outside of history serves an ideological function- it provides an alibi for proponents of NATO expansion and insulates US defense policy from criticism. Rejecting the 1AC doesn’t mean supporting Putin- that’s a false dichotomy

(Rajan Menon is the director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities and senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University ,https://bostonreview.net/articles/nato-and-the-road-not-taken/, 3-16)

After a prolonged buildup of forces, the total reaching 120,000 soldiers and National Guard troops, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided on February 24 to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The decision has revived a sharp-elbowed debate in the United States. One side consists mainly, though not exclusively, of those belonging to the realist school of thought. This side insists that Putin’s move can only be understood by taking account of the friction that NATO’s eastward expansion created between Russia and the United States. The other side, primarily comprised of neoconservatives and liberal internationalists, retorts that Putin’s protests against NATO’s enlargement are bogus. They contend that Putin’s animosity toward democracy—particularly the fear that its success in Ukraine would rub off on Russia and bring down the state that he has built since 2000—was the sole reason for the war. Both sides have succumbed to the single factor fallacy. Given the complexities of history and politics, why should we assume that Putin has only one aim, only one apprehension? In consequence their exchanges have been inconclusive, producing more heat than light. On occasion, there have been simpleminded portrayals of realism in newspaper columns and magazines, and worse, ugly ad hominem attacks. There has been little meaningful debate. Social media has enabled much sound and fury, proving about as productive as a dog’s attempt to chase its tail, albeit much less amusing. Opposition to Putin’s war against Ukraine must not prevent efforts to understand the circumstances that led to it. This distinction bears emphasizing because emotions about the war have run high and analyses of Russia’s actions have sometimes been conflated with endorsement—and in ways that have exposed realists, in particular, to attack. We must examine the larger context and a deeper view of the role of NATO, and think about the European security order we might hope for in the future. The Context The outrage in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reflects the widespread belief that it cannot reasonably be seen as a necessary war of self-defense against an aggressor. Indeed, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Russia’s assault on Ukraine is a preventive war: its justification was that a designated enemy might, at some point in the future, pose a serious threat. Preventative wars do more than just violate international humanitarian law; when powerful countries claim the right to invade other countries and topple their governments based on imagined scenarios that they declare unacceptable, they make the world an even more dangerous place. Whatever Putin’s apprehensions about NATO, they do not justify his unprovoked assault on Ukraine, to say nothing of the Russian army’s wanton attacks on civilians. Yet, even though Putin bears primary responsibility for the unjust war in Ukraine, NATO cannot accurately present itself as blameless. As the temperature rose in the runup to the war, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and President Joe Biden repeated the alliance’s statement at its 2008 Bucharest summit—that its doors were open to Ukraine (and Georgia)—stood, and that Putin’s demand that the country pledge to be a neutral state was not up for negotiation. In truth there was no chance that Ukraine would be admitted to NATO anytime soon: NATO’s April 1949 founding treaty requires a unanimous vote before new members can join, and everyone knew that Ukraine wouldn’t clear that bar. Ukraine was thus left to knock on the alliance’s door for nearly fourteen years. Still, the possibility that it might be allowed in was enough to stoke Russian fears, and that increasingly exposed Ukraine to danger. Meanwhile, NATO had no serious intention of guaranteeing Ukraine security through membership. In short, Kyiv was left in limbo. That (non-)decision was a mixture of cowardice and strategic irresponsibility, one for which Ukraine has paid a terrible price, while NATO has paid none at all. Seen this way, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s anger at the alliance, reflected in his speech at the February 2022 Munich Security Conference, becomes understandable. Realists are right to say that Putin’s complaints about NATO expansion have been blithely dismissed by the defenders of that policy as a red herring. Anne Applebaum, for instance, waves away Putin’s complaints as nothing more than camouflage for his real fear, namely that a successful democracy in Ukraine could inspire Russians and threaten the Russian state. Stephen Kotkin, a preeminent historian of Russia, reaches a similar conclusion through a different route. Expansionism and authoritarianism have always marked Russian history and are ineradicable, he says. So, NATO expansion cannot account for anything Russia says or does; indeed, it’s an essential counterweight to an innately aggressive country. Russia, in short, is portrayed as irredeemable. Its past explains its present and future actions. Ergo, Western policy toward it deserves no scrutiny. Putin certainly does preside over an authoritarian political system and abhors U.S. campaigns to spread democracy and promote “color revolutions” in countries near Russia. But Ukraine has been a democracy—i.e., a country with regular elections, numerous civic organizations, and a free press—since the end of 1991, when it became independent. (Some have likened it to a “failed state,” but that label brings to mind Somalia- or Libya-like anarchy, fragmentation, and pervasive violence, conditions that don’t accurately describe Ukraine, no matter the flaws of its democracy.) Putin made no effort to annex parts of Ukraine before 2014, not even during the overtly pro-Western 2004–2005 Orange Revolution. Therefore, his aversion to democracy does not, by itself, explain his objections to NATO’s enlargement. What’s more, Russian opposition to NATO enlargement long preceded Putin’s presidency. In fact, it dates back to the 1990s, when, under President Boris Yeltsin, Russia was cheered in the West as both a democracy and a partner. Besides, it is not just democracies that are entitled to worry about their security. Democratic states are obliged, if only in sheer self-interest, to take the security interests of non-democratic states into account. Were this not true, the protracted negotiations that have been held with North Korea, for example, would be inexplicable. The argument of Applebaum, and others of like mind—including Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, and Michael McFaul, President Obama’s ambassador to Russia—is self-serving. It absolves dogged proponents of NATO expansion like them from having to engage in any introspection: Putin bears all the blame for the deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations and NATO expansion has had nothing to do with it. Case closed. If only things were that simple and easily reducible to moral certitudes.