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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
As US-Russian relations scrape the depths of cold-war antagonism, the promise of partnership that beguiled American administrations during the first post-Soviet decades increasingly appears to have been false from the start. Why did American leaders persist in pursuing it? Was there another path that would have produced more constructive relations or better prepared Washington to face the challenge Russia poses today?
With a practitioner's eye honed during decades of work on Russian affairs, Thomas Graham deftly traces the evolution of opposing ideas of national purpose that created an inherent tension in relations. Getting Russia Right identifies the blind spots that prevented Washington from seeing Russia as it really is and crafting a policy to advance American interests without provoking an aggressive Russian response. Distilling the Putin factor to reveal the contours of the Russia challenge facing the United States whenever he departs the scene, Graham lays out a compelling way to deal with it so that the United States can continue to advance its interests in a rapidly changing world.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Endorsement
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
No Cold War Redux but Dangers Abound
The Plan of the Book
Understanding Russia in its Own Terms
Seeking the Enduring in the Temporal Flux
Notes
1. The Foundations of America’s Russia Policy
Anchoring Russia
Grand Strategy: Integration and Partnership
Why Integration?
The Hedge
From Integration to Containment and Beyond
Unanswered Questions
Notes
2. The Clash of Worldviews
Geography, Climate, and Geopolitics
Russian Messianism v. Realpolitik
American Exceptionalism and Ambition
Russia’s Ambitions Limited
The Continuing Clash of Expansionary Missions
Notes
3. The Paradox of Russian Power
The Complex Challenge of Assessment
Upper Volta with Nukes?
The Future of Russian Power
Implications for the United States
Notes
4. Russian National Interests and Grand Strategy
The Importance of the State
Making Russia a Great Power Again
The Kremlin’s World in 2012
The Shifting Contours of Grand Strategy
The Pivot
Will Russia Succeed?
Notes
5. The Putin Factor
The Limits of Putin’s Power
The Importance of Ukraine
Russian–Ukrainian Relations in the Post-Soviet Era
The Run-Up to the War
Putin Decides
The Future
Notes
6. Washington’s Blind Spots and Missteps
Contingency and Purpose
Integration Fails: Misconceptions and Missteps
Imagination Fails: Hedging the Way to Failure
Strategic Partnership a Non-Starter
Russia Policy in the Docket
Implications for Containment
Notes
7. What is to be Done?
The Foundations of Policy
The Way Forward
The Critical Issues
Ukraine in the Strategic Context
Getting Russia Right
Notes
Epilogue
Clash of Civilizations
Messianic Detour
Putin’s War Becomes Russia’s
The Reality of Separateness
Dealing with Russia as It Is and Will Be
Strategic Patience
Notes
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Endorsement
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
Begin Reading
Epilogue
Index
End User License Agreement
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The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. Founded in 1921, CFR carries out its mission by maintaining a diverse membership, with special programs to promote interest and develop expertise in the next generation of foreign policy leaders; convening meetings at its headquarters in New York and in Washington, DC, and other cities where senior government officials, members of Congress, global leaders, and prominent thinkers come together with CFR members to discuss and debate major international issues; supporting a Studies Program that fosters independent research, enabling CFR scholars to produce articles, reports, and books and hold roundtables that analyze foreign policy issues and make concrete policy recommendations; publishing Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy; sponsoring Independent Task Forces that produce reports with both findings and policy prescriptions on the most important foreign policy topics; and providing up-to-date information and analysis about world events and American foreign policy on its website, www.cfr.org.
The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional positions on policy issues and has no affiliation with the U.S. government. All views expressed in its publications and on its website are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.
GETTING RUSSIA RIGHT
A Council on Foreign Relations Book
Thomas Graham
polity
Copyright © Thomas Graham 2023
The right of Thomas Graham to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2023 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5690-8
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022948488
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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Dedication
For Ro
Acknowledgments
This book would never have been written if not for Louise Knight, Publisher for Politics and International Relations at Polity Press. She approached me in March 2022, shortly after Russia had launched its brutal assault on Ukraine, to gauge my interest in writing a short book to explain what the West got wrong about Russia. I needed little persuasion. I was working on a much longer history of US–Russian relations, but Louise offered me an opportunity to articulate my ideas in a more concentrated form and to release them into the public debate at a time when people would be inclined to pay attention. Since then, it has been a pleasure to work with her and her colleague and editorial assistant Inès Boxman, from the initial drafts to the final book. Two anonymous reviewers engaged by Polity provided trenchant critiques of the manuscript, which helped me refine my argument and its presentation.
The Council on Foreign Relations has been my professional home while I worked on this book. Richard Haass, the president, James Lindsay, the Director of Studies, and Shannon O’Neil, the Deputy Director of Studies, all read the entire manuscript and offered invaluable advice on how to improve it. My research associate, Anya Konstantinovsky, provided much appreciated research support and editorial assistance. Samuel Farbman and Julian Gonzales-Poirier, while interning at the Council, verified dates for events cited in the text and saved me from some embarrassing errors. Drew Guff and the Friedman Family Foundation Strategic Innovation Fund offered generous support for my research program at the Council, for which I am deeply grateful.
In addition, while I was writing this book, I was a research scholar and lecturer in the Program on Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies of the MacMillan Center at Yale University. I want to thank the Center’s director, Steven Wilkinson, for the appointment, which enabled me to test drive many of my ideas with dozens of bright and demanding graduate and undergraduate students in seminars on US–Russian relations since the end of the Cold War. Their questions and comments made for a better book.
My ideas about Russia and US–Russian relations have evolved over the past thirty-five years over hundreds of conversations with Americans, Europeans, and Russians too numerous to mention, many of whom have become valued friends. Some deserve special recognition. Bob Otto read the entire manuscript – more than once – and shared numerous insights and counter arguments that challenged me to sharpen my own. Peter Charow, Ivan Kurilla, Bob Legvold, Rajan Menon, Ivan Safranchuk, and Ray Smith reviewed one or more chapters. I am grateful for their probing questions and comments.
I also want to thank the Polis Non-Profit Partnership for permission to freely re-use parts of my article “Russia and the USA on the World Stage,” originally published in Russian translation in Polis, issues 1–3, 2022. The article served as the basis for Chapter 2.
I am of course solely responsible for the views expressed in this book and the perhaps naive hope that, if the United States gets Russia right, constructive relations are possible in the future, despite the disappointments of the past and the horrors of the present.
Preface
Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was a day of reckoning – for Russia, Ukraine, and the West, to be sure, but also at a less exalted level for all Russia experts, especially those like me who, up to the last moment, believed Russian President Vladimir Putin would take a less fateful route. Diplomatic talks had not run their course. A smallscale intervention, as in 2014, could have underscored his seriousness of purpose, tested Ukrainian and Western resolve, and helped assess the risks of further military action. Such steps seemed to be more in line with the pragmatic approach Putin had taken to most issues since he assumed power a generation ago. Alas, he decided to roll the dice.
Why did so many experts get it wrong? Were their assumptions about Putin and Russia fatally flawed, or did they overlook a significant event that set Russia on an unlikely path? Beyond those immediate concerns loomed the larger question of how Russia and the United States had arrived at this point some thirty years after the Cold War’s end, which had given birth to grand visions of enduring US–Russian partnership in building a more peaceful, secure, and prosperous world.
That question was of particular salience for someone like me who had been studying Russia for most of his life – the Sputnik moment in 1957 that convinced the United States to radically elevate its response to the Soviet challenge also sparked my life-long fascination with Russia. Finding the answer was a matter of professional pride for someone whose career as a Russia expert began during the dying days of the Cold War.
I entered US government service in 1983 and spent twenty years working on Soviet and then Russian affairs at the American Embassy in Moscow, in the Departments of State and Defense, and on the National Security Council staff, including three years as the senior director for Russia. Since I left government in February 2007, I have continued to work on Russian matters, as a consultant, teacher, and researcher. For the last 35 years I have either lived in Moscow or traveled to Russia regularly for meetings with senior Russian government officials, businesspeople, media representatives, experts, students, and others.
My positions and travels have provided various perches from which to observe the evolution of US–Russian relations since the last years of the Cold War. During the George W. Bush administration I was directly involved in the formulation of US Russia policy, although I was never more than a second-tier player, who will not merit even a footnote in the history books.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it was time to take a critical look at the post-Cold War history of US–Russian relations and the quality of US policymaking, with the hope that the lessons learned would help the United States better deal with the Russia challenge in the future. Thus, this book.
Despite my government service, this book is not a brief in defense of any administration’s policy. To the contrary, I turn a critical eye to all post-Cold War administrations, with a focus more on the shortcomings than the successes. Nor is this book a lament that administrations did not take my advice on the overall approach to Russia or on specific matters. Nowhere do I argue that relations would have turned out better if senior officials had done so. I have suffered from my own share of misperceptions, blind spots, and illusions, which become all the more stark in retrospect. Rather, my goal throughout has been to understand what I have witnessed during the past three to four decades, with a particular focus on US policy.
Policy is always made in a situation of imperfect knowledge. As a rule, policymakers are compelled to act before they have a full understanding of the issue at hand. This is always the case during a crisis. To a lesser extent, it is true of strategic planning, as well – policymakers have blind spots; they lack critical information about the target country of the policymaking. No outsider can fully appreciate the often subterranean forces that shape a country’s destiny – and, truth be told, few natives do, although their intuition is usually more acute. This is the natural state of things; the policymaker has no reason to complain.
As Henry Kissinger has noted, there is an inverse relationship between influence and certainty. The policymaker often has the greatest opportunity to shape events when much is uncertain. Waiting for more information can diminish influence. This is not a plea for hasty judgments and actions. It is rather to note that the art of statesmanship requires a keen sense for the moment when the statesman has sufficient knowledge to act decisively, and when waiting for its further accumulation begins to erode his influence.
That intuition comes from experience and the study of history. It requires distilling out of a complex situation the essence that enables purposeful action. In this sense, essentialism – so suspect in academic circles – is a necessary aspect of policymaking. Complexity paralyzes the will, which is one reason why few academics adjust well to the policy world. Policymakers need to simplify reality to a manageable degree, and they necessarily operate on the basis of what they consider to be a few essential truths about world affairs, the country they serve, and the foreign lands they deal with. As Bismarck eloquently put it, “The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.” Success depends on whether he hears those footsteps clearly through the noise of a turbulent world.
Critics will object that I have painted with too broad a brush in the following pages. That I have left out nuance. This is indeed the case. But my goal was not to provide an exhaustive examination of US policy, Russian national interests, and US–Russian relations. It was to distill the few key ideas that have shaped policy and the critical forces that have driven events, to provide a framework for understanding Russia, which it is hoped will help future policymakers advance US interests in relations with that country. Cold War containment, widely praised as an historic triumph, the critics should remember, was grounded in a few essential truths about Russia and the United States, first articulated by the American diplomat George F. Kennan in his Long Telegram from the Embassy in Moscow to the Department of State in 1946.
In the end, policymaking is always haunted by regrets. In retrospect, policymakers could always have done better, if they had known then what they know now. But “the owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk,” the great German philosopher Hegel observed. Understanding comes only when it is too late to act. The best one can do is to pass that belated understanding on to the next generation of policymakers in the hope that they will know how to use it.
Introduction
The United States and Russia are once again adversaries. This is not where either country wanted to be some thirty years ago at the end of the Cold War. Back then, both countries harbored visions of partnership, although they sought it for different reasons. The United States hoped to integrate Russia into the Euro-Atlantic Community of free-market democracies. That would seal the American victory in the Cold War and vindicate its system, much as the emergence of liberal democracy in Germany and Japan under American tutelage had after their defeats in the Second World War. Russia, meanwhile, sought to use partnership to restore its status as the second leading global power, if not exactly the other superpower. Whether it was democratic or authoritarian was of little intrinsic interest as long as it was powerful. So the destinations were distant from one another, and yet both Washington and Moscow believed the path to their respective goals lay through partnership.
After a quarter century of failed efforts to build a lasting partnership, followed by several years of mounting tensions, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, crystalized a profound alienation between Russia and the United States. Relations today are scraping the depths of Cold War antagonisms. Indeed, they have probably not been so hostile since 1983, the darkest year of the second half of the Cold War. Then President Ronald Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and launched his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or Star Wars as it was quickly dubbed), which questioned the principles that undergirded strategic stability, much to Moscow’s alarm. The Soviets shot down a South Korean commercial airliner in the Far East, killing all on board. When the United States protested in the strongest terms, Moscow broke off arms control negotiations. On at least two occasions in the Fall, the world came close to nuclear war, once because of a technical glitch in the Soviet early warning system, then because the Soviet leaders feared that a regular NATO nuclear-launch exercise was merely cover for a decapitating strike against the Soviet Union.
No Cold War Redux but Dangers Abound
Against this background, it is easy to see the current situation as Cold War 2.0 and to turn to that era for insight into the current US–Russian dynamic and guidance on the appropriate response. That the United States won the original Cold War makes the analogy all the more appealing to policymakers, experts, and the public alike. But the Cold War frame obscures as much as it illuminates, and it favors policies that are out of sync with current circumstances – containment, for example, cannot describe an adequate policy in a multipolar, interconnected world when key countries, notably China and India, are unwilling to follow the US lead.
The original Cold War was of different dimensions. It was a global existential struggle between the world’s two superpowers, which espoused diametrically opposed views of the state, society, and individual. Each ultimately built nuclear arsenals capable of devastating its rival several times over. Each headed its own bloc, with major allies or satellites in Europe and East Asia. Soviet–American relations were the central axis of global politics around which other countries oriented their foreign policies. Not surprisingly in this light, the Soviet Union lay at the core of American foreign policy – all major foreign-policy challenges were assessed through the prism of Soviet–American relations.
Nothing close to those conditions obtains today. US–Russian rivalry is not truly global in scope – it is focused on Europe. It is not existential, except in the nuclear realm; the two countries do not espouse diametrically opposed worldviews, despite President Joseph Biden’s defining the current era as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, or President Vladimir Putin’s claiming to be the champion of traditional Christian values against Western decadence. A vast asymmetry in power robs the relationship of the centrality it once enjoyed in world affairs and on the American foreign-policy agenda. China now occupies the place the Soviet Union once did in Washington’s imagination as the sole peer strategic competitor for global leadership. Russia is dismissed as an “immediate and persistent threat.” It is hard to conduct a cold war against a country you do not respect or fear.
To be sure, as Robert Legvold, a leading Russia watcher, argues, the current US–Russian confrontation bears attributes of the Cold War. As during that earlier period, each side regards the confrontation as the exclusive fault of the other side. Since the battle is over conflicting purposes, neither side is looking for common ground and each believes that the contest can only end with radical change on the other side, or its collapse. Moreover, agreements do not have a positive effect on other areas of relations, while conflict tends to spread poison elsewhere.1 The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, released in October 2022, exhibits all those attributes in its discussion of Russia. It makes clear that Russia spurned American offers of more constructive relations and holds out little hope for improvement as long as Putin is in power.2
Yet the Biden administration – rightly – refuses to talk of a cold war, even if its policy of hard-edged containment draws inspiration from that earlier time. It prefers to speak of great-power competition, as did the Trump administration previously. But the US–Russian rivalry is more than just normal great-power competition, largely because of the way in which the United States deals with major competitors. In general, it does not recognize geopolitical rivalry that is not grounded in diverging systems of values. The Ukraine conflict provides an apt illustration. For the Russian elite, it is fundamentally geopolitical – at its core lies the question of Russia’s security and power – even if Putin entertains some curious ideas about making Russia whole again by reabsorbing Ukraine. Washington, however, rejects the security dimension out of hand, insisting that neither Ukraine nor NATO could be reasonably seen as threatening Russia. Rather, it frames the conflict as a manifestation of aggressive Russian imperialism, grounded in its autocratic political system. Moscow believes that the United States is out to crush it because it cannot abide Russian power, while Washington is seeking to contain what it sees as Russia’s malign ideas and impulses by eroding its power. Moscow’s geopolitical contest is ultimately an ideological one for Washington. There is no common ground between those two positions, no room for compromise.
To say that the United States and Russia are not engaged in a new cold war does not mean that the situation is not dangerous or without far-reaching consequences. Russia may be much weaker than the Soviet Union was – and its unexpectedly dismal performance in the initial months of the Ukraine conflict only underscores that point – but it still has considerable power. Its nuclear arsenal is the world’s largest; it can still destroy the United States as a functioning society in as little as thirty minutes. It has the largest reserves of fossil fuels, which will power the world for years to come, even as the West and others press ahead in the development of green technologies. Its location in the heart of Eurasia enables it to project power and pathologies into the world’s major strategic regions outside of North America.
The risk of nuclear war once again focuses minds in Washington as Moscow rattles its nuclear saber in the face of deteriorating battlefield conditions in Ukraine. Global energy markets are in the midst of dramatic change as Europe seeks to end its excessive reliance on Russia and accelerates its move to renewables, while the United States steps in, in hopes of becoming a major supplier of both gas and oil to European markets. Sweden and Finland, with Washington’s encouragement, have broken with their longstanding tradition of neutrality to join NATO, as concerns about Russian aggression mount. US policy is driving Russia into an even closer embrace of China. The US-led rules-based world order is breaking under the strain of a shifting strategic landscape. No new global equilibrium is apparent on the horizon. The world is a dangerous place, and it is so in part because of the breakdown in US–Russian relations.
The Plan of the Book
How did we get to this point? Where do we go from here? Those are the two questions that animate this book. The subject is US–Russian relations since the end of the Cold War. This book is not a history. Rather, it is a critique of America’s post-Cold War Russia policy through six administrations, beginning with George H.W. Bush’s and ending with Joseph Biden’s, with a particular focus on the grand strategy of integrating Russia into the West, which began in the dying days of the Cold War and ended abruptly in March 2014, when Putin’s Russia seized and annexed Crimea illegally. The book ends with an appeal to think about relations beyond the current conflict in Ukraine, to consider ways in which the United States could construct relations with Russia to best advance its interests long term, as a period of historic change gives rise to a new world order.
The book makes two core claims: That, to defend its long-term strategic interests, the United States must treat Russia as a great power, which entails, as all great-power relationships do, making trade-offs and compromises to manage the inevitable competition responsibly, and that the integration model, the premise that Russia could join the West, ultimately failed because it was, and remains, incompatible with the deeply held national aspirations and policy imperatives of both the United States and Russia.
To expand slightly, the initial American post-Cold War goal of integrating Russia into the Euro-Atlantic Community as a free-market democracy and building an enduring partnership was doomed from the start. Clashing worldviews and national missions, grounded in geography, geopolitical circumstances, and historical experience, which could never be fully reconciled, inevitably injected a lasting element of tension in relations, which was exacerbated by US actions and Russian reactions. But there was nothing foreordained about the depths of antagonism that divide the two countries today. There was another pathway forward, toward, if not strategic partnership, then more constructive relations of mutual benefit, which would have required the United States to respect Russia as a great power. Taking it would have, however, required greater clarity of vision, imagination, and political will than successive American administrations could muster at the time.
Now Russia’s unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine has radically altered the context of US–Russian relations, as have the dramatic geopolitical, technological, and other changes underway across the globe. Looking forward, the United States faces a two-fold challenge: Defeating the Russian assault on the European order in the short term, while preparing the ground for relations that will enable the United States to interact with Russia as a major pole of power in the emerging polycentric world, to construct and sustain a long-term complex global equilibrium and to deal with transnational threats.
The argument unfolds across seven chapters. Chapter 1 begins with an examination of the foundations of US–Russia policy. Why did the United States decide to focus on Russia’s integration at the end of the Cold War? Why did it believe that a country with a long autocratic tradition could successfully make a transition to free-market democracy in a relatively short historical period? Why did it believe that a country that prided itself on being a great power would willingly become a junior partner in supporting a US-led world order? How did it hedge against the failure of its preferred course? And did the hedges ironically increase the risk of failure? The answers are found in the euphoria that swept over the American political class after the triumph in the Cold War, which was a vindication of the American system and a confirmation of its universal applicability.
An historical exegesis follows in Chapter 2 to identify the sources of the inherent tension in US–Russian relations that has repeatedly bedeviled efforts to build an enduring partnership. In brief, geography and geopolitical setting shaped over time competing American and Russian concepts of security requirements and national purpose. Russia expanded in search of security on a vast territory with few formidable physical barriers against foreign invasion; the United States expanded from its most secure position in North America to spread its “universal” values and nourish its prosperity. Russia was determined to maintain its own unique identity as a great power; the United States hoped to transform the world in its image. Those opposing goals inevitably produced friction as these two expansionary powers came into ever more frequent contact on the Eurasian supercontinent from the end of the nineteenth century onwards.
Chapter 3 explores the question of Russian power. It lays out the reasons why the United States has considered Russia to be a country in decline, destined to lose its status as a great power, if it had not already done so, and to play an ever lesser role in world affairs. That attitude has led American administrations to conclude that they need not pay much heed to Russian interests. The chapter then assesses the state of Russian power today with a focus on the economic, technological, demographic, and political challenges the country faces in coming years as it seeks to sustain itself as a world power. The paradoxical conclusion is that even a Russia in decline will long retain the capacity to act as a major power, to advance or thwart American interests in critical areas, and, therefore, remains a country that Washington cannot afford to ignore.
Two chapters follow on Russia’s views of its national interests and foreign-policy challenges. Chapter 4 identifies the preservation of the state and Russia as a great power, as the historically grounded core national interest. It traces the steps Russia has taken at home and abroad since the end of the Cold War to validate its great-power status. It highlights the challenges posed by Russia’s geopolitical position and analyzes the changing ways in which Russia has sought to meet them. In particular, it looks at the developments that led the Kremlin to abandon the effort to build a partnership with the United States in favor of seeking strategic alignment with China, as the best way to bolster its claim to be a great power.
Chapter 5 is devoted to the Ukraine crisis, providing a brief overview of the historical background that has convinced Russia of the importance of Ukraine to Russian identity and security as a leading power. It also takes a close look at Putin’s own views and the calculations that led him to launch a massive invasion of Ukraine. The argument is that, while any Russian ruler would have been alarmed by developments in and around Ukraine, few would have run the risk of war at this time, as Putin has. In short, it is more Putin’s war than Russia’s. That is an important conclusion that should affect the way the United States approaches the war in Ukraine and long-term relations with Russia.
Chapters 1 to 5 lay the groundwork for assessing the quality of US Russia policy since the end of the Cold War in Chapter 6. It shows why certain US policies discredited the very idea of integration in Russian eyes and how a lack of imagination led the United States to hedge against Russia’s failure to integrate in ways that increased the likelihood of failure. Indeed, the chapter concludes that excessively vigorous hedging against the reassertion of Russian influence in the former Soviet space caused relations to break down in 2014, when Putin pushed back by seizing Crimea and destabilizing eastern Ukraine. Thereafter, however, it was not US policy but Putin’s aggressive conduct, culminating in the massive invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that produced the complete rupture that characterizes relations today.
As for lessons learned, Chapter 6 focuses on those that arise from Russia’s insistence that it is, and must be respected as, a great power: it will reject any interference in its domestic affairs; it will always be tough in negotiations, presenting its own unique views on global issues; and it will be tenacious in the defense of its interests in the former Soviet space, where it views its preeminence as critical to its security and prosperity. It also underscores the importance of strategic patience, of managing relations with Russia so as to advance American interests incrementally over time.
The final Chapter 7 deals with the inevitable question: What is to be done? On the basis of an analysis of global trends and Russian developments, as well as the lessons of the past thirty years, it underscores why the United States benefits from a Russia strong enough to play a major role in world affairs, with a focus on three critical issues – strategic stability, European security, and China. It ends with a proposal on how to approach the conflict in Ukraine that supports the long-term strategy, while building toward an enduring, and just, settlement.
Understanding Russia in its Own Terms
To get Russia policy right it is critical that the United States has a clear understanding of that country, of its fears and ambitions. This is not an easy task. Russian writers have reveled in the mystery of their country, its ability to play a large role in human affairs, despite the seemingly debilitating contradictions of Russian life – the opulence of the court and the grinding poverty elsewhere, economic backwardness and spectacular military victories, harsh external conditions and extraordinary resilience. The nineteenth-century Russian poet, Fedor Tyutchev, avowed that Russia defied reason; one had no choice but to “believe in Russia,” whatever that might mean. Churchill famously called Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
Washington policymakers cannot, however, avoid using reason to penetrate the riddle of Russia. The typical way of doing that in the West has been to seek answers to the question of why Russia has not become Western. That issue was in the forefront as the United States sought to bring Russia into the Western world. The answer is generally found in what Russia is lacking. Western observers are quick to point out that it missed the Renaissance, Reformation, and Roman Law; its engagement with the Enlightenment was superficial. Western ideas and values therefore had to be imported into Russia and used to re-form the character of basic Russian political and economic institutions and habits to Western standards.
A more fruitful approach, however, is to ask why Russia became what it is, as the historian Edward Keenan suggests in his seminal work on Russian political culture. How did a great empire emerge in such adverse climatic and geopolitical conditions? How did a small number of men exercise control over such a vast territory? How did they manage to tax a population that was sparsely settled and remote? How did they mobilize the resources of far-flung territories for their own purposes?3 Such an approach highlights Russia’s successes more than its shortcomings. Given the prevailing view in the United States that Russia is in decline, it is worth remembering that Russia has been among the most successful countries in world history, at least in terms of what it values, geopolitical advance and international sway. Pride in that success, and commitment to the values and institutions that produced it, has meant that there will always be tremendous resistance to Western attempts to re-form Russia.
The latter approach is the one I have taken in the following pages, as I seek to explain why Russia has conducted itself the way it has in the post-Soviet period. It is an effort to understand Russia on its own terms, to see the world as Russian leaders do, to uncover the forces and considerations that have driven decision-making, to engage in what is called “strategic empathy,” without casting moral judgments.
This effort to understand Russia should not be taken as a justification for Russia’s actions during the past thirty years, and certainly not its invasion of Ukraine. Knowing how that country figures in Russia’s worldview, or what considerations drove Putin’s decision to invade, is essential if Washington is to formulate a response that advances American interests. But it in no way justifies the invasion or the brutality with which Russia has prosecuted the war. That conduct has fueled moral outrage in the West, and rightly so. But moral outrage makes for poor policy, even if morality should always have a place in policymaking.
Seeking the Enduring in the Temporal Flux
There are obvious perils in writing a book about US–Russian relations while a war is raging, which Putin defines as a proxy war with the “collective West,” led by the United States. The drafting began shortly after Russia’s invasion in February 2022; the final chapter was drafted nine months later, shortly after Ukraine regained Kherson, the only provincial center that Russia had seized during the war. At that time, Western commentators were in thrall of an impressive Ukrainian counteroffensive that had driven Russian forces out of Kharkiv and Kherson, regaining over half the territory Russia had seized during the campaign. Russian forces were widely depicted as inadequately trained and provisioned and utterly demoralized. Many pundits predicted a Russian defeat, Putin’s demise, and dire consequences for the fate of Russia itself, up to and including its collapse. Nevertheless, most Western governments operated on the assumption that Ukraine and Russia were engaged in a war of attrition that could last for months, if not years.
Much will have probably changed by the time this book is published. The war could have taken a decisive turn in favor of Russia or Ukraine. It could have spread beyond Ukraine into Eastern Europe, sparking a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia. A nuclear weapon could have been used in anger. Putin could have left or been removed from power. Political disarray could have engulfed Europe as it deals with ever more onerous socio-economic challenges arising from the war – inflation, energy crises, refugees, and so on. If the situation changes radically, what will be the value of this book?
I have tried to situate US–Russian relations in the broad historical sweep. Putin, of course, figures large in the discussion of Russian national interests and the path to war in Ukraine. It could not be otherwise. He came to power after a decade of systemic crisis and national humiliation, and dominated Russian politics for the next twenty-plus years, as Russia regained some of its lost stature and played an active role in world affairs.
But this book is not about Putin. It is about Russia – about the geopolitical conditions and historical experience that have shaped rulers’ worldview, about the nature of the political system that constrains what a ruler, even Putin, can do – and American relations with that country. And the argument is that Putin’s Russia is only the current concrete manifestation of a larger Russia problem that will test American policymakers well into the future, even if his recent messianic impulses strain Russia’s long tradition of realpolitik in foreign policy. The evolution of the conflict in and around Ukraine will shape the specific challenges the United States faces in the years ahead, but it will not alter the basic contours. That, at least, is the premise on which this book rests. But, as the Russians like to say in the midst of uncertainty, time will tell.
Notes
1.
Robert Legvold,
Return to Cold War
(London, United Kingdom: Polity, 2016), 28–31.
2.
White House,
National Security Strategy of the United States of America
(Washington, DC: The White House, October 2022), 25,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf
.
3.
Edward L. Keenan, “Muscovite Political Folkways,”
Russian Review
45, no. 2 (April 1986): 118–19.
1The Foundations of America’s Russia Policy
On January 28, 1992, before a joint session of Congress, President George H.W. Bush triumphantly declared victory in the Cold War. “A world once divided into two armed camps,” he said, “now recognizes one sole and preeminent power, the United States of America.” And it trusted that power to do “what’s right.”1
Earlier, the president had avoided any note of jubilation, concerned that he might alienate or undermine the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose actions had greatly benefited American interests. Gorbachev had refused to use force to crush the anti-communist, anti-Soviet revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989; he had pursued major arms control agreements with the United States; he had wound down Soviet involvement in regional conflicts across what was then known as the Third World of developing nations. And he had been slowly, if haphazardly, dismantling the Soviet totalitarian system in favor of a more open, democratic political system and a market-based economy.
But Gorbachev was no longer the Soviet leader. By the end of December, the Soviet Union had dissolved into fifteen new states, the unintended consequence of Gorbachev’s ill-fashioned reforms. Bush could now say publicly what he deeply believed without fear of doing harm.
But, if the Soviet Union had collapsed, a new Russia had emerged from the wreckage. It was in crisis – the government was in disarray, the economy was imploding, inflation was surging, food shortages loomed. Russia nevertheless remained a potentially powerful presence on the global stage. It was still by far the largest country in the world, spanning eleven time zones, with the world’s richest endowment of natural resources. It had inherited the lion’s share of the Soviets’ fearsome nuclear arsenal, as well as the Soviet Union’s permanent seat – and accompanying veto – on the United Nation’s Security Council. What happened in Russia would impact developments all along its long periphery stretching from Europe through the Middle East and South and Central Asia to Northeast Asia and the Arctic. What’s more, this Russia aspired to play a large role on the world stage. No matter what its current plight, Russian leaders could conceive of their country as nothing other than a great power. They were determined to reassert Russia’s prerogatives and compel others to respect them as soon as possible.
What this new Russia would become was uncertain. The Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, had played the leading role in breaking up the Soviet Union. For the past two years he had criticized Gorbachev’s political and economic reforms as much too timid. He stressed his commitment to democracy. He surrounded himself with young, aggressive reformers who were laying the basis for what they hoped would be the rapid erection of a free-market economy on the ruins of a planned economy. Western leaders fervently wished Russia success. But Russia’s imperialist past weighed heavily in their calculations, and the prominence of vengeful communists and rabid nationalists in the legislature, the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies, did little to ease anxieties.
Bush may not have said so in his address, but this new, inchoate Russia still loomed large in American foreign policy. How should the United States approach it to prolong America’s period of preeminence as far as possible into the future? How should the United States balance its hope for a democratic Russia and its fear of revanchism? Was productive partnership possible, or was the return of dangerous confrontation inevitable?
Anchoring Russia
The beginnings of an answer came four days later, when Bush met with Yeltsin at Camp David for three-and-a-half hours to discuss Russia’s reform program and arms control. The two leaders issued a short declaration that laid out principles to guide relations. The first and most important was that the two countries no longer viewed each other as potential adversaries; rather, relations were to be “characterized by friendship and partnership, founded on mutual trust and respect and a common commitment to democracy and economic freedom.”2 When Yeltsin traveled to Washington in June for a formal summit, the two presidents issued “A Charter for American–Russian Partnership and Friendship,” which stressed the two countries’ commitment to democracy, their determination to promote a democratic peace, and their intended cooperation in advancing market-based economic reform in Russia.3
In broad terms, the administration’s goal was to anchor Russia (and the other former Soviet states) in the Euro-Atlantic Community as a free-market democracy. Success would go a long way toward building the Europe “whole and free” that Bush sought, sharply reducing the risk of another great European war, hot or cold, like those that had plagued the twentieth century and devoured so much American blood and treasure. Advancing that goal entailed most immediately working closely with Russia’s popularly elected leader and his government to consolidate democracy. A critical step would be to assist Russia in revitalizing the economy on the basis of free markets, in alleviating the hardship for vast numbers of Russians, so as to help to expand and deepen support for the country’s democratic leaders. In response to Yeltsin’s urgent plea, the administration took the lead in forging a $24-billion multilateral assistance package ($18 billion in loans, debt deferral, and other financial assistance, and a $6 billion stabilization fund),4 and pushed the Freedom Support Act through Congress to back democratic and economic reform in Russia and the other post-Soviet states.5
Nevertheless, Bush and his colleagues knew that a bet on integration and Russian democracy was far from a sure thing. Two threats loomed large: anarchy and Russia’s reversion to its expansionist traditions. Either would resurrect ominous threats to European peace and stability and undo America’s triumph in the Cold War. Bush needed to hedge against both.
One hedge was to ensure that the Soviet Union’s vast nuclear arsenal, now split among four states (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan), remained under firm, reliable control and did not create an acute proliferation risk. The preferred option was to bring all the weapons under Russia’s control and then sign an arms control agreement with Russia that would reduce the size of the arsenal. After tough negotiations – the Ukrainians proved especially recalcitrant – the United States persuaded the three non-Russian states to commit to relinquishing their nuclear weapons and joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states. Washington and Moscow then negotiated the START II agreement, which would lead to only a small reduction in arsenals after the massive reductions achieved under START I (signed in July 1991) but, more importantly, would ban intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with multiple reentry vehicles (MIRVs), one of the most destabilizing systems.6
While pursued primarily to limit the dangers of possible anarchy, the nuclear agreements also acted as something of a hedge against the reversal of reform – if Russia turned hostile, it would be better if it had fewer weapons. But we should not exaggerate their significance in this regard. Both sides had an interest in maintaining strategic stability. In the past two decades, treaties had been negotiated with the Soviet Union, and a Russia that abandoned reform would undoubtedly have engaged in arms control talks, even if reaching agreement would have proved to be much more arduous. The United States needed a more formidable hedge against Russian recidivism to prevent the reemergence of a threat of Soviet dimensions in Eurasia.
The critical geopolitical task – the second hedge – was to block Russia from reasserting its dominance over the states that had emerged from the Soviet empire. The United States was already working closely with former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe to bolster their independence after the revolutions of 1989; with the demise of the Soviet Union, it moved quickly to recognize the independence of the new post-Soviet states. Shortly after Yeltsin’s February visit, Secretary of State James Baker embarked on a ten-day trip to those states to reinforce the American commitment to their sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.7
Oddly, however, the Bush administration did not put much effort into building relations with the new Russia, to consolidate what the president saw as a hard-won victory in the Cold War. With that war over, he turned his attention to his reelection campaign, which compelled him to focus on his domestic agenda amid mounting economic anxiety. Rhetorical support for Yeltsin and his reformist government was never matched with vigorous concrete action, except in the area of strategic arms control. Tellingly, the president and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, end their joint memoir with the demise of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 – there simply wasn’t much to write about their effort to engage the new Russia.8
Nevertheless, the Bush administration created a broad framework for relations with Russia that was to endure a quarter century, until Russian invaded and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Euro-Atlantic integration, equal partnership, shared democratic values, and free-market economies were declared to be the foundation of relations between the two countries. Arms control, especially symmetrical cuts in strategic nuclear weapons, would be both a symbol of equality and partnership in preserving strategic stability and, in the American view, a hedge against chaos in Russia and the surrounding region. Geopolitical pluralism in the former Soviet space and the advancement of Western institutions, as well as the American presence, in the former Soviet bloc would serve as a hedge against Russian recidivism. All the while, Russia’s glaring strategic weakness and the absence of any other great-power competitor would enable Washington to overcome any Russian resistance to its grand design. It was one part idealism, one part realism in the name of advancing American interests in the world.
The three succeeding administrations – under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama – all operated within this framework, albeit with waning enthusiasm and confidence, and greater cynicism and disregard for Russia, from administration to administration. Even though each administration began with great expectations, only to leave office with relations in worse shape than it found them, the Bush and Obama administrations continued to use this framework, confident that they could succeed where their predecessor had failed. And each wanted to succeed because Russian cooperation remained critical to its broader goals. Clinton had the largest ambitions, hoping to turn Russia into a junior partner in support of American aims across the globe. Bush initially sought Russian cooperation in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and, after 9/11, more broadly, in prosecuting the global war on terror, his top foreign-policy priority. And Obama could not do without Russia if he hoped to realize his grand vision of a world without nuclear weapons.
Grand Strategy: Integration and Partnership
Clinton Allies with Russian Reform
Clinton thought that his predecessor had been woefully remiss in not seizing the historic opportunity presented by the emergence of a democratic Russia. He would make that his top foreign-policy priority. To underscore that intention, he appointed an old friend and Russia expert, Strobe Talbott, as the special advisor to the Secretary of State on the states of the former Soviet Union, charged with overseeing the formulation and execution of his Russia policy. A few months later, he devoted his first major foreign-policy address as president to Russia, a seminal speech that remains to date the most comprehensive presidential explication of an administration’s Russia policy in the post-Soviet period. Thereafter, he remained so actively engaged on Russia matters that Talbott dubbed him the administration’s main “Russia hand.”
The US goal, in Talbott’s words, was to help Russia become “a normal, modern state – democratic in its governance, abiding by its own constitution and by its own laws, market-oriented and prosperous in its economic development, at peace with itself and with the rest of the world.”9 To that end, Russia would be integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community through a wide-ranging effort to assist Russia in its internal transformation in what Clinton billed as a “strategic alliance with Russian reform.”10
For Clinton, Yeltsin personified reform, and this alliance translated in the real world into nearly unconditional support for him. His senior advisers may have had doubts about the erratic Russian president, but Clinton was convinced that Yeltsin was on the right side of history in the struggle between democracy and dictatorship. More to the point, he saw no leader capable of replacing him.11 That support was not to waver through a series of challenges, and Yeltsin’s less than fully democratic maneuvers, which began as soon as the administration took office: the bitter struggle between Yeltsin and the Congress of People’s Deputies that ended with Yeltsin’s shelling the Russian White House, the seat of the Congress, in October 1993; Yeltsin’s brutal war against Chechen separatists, starting in 1994; and a bitter, nasty, but victorious reelection campaign against a communist foe in 1996. For Clinton, Yeltsin’s transgressions represented merely the growing pains within democracy, not a retreat from it.12
The core problem that Yeltsin needed to tackle, Clinton decided, was the economy – hardly surprising for a man who had made overcoming the American economic malaise the winning plank in his own campaign for the presidency. As in the United States, economic revival was critical to building popular support for government policies. More important in the Russian context, it would foster a middle class, which would sustain the transition to a full-blooded democracy.13 This was a daunting challenge – the task was not the restoration of what had been lost, but rather the construction of an entirely new socio-economic system on the ruins of the Soviet planned economy.
To meet the challenge, the Clinton administration developed a bilateral assistance program for Russia in the amount of $1.6 billion and coordinated a multilateral assistance package worth some $43 billion, both of which Clinton unveiled at his first meeting with Yeltsin in Vancouver, Canada, in April 1993.14 Clinton and Yeltsin also launched a joint commission on economic and technological cooperation, called the Gore–Chernomyrdin Commission after its co-heads, US Vice President Albert Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. This was a massive US assistance effort, in the guise of cooperation to make it more palatable to the Russians, that brought US cabinet-level officials together with their Russian counterparts on critical matters such as space, energy, science and technology, defense conversion, business development, agriculture, environment, and health.15 The administration subsequently flooded Russia with aid workers, technical advisors, and volunteers, to instruct Russians in the ways of free markets and, to a lesser degree, democratic politics.16
Thus, in its first three months, the Clinton administration had set the course of its Russia policy. In the years ahead, it would repeatedly underscore the progress Russia was making in its transition and the mounting strength of US–Russian partnership. It did so even though Russia’s precipitous economic decline continued, rapacious entrepreneurs and regional barons seized lucrative state assets for a pittance and privatized parts of the state for their own parochial interests, and Yeltsin and his allies undermined democratic norms in the name of defending democracy against communist and nationalist foes and Chechen rebels.
In September 1997, Talbott surveyed the landscape. Yeltsin’s victory in the 1996 presidential elections had thwarted a communist comeback. The Russian economy had just produced its first year of growth. Yeltsin had brought the Chechnya conflict to an end. Final success still lay in the future, but Russia, Talbott declared, was at the end of the beginning of its transition to free-market democracy.17
He spoke too soon. Less than a year later, Russia suffered a devastating financial collapse. Mounting debt, capital flight, and the contagion of an Asian financial crisis undermined Russia’s solvency. In mid August 1998, the Russian government devalued the ruble by 50 percent and defaulted on its outstanding debt. Yeltsin dismissed the reformist government and appointed a new prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, who enjoyed strong backing from the communists and selected one of their leaders, a former head of the Soviet economic planning agency, Gosplan, to serve as his first deputy in charge of the economy. So much for Clinton’s grand ambition to turn Russia into a free-market democracy.
Shortly thereafter, US–Russian foreign-policy cooperation approached a breaking point in the dispute over Serbia’s effort to cleanse its autonomous region of Kosovo of its Muslim population. The United States and its NATO allies were determined to end Belgrade’s ethnic cleansing, through the use of force, if necessary. Russia was vehemently opposed to any military interference in a country that was a traditional ally. Nevertheless, NATO launched a massive air bombardment campaign against Serbia – bypassing the UN Security Council to avoid a Russian veto.
Three months later, facing the unpalatable need to introduce ground forces to subdue the Serbs, the United States turned to Russia for help in negotiating an end to the conflict. Despite Russia’s assistance, the United States then sought to deny it a role in the peacekeeping force to be set up in Kosovo. Although it remains unclear who gave the order in Moscow, Russian troops from a peacekeeping force in Bosnia raced to occupy the airfield in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, before NATO forces could arrive. After a brief, but tense, NATO–Russia standoff was defused, Moscow got the role in the peacekeeping operation it sought. But the damage to US–Russian relations was done.18 And Clinton left office with Russia less democratic, and relations with Russia worse, than he found them.
