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Summary

The U.S.-Russian relationship is broken, and it cannot be repaired quickly or easily. Improved personal ties between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin may be useful, but they are not enough. The Trump administration needs to temper expectations about breakthroughs or grand bargains with Moscow. Instead, the focus should be on managing a volatile relationship with an increasingly emboldened and unpredictable Russian leadership. The real test for any sustainable approach will be whether it advances U.S. interests and values, especially in the wake of Moscow’s reckless meddling in the November presidential election.

Key Themes

• The breakdown in U.S.-Russian relations is a product of long-standing disagreements about the fundamentals of each country’s national security interests and policies.
• The Kremlin’s political legitimacy is increasingly predicated on stoking fears of external threats and anti-Americanism.
• Moscow’s relationship with its neighbors will be inherently unstable due to persistent Russian attempts to dominate their political and economic orientation, and a yawning power and wealth differential.
• Better U.S.-Russian relations are impossible without a major course correction by either or both sides. It is unlikely that Putin will compromise on core Russian interests. Thus, unless Trump is prepared to cave on U.S. principles and interests, relations will remain largely competitive and adversarial.

Policy Recommendations

Four principles should guide U.S. policy toward Russia and its neighbors:

The United States’ commitment to defend its NATO allies will remain unconditional and ironclad. America should fully implement the measures it has announced to bolster deterrence and to defend NATO’s eastern flank.

The United States and its allies will defend the norms that underpin European security. These include the Paris Charter for a New Europe and the Helsinki Final Act.

The United States will continue its strong support for Ukraine. Halting the conflict in Donbas, deterring further Russian aggression, and supporting Ukraine’s domestic reforms will be top priorities for U.S.-EU diplomacy.

Engagement with Russia will not come at the expense of the rights and interests of Russia’s neighbors. The United States must recognize, however, the limits on its capacity to promote democracy and human rights in this region.

The following problem areas should be addressed without delay:

• signaling to Russia that its interference in the domestic politics of the United States or its allies is unacceptable and will be met with a strong response;
• reducing the risk of an accidental or unintended NATO-Russian military confrontation;
• achieving a durable, verifiable ceasefire in eastern Ukraine; and
• working together on Iran and other countries of proliferation concern to keep WMD and nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists and dangerous regimes.

Introduction

Turbulent events over the past year have compounded the already difficult problem of fashioning a sustainable long-term U.S. policy toward Russia, Eurasia, and Ukraine. The unprecedented presidential campaign in the United States, the British vote to leave the European Union (EU), and the rise of nationalist, populist, and antiglobalization forces elsewhere in Europe have formed a very different strategic landscape from the one that then U.S. president Barack Obama inherited eight years ago. The new U.S. administration will confront an exceedingly complex set of challenges. These include a global rebalancing of economic, political, and military power; a vast region in turmoil from North Africa to China’s western border; and uncertainty about the most important U.S. relationships with allies and partners in Europe and Asia. More fundamentally, the liberal international order that the United States and its European allies have upheld since the end of World War II is in danger of unraveling, and there is mounting concern that the United States may abandon its commitment to preserving this order.

Russia looms especially large on this landscape, and the task of formulating a sustainable policy toward Russia has risen to the top of the national security agenda for the new U.S. administration. But the attention devoted to Russia by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic should not obscure the fact that Russia is not the principal challenge facing the United States and its allies. Any long-term U.S. policy framework must assess how the U.S. relationship with Russia represents only a subset of the broader global challenges posed by forces of national fragmentation and division; the rise of other centers of power and nonstate actors; the problems emanating from a broken, an angry, and a dysfunctional Middle East; the growing political appeal of populism and nativism; and sweeping technological changes.

The West’s relationship with Russia is and for the foreseeable future likely to remain largely competitive and oftentimes adversarial. But Russia is not the cause of the turmoil in the Islamic world, of the tensions between the United States and China, or of the crisis in the European Union. It may seek to capitalize on these developments or aggravate them, but Russia is not their driver or root cause. Solving the West’s Russia problem will not solve the numerous strategic challenges it needs to confront. At the same time, Russia can be part of the solution, and a more constructive U.S.-Russian relationship could help to produce better outcomes. But it cannot be the solution or an end in itself.

With that caveat in mind, it is hard to challenge the proposition that the rise of a more assertive Russia and the collapse of the post–Cold War security order in Europe in the wake of the Ukraine crisis have far-reaching implications for U.S. national security interests and those of its allies and partners around the world. In Ukraine, the Kremlin mounted the first land grab since World War II and launched a bloody, covert war that shows no signs of ending any time soon. Russian military intervention in Syria has prevented the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime and seriously constrained the options of the United States and its partners to influence the future direction of the conflict. The Kremlin’s unprecedented meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election via a multifaceted cyber and information operations campaign highlights the difficulty of establishing new norms for cyberspace. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s reliance on anti-Americanism and unrelenting crushing of internal dissent continues.

As disturbing as these developments have been to Western audiences, U.S. policymakers cannot lose sight of America’s strengths and advantages. Without downplaying the dangers inherent in the Kremlin’s risk-taking brand of foreign policy, there can be no mistaking the long-term weakness of the hand that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is playing. In the coming decades, Moscow will face political, economic, demographic, security, and geopolitical problems that can hardly be wished away or swept under the rug.

The West’s relationship with Russia is and for the foreseeable future likely to remain largely competitive and oftentimes adversarial.

But bearing in mind what John Maynard Keynes said about the long run, it is essential to take a cold, hard look at the near-term challenges that an emboldened Russian regime represents for U.S. interests as well as the potential areas that still exist for cooperation. Any appraisal will reveal that Russia, far from being just a regional power, to paraphrase Obama, figures prominently in numerous important issues and parts of the world.¹ That will not change. Even if Russia were a declining power, history teaches us that such states can be extremely disruptive and do considerable damage as they descend. And if there is one thing known about Putin, he is a remarkable opportunist, capable of forcing the outside world to reckon with him—usually on his terms.

In recent years, discussion of U.S. policy options toward Russia has focused heavily on creating the right combination of pushback and containment. Such ideas enjoyed great appeal in the days before President Donald Trump’s upset victory. Notwithstanding the remarkable change in tone by the new administration, there is a need for abundant caution in dealing with Moscow, given the downside risks of stumbling into a possible direct confrontation. Putin has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to escalate disputes with the West in dangerous and irresponsible ways in order to throw his adversaries off-balance. The risk of a collision or military incident involving Russia has reached unacceptably high levels in recent months. By the same token, Russia’s resilience in the face of domestic challenges, economic sanctions, and international pressure over the past three years has confounded U.S. and EU policymakers.

These realities point to the necessity of carefully managing differences with the Russian regime—and standing firmly when U.S. vital interests are threatened. Steadiness and deliberation, therefore, must be at a premium, given that abrupt shifts in U.S. policy toward Russia and the broader Eurasia region could have a lasting negative impact on the fragile transatlantic relationship, contribute to the chaos in the Middle East, and erode the global preeminence of the United States and the durability of the international order that greatly benefits American security and economic prosperity.

Even if Russia were a declining power, history teaches us that such states can be extremely disruptive and do considerable damage as they descend.

Absent an abrupt change in the fundamentals underlying U.S. policy toward Russia or Russia’s policy toward the United States, it will be all the more daunting to create a productive relationship with Moscow in the coming years; this is due in no small measure to the lingering effects of a destabilizing crisis that has wiped out fundamental aspects of the post–Cold War security order and, along with it, any semblance of trust on either side. At the same time, it would be naive and irresponsible for any U.S. administration to try to close its eyes to the Russian regime’s responsibility for a costly, pointless war in Ukraine; its ongoing crackdown on civil society and other vulnerable groups; and its brazen attempts to subvert the democratic institutions and the integrity and sources of information that are at the heart of the liberal international order.

The Boom-and-Bust Cycle of U.S.-Russian Relations

Since 1991, the relationship between the United States and Russia has alternated between high expectations and bitter disappointments. The Obama administration’s experience of dealing with Russia fit the pattern established by its predecessors over the course of the previous two decades.

Elements of the boom-and-bust cycle in bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington became visible in the final years of the Soviet Union. The rapid thaw in relations between the two Cold War adversaries and political change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s gave rise to hopes for a new U.S.-Soviet partnership to serve the interests of global peace, stability, and security.² Those hopes were quickly dashed as the Soviet Union unraveled, and the United States was left with the task of bailing it out rather than relying on it as a partner in building the new order.

Then U.S. president Bill Clinton inherited a relationship with a Russia in the throes of a seemingly never-ending political and economic crisis, a relationship that fell well short of its potential, even as support for Russia’s democratic and market reforms became one of the top priorities for the Clinton administration’s foreign policy. The West’s partnership with Russian reform was not merely an act of charity. A stable, democratic, and capitalist Russia would become a reliable partner to the United States and its allies. Moreover, restoring stability in Russia was essential for carefully managing the safe disposition of the Soviet Union’s nuclear legacy, which was scattered across several newly independent former Soviet republics. Securing and consolidating that deadly arsenal in a stable Russia under responsible leadership and avoiding a violent, Yugoslavia-style breakup were vital to U.S. national security interests. Thus, Russian reform became a top-tier U.S. security interest.³

In 1993, at the first summit meeting between presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in Vancouver, the United States committed to assist Russian reform across a wide range of areas.⁴ A U.S.-Russian partnership was launched as the two presidents “declared their firm commitment to a dynamic and effective U.S.-Russian partnership that strengthens international stability.”⁵

In retrospect, the relationship launched at Vancouver proved largely disappointing to the Russian side. The United States and other international donors may have delivered billions of dollars in foreign aid and technical assistance at a time when Russia was running on empty, but the promised benefits of rapid price liberalization and privatization came only after many years of severe economic hardship. In the security realm, the United States made it possible for Russia to consolidate and secure the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal—a complex and costly task that likely would have been beyond the reach of the struggling Russian state. The United States benefited, too—the threat of nuclear proliferation from the remnants of the Soviet state was largely averted.

But the relationship proved far from smooth and nearly from the very beginning was punctuated by a series of disagreements—over Russia’s heavy-handed treatment of neighboring states like Georgia and Moldova; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) enlargement; NATO’s interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo; Russia’s war in Chechnya; concerns in the United States about Russian neo-imperialist tendencies; and fears in Moscow of U.S. encroachment on the sphere of influence Russia claimed around its periphery. The relationship owed much to the personal chemistry between Clinton and Yeltsin and their ability to smooth over disagreements during personal meetings. However, as frictions accumulated and mutual frustrations grew, personal chemistry proved insufficient to keep the relationship from deteriorating.

For Russia, which opposed NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, U.S. leadership of that campaign signaled that America was prepared to act unilaterally to advance its vision of order in the Balkans and disregard Moscow’s concerns and objections. Moreover, for the national security establishment in the greatly weakened and diminished great power, the intervention in Kosovo raised the specter of potential U.S. intervention not only in the Balkans but also inside Russia.⁶

U.S. attitudes toward Russia had changed by the late 1990s in large measure as a result of the brutal campaign waged by the Russian government to restore its control over the breakaway province of Chechnya. The Russian government was widely criticized for its indiscriminate tactics in that war and the widespread violations of human rights. Hardly any voices in the United States called for a direct intervention in Chechnya similar to the U.S. intervention in Kosovo, but that did little to alleviate Moscow’s concerns about its vulnerability in the face of America’s unchallenged dominance on the world stage.

The resignation of Boris Yelstin at the end of 1999 deprived the deteriorating relationship of an essential element—the personal Yeltsin-Clinton chemistry that had steadied it during much of the 1990s. The rise of Vladimir Putin with his KGB credentials marked the beginning of a new chapter in the bilateral relationship between Moscow and Washington, which at the end of Bill Clinton’s term in office had fallen far short of achieving the goals set forth in Vancouver eight years earlier.

The administration of then president George W. Bush thus inherited a damaged relationship with Russia. Despite some initial misgivings, it launched its own reset with Moscow in 2001—an initiative that was precipitated by the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the urgent requirement to build an international coalition for the War on Terror. The appeal to join this war struck a responsive chord in the Kremlin, which had long maintained that its own war in Chechnya was part of the global antiterrorist struggle.⁷ U.S. officials had muted their criticism of the war in Chechnya and, as in the previous decade, the U.S. and Russian presidents established a personal bond,⁸ and once again a U.S.-Russian partnership animated the bilateral agenda.⁹

Notwithstanding such progress, the relationship soon suffered from renewed disagreements. The list of mutual complaints included some familiar themes: Russian criticism of the war in Iraq launched by the United States, without Moscow’s consent or the approval of the UN Security Council; opposition to further NATO enlargement; concerns about U.S. missile defense plans, exacerbated by America’s abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and U.S. support for the “color” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. The United States, for its part, was critical of Putin’s retreat from democracy and Russian hardball tactics in dealing with its weaker neighbors. As many elements of the desired partnership—energy, trade and investment, and World Trade Organization accession for Russia—failed to materialize, the irritants outweighed the benefits, even if the personal ties between Bush and Putin provided the essential ballast for the relationship.

The break, which no personal relationship between the two leaders could overcome, occurred when Russian troops crushed the tiny Georgian military in August 2008. Russian tanks smashed not only Georgian forces but also the remaining hopes for partnership between Washington and Moscow.¹⁰ Washington branded Moscow an aggressor whose actions had grossly violated the founding principles of the post–Cold War European order. The relationship between the United States and Russia reached a new post–Cold War low.

This was the legacy inherited by the Obama administration in 2009. With relations between Washington and Moscow in tatters, U.S. policymakers felt the ripple effects in a number of collateral areas—for example, the U.S. pursuit of comprehensive sanctions on Iran to stop its nuclear program; in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, where the task of supplying U.S. and coalition troops demanded alternatives to routes through Pakistan; and in nuclear disarmament, which Obama singled out as one of his priorities.

There was also a new president in Russia—Dmitry Medvedev, a younger and seemingly more progressive leader than Putin—whose public acknowledgment of the need to modernize Russia held out hope for a new course in Russian domestic politics and foreign policy. To test the new Russian leader and restore a measure of cooperation with Russia in key areas of interest to the United States, the Obama administration attempted to reset the relationship with Russia. Once again, personal chemistry between the two presidents proved essential to thawing the relationship and moving the two governments to resume cooperation in several key areas. The early results—the signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the establishment of the Northern Distribution Network, the cancellation of the sale of the S-300 air defense system to Iran, the imposition of new UN Security Council–mandated sanctions on Iran, the accession of Russia to the World Trade Organization—rekindled hopes for a new and lasting partnership.

However, the relationship continued to suffer from numerous irritants: U.S. criticism of Russia’s democracy deficit and human rights violations; congressional moves to impose sanctions on Russian officials connected with the death of Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky; disagreements over plans for U.S. missile defense deployment in Europe; Russian criticism of NATO’s intervention in Libya; Russian resentment of perceived U.S. intervention in Russian domestic politics; pressure on former Soviet states to curb their relationship with Western economic and security structures; and disagreements over Syria’s future.

The turning point occurred in late 2011 and early 2012, when Vladimir Putin decided to reclaim the presidency from Medvedev. Large-scale protests erupted in Moscow and other major cities in the aftermath of that switch and amid allegations of vote rigging in the December 2011 Duma election.¹¹ American officials were perceived in Moscow as capitalizing on the election dispute to encourage unrest, feeding suspicions in Russia that Washington was opposed to Putin’s return to the presidency. The latter development left the bilateral relationship without a critical ingredient—a strong personal bond between the U.S. president and his Russian counterpart. The political crackdown that followed Putin’s re-election and the criticism it triggered from the United States accelerated the cooling trend in the relationship.

The final break occurred with the crisis in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Maidan revolution pitted the United States and Russia against each other, with Washington expressing support for the antigovernment protesters clamoring for closer ties with the West and Moscow backing the pro-Russian government. The chain of events that followed, culminating in the fall of the Viktor Yanukovych government in Kyiv, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and Moscow’s undeclared war in eastern Ukraine, dealt a severe blow to the entire post–Cold War European security order and brought the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationship to its lowest point since some of the coldest days of the Cold War.

The Trump administration has inherited a relationship at its lowest nadir in many decades.

The experience of the three post–Cold War U.S. presidencies—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—highlights some of the persistent trends in bilateral relations between Washington and Moscow. These include: (1) inflated expectations at the outset of each new U.S. presidential term; (2) the critical and irreplaceable role of personal ties between U.S. and Russian presidents; and (3) the enduring potency of long-term irritants in the relationship—for example, human rights and democracy, the nature of U.S. and Russian relations with Russia’s neighbors, and U.S. use of military force to topple regimes despite Russian objections.

The Trump administration has inherited a relationship at its lowest nadir in many decades. Although it will have to tackle some new and extremely complicated issues arising from recent events—Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign and the impasse over Syria—the underlying challenges to better relations between the United States and Russia will not change. The Trump administration’s approach to issues of democratic governance, relations between Russia and its neighbors and U.S. ties to those neighbors, and the United States’ unilateral use of force will be pivotal to the quality and direction of U.S.-Russian relations.

Russian Realities

Is Russia an authoritarian regime? An oligarchy? An illiberal democracy? More than a quarter century after the infamous Article VI of the Soviet constitution, which guaranteed the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, was repealed, Russia’s political system eludes an easy characterization: it is much easier to say what it is not, than what it is. It is not a democracy.¹² Although it has many features of a rigid, closed, and controlled political system, it is not a totalitarian regime. Many aspects of the modern political system in Russia have their roots in Soviet and Russian history. At the same time, Russian society has embraced many aspects of life in the twenty-first century that invite comparisons with many other countries in Europe and Asia with decidedly different political systems and cultures.

The easiest definition of modern-day Russia is that it is a society and political system in transition. It left its communist, totalitarian system behind in the twentieth century. However, it is not clear what it is transitioning to—a more open and democratic political system, an autocracy with a market economy, or some hybrid form yet to be defined. The direction and speed of this transition is uncertain, and just as with the breakup of the Soviet Union, it could result in a sudden and unforeseen change, or it could remain frozen for years or even decades.

Domestic Politics

Amid this uncertainty, there is little dispute that power in Russia resides in the executive branch, overwhelmingly at the expense of the legislature and the judiciary. These are not equal branches of the Russian government. The presidency is the dominant institution; much like the czar in pre-1917 Russia, it towers above the cabinet, the Duma, and the courts. The president has the authority, given to him by the constitution, to rule by decree, bypassing the legislature. The prime minister and the cabinet have no standing independent of the president and take their guidance from him. The head of state is also effectively the head of government.

The transition from Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin at the turn of the century demonstrated the importance of personalities in Russian politics and the flawed nature of a system that leaves so much at the mercy of individuals. Boris Yeltsin’s confrontation with parliament in 1993 paved the way for the new constitution’s unequal treatment of the executive and the legislative branches, empowering the former at the expense of the latter. Yeltsin’s relatively tolerant attitude toward the opposition had left room for the Duma to obstruct his policies throughout much of the 1990s. Putin’s decidedly less tolerant attitude toward the opposition eventually transformed the Duma into a docile institution ready to rubber stamp the Kremlin’s legislative initiatives with few, if any, checks and balances.

The power of the presidency extends well beyond the confines of the federal government, into Russia’s regional governments. The status of regional governors has been changed several times since 1991, alternating between elected and appointed officials. In the most recent iteration, they have become once again effectively presidential appointees, thus reaffirming the president’s authority to govern at the regional as well as the federal level.

The country’s parliament—the Duma—has long lost its ability to function as an independent branch of the Russian government. Nominally home to several opposition parties, it lost all traces of independence quite early during Putin’s tenure. The most recent parliamentary election conducted in September 2016 resulte