By
The Russian flag flying at the annual International Military-Technical Forum in Kubinka, west of Moscow.Sergei Ilnitsky/European Pressphoto Agency
In the quarter-century since the end of the Cold War,
profound grievances, misperceptions and disappointments have often defined the
relationship between the United States and Russia. I lived through this
turbulence during my years as a diplomat in Moscow, navigating the curious mix
of hope and humiliation that I remember so vividly in the Russia of Boris N.
Yeltsin, and the pugnacity and raw ambition of Vladimir V. Putin’s Kremlin. And
I lived through it in Washington, serving both Republican and Democratic
administrations.
There have been more than enough illusions on both
sides. The United States has oscillated between visions of an enduring
partnership with Moscow and dismissing it as a sulking regional power in
terminal decline. Russia has moved between notions of a strategic partnership
with the United States and a later, deeper desire to upend the current international
order, where a dominant United States consigns Russia to a subordinate role.
The reality is that our relationship with Russia will
remain competitive, and often adversarial, for the foreseeable future. At its
core is a fundamental disconnect in outlook and about each other’s role in the
world.
It is tempting to think that personal rapport can
bridge this disconnect and that the art of the deal can unlock a grand bargain.
That is a foolish starting point for sensible policy. It would be especially
foolish to think that Russia’s deeply troubling interference in our election
can or should be played down, however inconvenient.
President Putin’s aggressive election meddling, like
his broader foreign policy, has at least two motivating factors. The first is
his conviction that the surest path to restoring Russia as a great power comes
at the expense of an American-led order. He wants Russia unconstrained by
Western values and institutions, free to pursue a sphere of influence.
The second motivating
factor is closely connected to the first. The legitimacy of Mr. Putin’s system
of repressive domestic control depends on the existence of external threats.
Surfing on high oil prices, he used to be able to bolster his social contract
with the Russian people through rising standards of living. That was clear in
the boomtown Moscow I knew as the American ambassador a decade ago, full of the
promise of a rising middle class and the consumption of an elite convinced that
anything worth doing was worth overdoing. But Mr. Putin has lost that card in a
world of lower energy prices and Western sanctions, and with a one-dimensional
economy in which real reform is trumped by the imperative of political control
and the corruption that lubricates it.
The ultimate realist, Mr. Putin understands Russia’s
relative weakness, but regularly demonstrates that declining powers can be at
least as disruptive as rising powers. He sees a target-rich environment all
around him.
If he can’t easily build Russia up, he can take the
United States down a few pegs, with his characteristic tactical agility and
willingness to play rough and take risks. If he can’t have a deferential
government in Kiev, he can grab Crimea and try to engineer the next best thing,
a dysfunctional Ukraine. If he can’t abide the risk of regime upheaval in
Syria, he can flex Russia’s military muscle, emasculate the West, and preserve
Bashar al-Assad atop the rubble of Aleppo. If he can’t directly intimidate the
European Union, he can accelerate its unraveling by supporting anti-Union
nationalists and exploiting the wave of migration spawned in part by his own
brutality. Wherever he can, he exposes the seeming hypocrisy and fecklessness
of Western democracies, blurring the line between fact and fiction.
So what to do? Russia is still too big, proud and
influential to ignore and still the only nuclear power comparable to the United
States. It remains a major player on problems from the Arctic to Iran and North
Korea. We need to focus on the critical before we test the desirable. The first
step is to sustain, and if necessary amplify, the actions taken by the Obama
administration in response to Russian hacking. Russia challenged the integrity
of our democratic system, and Europe’s 2017 electoral landscape is the next
battlefield.
A second step is to reassure our European allies of
our absolute commitment to NATO. American politicians tell one another to
“remember your base,” and that’s what should guide policy toward Russia. Our
network of allies is not a millstone around America’s neck, but a powerful
asset that sets us apart.
A third step is to stay sharply focused on Ukraine, a
country whose fate will be critical to the future of Europe, and Russia, over
the next generation. This is not about NATO or European Union membership, both
distant aspirations. It is about helping Ukrainian leaders build the successful
political system that Russia seeks to subvert.
Finally, we should be wary of superficially appealing
notions like a common war on Islamic extremism or a common effort to “contain”
China. Russia’s bloody role in Syria makes the terrorist threat far worse and
despite long-term concerns about a rising China, Mr. Putin has little
inclination to sacrifice a relationship with Beijing.
I’ve learned a few lessons during my diplomatic
career, often the hard way. I learned to respect Russians and their history and
vitality. I learned that it rarely pays to neglect or underestimate Russia, or
display gratuitous disrespect. But I also learned that firmness and vigilance,
and a healthy grasp of the limits of the possible, are the best way to deal
with the combustible combination of grievance and insecurity that Vladimir
Putin embodies. I’ve learned that we have a much better hand to play with Mr.
Putin than he does with us. If we play it methodically, confident in our
enduring strengths, and unapologetic about our values, we can eventually build
a more stable relationship, without illusions.
William J.
Burns is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a
former Deputy Secretary of State. He served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from
2005 to 2008.
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