There’s Only One Way to Deal with Russia

Key Points and Summary – For over three decades since the Cold War, the United States has lacked a coherent strategy for Russia, lurching from one failed “reset” to another.

-This stands in stark contrast to the clear, successful Cold War doctrine of containment.

-Successive administrations have failed to grasp Russia’s true nature and objectives, allowing Moscow to rearm and pursue its imperial ambitions.

How to Deal with Russia – Hard Power: Washington must abandon its preoccupation with resets and normative language and urgently articulate a new grand strategy grounded in hard-power deterrence to counter a resilient and expansionist Russia in Europe and beyond.

The 30-Year Failure of U.S.-Russia Policy

Much ink has been spilled since the Anchorage meeting between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin—the American President has been both praised for his effort to end the carnage in Ukraine and criticized for giving the Russian leader the red-carpet treatment while failing to achieve his declared goal of compelling Putin to commit to an armistice.

And while such commentary is likely to continue for some time, one aspect of the Anchorage summit has yet to register in the public domain, namely that it underscored yet again that the United States still lacks a Russia strategy that would extend beyond efforts to reset the relationship and improve bilateral relations, while accounting fully for the nature of Russian power and its objectives.

Reset on Russia Strategy

Simply put, it has been over three decades since the Cold War ended, and the community of Washington experts, for the most part, still does not grasp what drives Russian policy and continues to be manipulated by Moscow’s propaganda and its information operations. And so, we continue to talk about another reset, while we should be talking about deterrence.

America’s inability to articulate a Russia strategy beyond the ongoing effort at another détente is not confined to the Trump administration, as the post-Cold War decades have witnessed repeated failures to redefine the relationship.

The Soviet-designed Su-27 all-weather fighter-interceptor was created to counter the American McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. This two-seat trainer version, designated Su-27UB, entered USSR service in 1986 and still flies with Russian forces and other nations. Its NATO name is Flanker-C. Image Credit: U.S. Air Force.

Since the brief period of “benign neglect” that marked the Clinton-Yeltsin era and which witnessed the Russian Federation teeter on the brink, successive US administrations have been at a loss as to how to define the relationship, particularly after the re-centralization of the state under Vladimir Putin.

Successive presidents focused on improving relations with Moscow—from George W. Bush’s notorious quip that “he looked Putin in the eye” and presumably saw a man he could work with, to Barack Obama’s ill-fated “reset,” the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, superseded by Biden’s fiery condemnation of Russian second invasion of Ukraine, to the latest Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska. At each turn, the “how” of the relationship was front and center with scant mention of the fundamental “to what end” strategic level question, i.e., not only what the United States wants from the relationship but what is in fact achievable and how to get there.

United States Struggles to Stay on Top after Cold War “Victory”

The United States carried the day to victory in the Cold War because it had a clearly articulated a realistic strategy of containment, initially crafted by George Kennan and then expanded and implemented by successive US administrations.

An expert on Russia, Kennan understood the intricate nexus between geopolitics, culture, history, and ideology—offering the nation’s foreign policy establishment, our citizenry, as well as America’s allies and adversaries a level of clarity of purpose that was unequivocal, regardless of whether one prioritized geography, focused on hard power, or favored a values-based approach.

Most importantly, his strategy articulated a clear end state, whereby our steady effort to contain Soviet power would generate internal pressures within Moscow’s imperial domain that would eventually fracture and ultimately decompose its power base and political system. The fracturing of the “evil empire” encapsulated in Ronald Reagan’s “we win, they lose” quip was an enduring objective, even if on occasion Washington sought an accommodation with the USSR.

Russian Mobile ICBM Nuclear Weapons. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The implosion of the Soviet bloc and the end of the communist crusade it represented were the two clearly stated targets that enjoyed bipartisan consensus in Washington and were embraced by NATO allies in Europe and allies in Asia as the sine qua non of their security and sovereignty.

This common strategy generated a shared sense of purpose that incorporated the irreducible national interests of America’s allies, presenting the Soviets with a unified front, notwithstanding occasional stresses attendant to an alliance of democracies.

Containment After the Break of the Cold War

The Cold War-era strategy of containment prevented World War III and handed the United States a victory on a truly global scale—but one that, regrettably, was misread as the confirmation of its ideological pillar with little to no examination of how America’s hard power and our alliances contributed to the Soviet defeat.

The shock of 9/11 then channeled what passed for grand strategy post-Cold War into a narrow ideological cul-de-sac, throwing the United States headlong into two decades of overseas military campaigns to “democracy-build” and “nation-build” in secondary theaters, while Russia continued to rearm at speed and scale. China transformed itself from an economic powerhouse into a military great power.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been precious little strategic clarity of purpose to guide the United States’ relations with Russia, other than a persistent effort to disaggregate the Atlantic and the Pacific theaters to husband the nation’s military resources. The initial disdain that marked Washington’s approach in the Yeltsin era yielded only gradually to a recognition that Vladimir Putin was indeed intent on regathering the former imperial domain in Eastern Europe and returning Russia to Europe as a key political player.

Aided by Germany’s ill-advised energy policy during the sixteen years of the Merkel era that saw the construction of two Nord Stream pipelines that bypassed the eastern flank of NATO and in effect doubled Germany’s dependence on Russian gas, and the attendant disarmament of Europe, the last thirty years reduced what passed for a Russia strategy to leveraging existing legacy institutions while clinging to assumptions that no longer reflected the geopolitical realities on the ground.

Washington Should Move from Normative to Deterrant

Washington’s preoccupation with “normative language” when it came to national security, with its incessant talk about defending the “rules-based international order,” left America and its allies in a state of deepening confusion, with no clarity about the hierarchy of national interests and ultimately no strategy to undergird operational planning. And so, a string of administrations bounced from one failed attempt at reset to the next, hoping against hope for yet another engagement with Russia. At the same time, Moscow stayed the course of its imperial reconstitution.

An elevated port side view of the forward section of a Soviet Oscar Class nuclear-powered attack submarine. (Soviet Military Power, 1986) Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Washington urgently needs to articulate a deterrent strategy against Russia to provide guidance in the European theater and beyond. The Europe strategy should augment the ongoing planning for the Indo-Pacific, as the two theaters are part of the same problem set, with Russia and China working in tandem to undermine US power and influence in both. Any workable Russia strategy must be grounded in a clear understanding of one’s adversary, and most of all articulate what irreducible interest America is determined to pursue.

US Policy on Russia

Increasingly, however, some US policy experts have propagated the notion that after the Cold War, Russia was somehow entitled to an exclusive security buffer comprising Ukraine and Belarus, as well as a zone of privileged interest in the Baltic littoral and Central Europe. This shift reflected our frustration and growing self-doubt, rather than sound geostrategic principles. Hence, the result has become a seemingly never-ending debate in American media and among US experts about whether NATO enlargement has provoked the current crises in Eastern Europe and led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the stipulation that conceding to Russian demands in Ukraine would somehow settle the issue.

Few voices have articulated why remaining in Europe is, in fact, vital to US national security and prosperity going forward, not in terms of the normative construct that skewed the policy debate over the past thirty years, but in terms of territorial security, access to resources, and trade.

This shift has been reinforced by the enduring misconception among a large portion of America’s commentariat that Ukraine is no different from Russia—as such reasoning goes, they are both Slavic after all, and so Ukraine ought to exist in a quasi-paternalistic relationship with its bigger neighbor. Or perhaps even worse, some seem to think that Russia’s cultural contributions entitle it to exercise veto power over—and violate the sovereignty of—its less “sophisticated” neighbors.

To this day, a large portion of America’s policy elite has been awed by the geographic scale of the Russian Federation, spanning eleven time zones across the Eurasian landmass, while failing to grasp what Russia’s aspirations actually are and what drives its imperial policy. Few among US and Western European experts whom the official Russian narrative has persuaded have actually traversed the country’s territory, for if they did, they would soon discover the glaring disconnect between Moscow or Petersburg and the provinces, where basic infrastructure is nonexistent. The standard of living is reminiscent of a country locked in a cycle of underdevelopment and its attendant social pathologies.

Today, it is challenging to find anyone in Washington who can articulate a clear Russia deterrent strategy for America, beyond the typical mantra of leaving Russia for the Europeans to deal with, so that we can focus on the Indo-Pacific. There is little appreciation or understanding of what has driven Russia’s inherently expansionist course, one that spans centuries, and which enabled the tiny Duchy of Muscovy to grow into a transcontinental empire.

And while Russian foreign policy experts provide an unprecedented degree of continuity in how they approach the United States—foreign minister Lavrov epitomizes that level of expertise and permanence—in Washington, every four years, political appointees reinvent the wheel when it comes to how Moscow operates, with only a few notable exceptions of genuine Russia experts buried deep in our foreign and defense bureaucracy.

Tu-22M Backfire Bomber from Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

As regional power balances become increasingly fragile and global instability grows, now is the time to reflect on our objectives for US-Russia relations and develop a strategy that is both viable and aligned with the nation’s core interests.

Kennan Remains Relevant

Like in the Kennan era, this strategy must be steeped in geopolitics, rest on a hard-power calculus, while drawing once more on our values to augment—but not replace—the hard power calculus.  Most of all, our strategy cannot rely on Moscow’s goodwill, for Russia has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to take advantage of our goodwill.  Great power “resets” are possible only when the fundamentals of national interest and hard power have been addressed, including the extant military imbalance in Europe and the Atlantic theater.

Much like during the Cold War, a stable relationship with Russia can and will develop, but only after we have spent the money to strengthen our military and augment our force posture in Europe, and when we have reinforced it with our NATO allies’ restored military capabilities.

For over three decades, the United States has failed to develop a workable strategy to deter Russia, pursuing instead a series of “resets” while funding costly military campaigns in secondary theaters in our chimerical quest to eradicate transnational terrorist networks. If we don’t put this era firmly behind us and focus on the fundamentals of geopolitics and hard power, we will be outmaneuvered yet again, and the price of failure will only grow over time.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew A. Michta

Dr. Andrew A. Michta is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. Views expressed here are his own. You can follow him on X: @Andrewmichta.

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