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Thirty Years of U.S. Policy Toward Russia: Can the Vicious Circle Be Broken?
U.S.-Russia relations are at an impasse. Fixing this relationship requires Washington to change its policy on strategic stability, NATO expansion, and sanctions.
by Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky
Published on June 20, 2019
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program Russia and Eurasia
The Russia and Eurasia Program continues Carnegie’s long tradition of independent research on major political, societal, and security trends in and U.S. policy toward a region that has been upended by Russia’s war against Ukraine. Leaders regularly turn to our work for clear-eyed, relevant analyses on the region to inform their policy decisions.
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Executive Summary For nearly thirty years, successive U.S. administrations have struggled to come up with a sustainable policy toward Russia. Throughout this period, the U.S.-Russian relationship has experienced a familiar pattern of boom-bust cycles: a new administration comes in dissatisfied with the state of the relationship and promises to do better. It launches a policy review that generates a reset aimed at developing a partnership. A period of optimism follows, but obstacles to better relations emerge, and optimism gradually gives way to pessimism. By the end of the administration, the relationship is at the lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
Russia, with its disruptive and often rogue actions, bears a major share of the responsibility for the deterioration in the relationship. But U.S. policy toward Russia has largely ignored such crucial factors as Russia’s history, culture, geography, and security requirements—as they are seen from Moscow. For three decades, U.S. administrations have pursued the same unrealistic policies and contributed to the failure of the relationship. Two in particular stand out:
- a refusal to accept Russia for what it is, as evidenced by repeated initiatives to reform and remake its political system, despite the Kremlin’s rejection of democracy promotion in and around Russia as a threat to Russian domestic stability; and
- insistence that NATO is the only legitimate security organization for Europe and Eurasia and the extension of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture to the Eurasian space surrounding Russia, which in Moscow’s eyes represented a threat to Russian security.
Several other patterns in U.S. policy toward Russia account for the failures over the past three decades. Overreach has been a persistent feature of U.S. Russia policy, reflected in commitments to ambitious goals without the means to accomplish them. U.S. policymakers have repeatedly exaggerated America’s ability to affect developments in Russia and their influence over the Kremlin. They have defined American interests in the most expansive terms, failing to distinguish between core and peripheral concerns or to prioritize them. When Moscow pushed back, Washington reasserted its right and responsibility to teach Russia and its neighbors how to manage their affairs rather than take account of Russian objections. It is hard to escape the conclusion that a more restrained U.S. approach to dealing with Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union could have resulted in a more productive U.S.-Russian relationship.
Changing the trajectory of U.S.-Russian relations will be difficult. Russia’s image is toxic in the current U.S. political climate, and as a result there will be few opportunities for cooperation even where Washington and Moscow have common interests. Russia is vitally important to the United States, however, and managing this relationship responsibly—even if not necessarily making it better or solving problems—is a task that U.S. policymakers can ill afford to neglect. Yet the difficulty of managing the relationship is compounded by the fact that both countries are set in their respective approaches to each other and will find it hard to change course.
- Russian leaders see their country as a great power in charge of its own destiny. They do not accept American primacy and want to accelerate the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world; they reject democracy promotion as a cover for U.S.-sponsored regime change; they believe they are entitled to a sphere of influence and will resist perceived U.S. intrusions; and they rely on anti-Americanism to legitimize their unpopular policies with domestic audiences.
- The post–Cold War consensus in the United States—its primacy in a unipolar world, insistence on no spheres of influence, and commitment to democracy promotion—is baked into its foreign policy DNA. In today’s poisoned climate, where Russia is seen as the cause of many problems in the world, changing that consensus will be an uphill struggle.
To break out of this impasse, the United States will have to—for its part—make several key adjustments to its Russia policy, including:
- prioritize U.S. interests vis-à-vis Russia and focus on the essentials—the nuclear relationship and strategic stability;
- leave Russia’s internal affairs for Russians to untangle;
- halt NATO’s eastward expansion and refocus on the alliance’s core mission of collective defense;
- be clear with Ukraine and Georgia that they should not base their foreign policies on the assumption that they will join NATO, but sustain robust programs of security cooperation with them; and
- rethink the sanctions policy toward Russia and use them with restraint.
These changes will not, by themselves, guarantee a different U.S. relationship with Russia, since the Kremlin would also have to make major changes in Russia’s foreign policy behavior. But pursuing the same policy and expecting different results is not a sound approach for the United States. At the very least, the proposed changes would restore a measure of realism, prudence, and discipline to U.S. policy; more closely align the ends and means of U.S. policy toward Russia; avoid inflicting further harm to the relationship; hold the door open for cooperation on shared interests; and shed the chronic habit of overpromising and underdelivering. These are not grandiose or transformational objectives, but they are realistic and attainable and will help the two countries manage their differences more effectively. To quote the great philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, sometimes it is best to find “proximate solutions to insoluble problems.” |
