With the exception of Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t have many friends or associates left in the West. Whereas some leaders in Europe were willing to give him an opportunity to make his case for better relations, Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine has significantly limited Moscow’s freedom of action. Bridges with the West have essentially burned down. Even the European Union, previously content with gobbling up Russian oil and natural gas, is moving away from Russia in the energy sphere; according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, EU imports of Russian gas are down by half this year.
The U.S.-Russia relationship, to put it charily, is a dumpster fire. About a year and a half ago, President Joe Biden and Putin shook hands with each other with stern faces in Geneva and came away from the summit guardedly optimistic that ties could be stabilized. Today, the tone is one of icy contempt, with Putin blasting Biden for orchestrating a campaign to permanently weaken Russia and Biden (rightly) labeling the Russian strongman an aggressor who wants to wipe out Ukrainian identity. White House aides are working hard to ensure Biden and Putin’s paths don’t cross during the Nov. 15-16 G-20 summit in Indonesia.
The personal relationship at the top is in many ways a microcosm of the overall relationship at the state-to-state level. It’s a struggle to find any area of policy convergence between Washington and Moscow. Arms control, that most important of topics, is dormant, with the Biden administration having suspended talks a day after Russia began lobbing missiles at Ukrainian cities. The U.S. and Russian delegations at the United Nations Security Council blame each other for every sin. The war in Ukraine is bleeding into other policy issues as well: Russia is not as constructive in the Iran nuclear talks as it once was, no doubt a consequence of Moscow doing everything possible to complicate a key U.S. policy objective in retaliation for Washington’s $18 billion in military support for Kyiv.
Nevertheless, U.S. and Russian officials are slowly coming to grips with the reality that an outright severing of communication links wouldn’t be prudent. Much has been made of Putin’s ominous suggestion that Russia will use the full power of its military to protect Russian territory — code for nuclear weapons — with many viewing it as a desperate bluff meant to sow divides in the West. But U.S. policymakers, who have immense responsibility on their shoulders, can’t simply plan for the best-case scenario. The old phraseology “hope for the best but plan for worst” applies. Durable, consistent contact is necessary at the senior-most levels to deliver messages clearly and forthrightly, minimize any misunderstandings that inevitably develop during a time of war and explore, however tentatively, paths that could lead to a de-escalation.
This is precisely what U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan has been doing for months. The Wall Street Journal reports that Sullivan, a longtime foreign policy aide to Biden and a top State Department official during the Obama administration, has participated in conversations with a number of Putin’s advisers, aiming to maintain open lines of communication, warn Moscow of the consequences of using a nuclear warhead and nip further escalation in the bud. Sullivan has also spoken with Ukraine’s political leadership throughout the war, including during a visit to Kyiv on Friday, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov.
Sullivan isn’t the only senior U.S. official making the rounds. After five months of radio silence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley had a telephone call on Oct. 24 with Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu twice over a three-day period in late October, which we can only assume touched on Putin’s threats of nuclear escalation. There are likely other calls that haven’t been disclosed publicly; it wouldn’t be surprising, for instance, if CIA Director William Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia and someone who is extremely familiar with how Putin operates, was involved in some of them.
Are these conversations appropriate? Should the U.S. be spending some of its valuable time talking with representatives of a country committing war crimes, forcefully relocating civilians under its control and condemning the Ukrainian people to a long, dark winter? Unsurprisingly, there are more than a few in the commentariat who would strongly disagree with the notion of sitting down with the Russians under any circumstances. Some on Capitol Hill would rather designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and freeze it out completely. Given the grisly nature of Russia’s conduct in Ukraine, one can’t condemn folks for feeling the way they do.
Ultimately, however, such recommendations are predicated on emotion. Emotion can be an extraordinarily powerful force, of course, and depending on the circumstances, it can be entirely justifiable. But emotion can also limit our options, cloud our judgment and tempt us to take actions that aren’t fully thought through — if they are thought through at all.
Nations don’t have the luxury of letting emotion rule the roost. We may despise what Russia is doing to its neighbor and dream of the day when Putin is sitting in the docket at The Hague as a defendant. Yet the U.S. doesn’t have the luxury of wishing Russia, a country with nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads, including up to 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads, into the ether, nor does it have the power to smash it into submission.
At best, U.S.-Russia relations won’t improve until Putin leaves the Kremlin. The most we can hope for is to prevent the situation from going from really bad to worse.
