Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, every U.S. president has entered office seeking to improve Washington’s relationship with Russia — and every single one of them has left that office years later having failed to accomplish the objective.
Bill Clinton was once chummy with Boris Yeltsin until NATO expansion, U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo grated on their personal chemistry. George W. Bush was doe-eyed when he looked at Vladimir Putin, only to learn after Russia’s invasion of Georgia that the ex-KGB agent wasn’t the genuine, democratic reformer he first thought. Barack Obama was set to turn the page with Dmitry Medvedev and even managed to sign a new arms control agreement with the Russian president. The bilateral relationship, however, soured over a litany of disputes, from Syria and Ukraine to Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Pending a miracle, President Joe Biden is bound to follow the same path as his predecessors.
In April 2021, Biden spoke of his desire to establish “a stable, predictable relationship” with Russia. The word “stable” was instructive, exhibiting a dose of realpolitik. While Washington and Moscow were never going to see eye to eye on every issue, they could at least try to limit their disagreements and respect one another’s core interests. Biden’s June 2021 summit with Putin, where the two leaders promised to work on strategic stability, was a tangible sign that the world’s biggest nuclear weapons powers were interested in moving forward.
The war in Ukraine has totally upended whatever hope the U.S. and Russia had toward a normal relationship. By virtue of Russia’s despicable conduct over the last nine weeks, relations between Washington and Moscow are now at their lowest point since the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan blasted the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” The very notion of U.S. and Russian officials speaking to one another directly is now anathema, with the politics in both capitals calling for a more confrontational approach. The Kremlin views the U.S. as the brains and muscle behind an anti-Russia coalition that seeks to use Ukraine to create a quagmire for Russian forces. The U.S. and its allies, meanwhile, consider Russia under Putin to be a highly destructive, revisionist power living in a dystopian fantasy.
The last several weeks have done nothing to lower the temperature. Despite highly publicized defeats in the field, casualties in the thousands and the prospect of the worst economic recession in Russia in more than a quarter century, Putin is as committed to grinding down the Ukrainian military today as he was when the war started over two months ago. The Russian army’s indiscriminate use of artillery, airstrikes and other heavy weaponry inside and outside of the Donbas are illustrative of Putin’s urgency after repeated slip-ups.
The U.S. and its NATO allies have shown just as much commitment to supporting the Ukrainians as the Russians have to defeating them. If Putin believed attacking Ukraine would turn NATO into a squabbling, dysfunctional family, he severely miscalculated. Washington and Europe at large are gambling that a combination of military assistance to Kyiv and ever-stronger sanctions against the Russian economy will compel Putin to either give up on his venture or sue for a settlement. Biden’s $33 billion funding request on behalf of Ukraine (including $20 billion earmarked for security assistance), Poland’s delivery of Soviet-era tanks to buttress Ukrainian ground forces and Germany’s evolution away from Russian energy will further increase the cost to Moscow, economically and militarily.
The “stable, predictable relationship” envisioned by Biden a year ago is simply off the table as long as the war in Ukraine continues. Even when the war does eventually end, U.S.-Russia relations could remain in a period of intense antagonism. Given the total disregard with which Moscow has prosecuted the war, it’s hard to imagine Biden sitting down with Putin ever again.
The problem, however, is that Russia is here to stay regardless. It can’t be wished away or ignored any more than it can be transformed into a liberal democratic utopia. Even if Putin were to somehow wake up and decide to transfer his authority to a successor, Russia is likely to remain a formidable enough power with its own distinct set of national interests, geopolitical ambitions and sense of self — much of which conflicts with the U.S. position. The U.S. can vehemently disagree with Russian foreign policy and organize effective pushback when necessary. What Washington can’t do is be naive and think it can pressure Russia into behaving the way the U.S. wants it to behave.
During a conversation with NPR, former NATO Deputy Secretary-General Rose Gottemoeller offered an astute observation: “I do think, at some point, we are going to have to reopen … some discussions with Russia, at least about constraining and controlling nuclear weapons,” adding that it’s not in America’s interest “to have a great big pariah state with nuclear weapons.”
Successfully balancing the desire to assist Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression while maintaining open lines of communication with the Kremlin will go a long way in determining whether the U.S. can still practice good statecraft.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist who has also written for Newsweek and the Spectator.
