![]() ![]() “Russia has a right to a seat at the table on all major international decisions.”.In her book Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest, Angela Stent posits seven pillars of Russian foreign policy under Putin. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin Sources of Russian foreign policy Petersburg International Economic Forum gathered near an electronic screen showing Russian President Vladimir Putin who addressed a session of the forum in St. It is instructive to examine what went wrong (and right) and why, including what the United States did wrong, and what the Russians and the West can do to make it better. His “new thinking” on foreign policy, and Reagan’s constructive response to it, generated a turnabout in US-Soviet relations, and helped create conditions for breakthroughs that ended the Cold War peacefully.īoth authors worked on relations with Moscow starting in that more hopeful period, and during the better times that followed during the 1990s. They are realistic about the obstacles, especially in the short run, but do not think that Russia’s relations with the West are permanently stuck in the bad place they are in now, or that “as it is” is Russia’s only possible end state.Ĭurrent US-Russian relations are about as bad as they were during the final years of Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union and the first term of the Ronald Reagan administration, a time when many in the United States and Europe believed that the danger of further deterioration-or even war-was real.īut, things turned out otherwise-and better. The authors prefer, however, to think in more hopeful terms about the longer-term potential of Russia’s relations with the world, the West, and the United States. That’s not a great basis for better relations, or for arguing that the United States or the West must take principal responsibility in reaching out to or accommodating Vladimir Putin’s Russia. ![]() Its leadership expects the West to grant Russia a free hand in “its” half of Europe, and to look the other way when it seeks to deprive its former neighbors-and its own citizens-of the right to chart their own futures. īut, Russia “as it is” is a stagnating authoritarian kleptocracy led by a president-for-life who has started wars against its neighbors, assassinates opponents inside and outside of Russia, interferes in US and European elections, and generally seems to act as an anti-US spoiler at every opportunity. 2 Rose Gottemoeller, et al., “Opinion: It’s Time to Rethink Our Russia Policy,” POLITICO, September 25, 2020. Bush, and Barack Obama tried and failed US-Russian relations are not much better under Trump, and Russia is not on especially good terms with Europe either.ĭealing with Russia “as it is,” as some capable Russia experts (including the authors’ former colleagues) recommend in their “open letter” urging that the United States rethink its Russia policy, sounds unarguably realistic. Trump suggested, would indeed be a good thing. Getting along with Russia, as then-candidate Donald J. ![]() Donald Trump, at the time the Republican Presidential nominee, attends a campaign event at Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Virginia, August 2, 2016. ![]()
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