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When entering the White House in 2009, President Barack Obama sought to “reset” relations with Russia. The Bush administration had tense relations with Russia, cancelling the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty during its first term, waging the war in Iraq over Russian objections, and establishing missile defense stations in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Obama administration decided to scrap the missile defense stations in Eastern Europe, signed a controversial nuclear reduction accord, and helped Russia become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, despite increasing America’s engagement with Russia, the Obama administration has recently been frustrated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reassumed power in 2012. Russia has supported the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, has hedged its bets on Iran’s nuclear program, and violated Ukraine’s territorial integrity by seizing Crimea. Putin’s recent actions have given credence to domestic conservatives claims that the Obama administration is weak on national security and they make Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s claims about Russia being America’s “number one geopolitical foe” prescient.
U.S.-Russian relations have been tortured since the twentieth century and questions about U.S.-Russian relations are bound to come up more regularly in light of recent events. This topic brief will provide a brief historical overview of U.S.-Russian relations, break down the foreign policy goals and mindsets of President Obama and Vladimir Putin, and then assess whether a new Cold War is breaking out and how this could affect the relationship between both countries and American politics.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
Historical Overview of U.S.-Russian Relations
In the twentieth century, the United States and Russia had a very uneasy relationship and this has its roots in the Russian Revolution of 1917. This revolution, which first established a provisional government to replace the Russian tsar and then later established a communist government, took Russia out of the First World War and necessitated the use of American troops to stop Germany’s 1918 offensive on the Western Front. After the First World War, the United States dispatched troops to Russia to help the White army in the Russian Civil War, which was fighting against the Red Army of the communist government. Russia’s communist leaders were aware of the support provided to White forces by Western European governments and the United States and Russia and the United States did not recognize the Soviet Union as a legitimate political entity until November 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The U.S. provided food aid to the Soviet Union in the 1930s when the collectivization policies of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin produced food shortages in urban areas. The U.S. also provided machinery for farmers and Soviet farmers came to think that every piece of U.S. technology was a Ford because Ford provided tractors that, to the Soviet farmers’ amazement, did not break down. The U.S. and the Soviet Union would become allies in the Second World War, which was a strained relationship as Stalin thought the U.S. and Britain were intentionally delaying an offensive action on the Western Front (what later became D-Day in June 1944) so that Soviet troops would bear the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany and incur a large number of casualties. Stalin also became suspicious of Western technology, which was confirmed when the United States successfully acquired an atomic bomb in July 1945. In fact, Stalin knew that the U.S. had the bomb before President Harry Truman did because of successful Soviet espionage efforts in American nuclear facilities.
The end of the Second World War inaugurated the Cold War as Stalin reneged on promises to provide for free elections in Poland and swallowed up many of the Nazi occupied territories in Eastern Europe as satellite states. Germany became partitioned between the Western powers and the Soviet Union as well, with its capital Berlin similarly partitioned (and having a wall erected to illustrate the divide in 1961). The U.S. also increased the temperature of the Cold War because of its suspicions that the Soviet Union was seeking to conquer all of continental Europe and spread communism throughout the world, which threatened the free market and democratic ideals that the U.S. stood for. When the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb in 1949, the world faced the possibility of a nuclear exchange and this became more of a possibility in ensuing decades when both nations used their investments in rocketry to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the closest that the world has come to nuclear holocaust when the Soviet Union placed missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba. Eventually a deal that preserved Cuba’s communist government and removed Soviet missiles from Cuba and the U.S. missiles from Turkey ended the crisis. Still, the Cold War, which lasted until 1991, saw the U.S. and Soviet Union compete for influence in the Third World by presenting countries with different political and economic systems. Whereas the U.S. backed regimes that were anti-communist (not all of the regimes it backed were democratic or free market-oriented), the Soviet Union backed regimes that were anti-Western. The U.S. presented a model to the Third World based on free markets and individual liberty whereas the Soviet Union promised a political and economic system based on social justice. The economic success of Japan and South Korea, coupled with the aggressive push for globalization in the final decades of the twentieth century, accelerated the collapse of Soviet influence in the Third World and economic problems eventually brought about the Soviet Union’s demise.
America’s relationship with the newly named Russian Federation improved under the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. The United States and Western economists encouraged Yeltsin to introduce “shock therapy” policies that were designed to make Russia a free market economy. Unfortunately, these reforms tended to benefit a small class of wealthy Russians, who bought state-controlled economic assets like natural gas and oil companies for pennies on the dollar. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 and declining oil prices created an economic crisis in Russia in 1998 which forced Russia to default on its debts. Russia also faced a crippling war in Chechnya, which sought to separate itself from the Russian Federation.
Vladimir Putin’s ascendancy to the Russian presidency on December 31, 1999 signified a new era in Russian politics. A former KGB official, Putin went about repaying Russia’s international creditors and higher oil prices helped Russia’s economy grow. Putin successfully drove much of the Chechen rebellion underground and controversially jailed Russian oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky that criticized his rule. Putin’s tenure in Russia has been marked by a weakening of Russian democracy, but also by a recovery from the 1998 financial crisis. It has also been marked by Russia reasserting itself on a global scale in terms of handling Iran’s nuclear program, playing a role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, providing aid to the Syrian government in the Syrian civil war, and formulating an ideology that stands against Western social interests.
Extempers that discuss U.S.-Russian relations would be wise to note that the U.S. and Russia operate in two very different environments and their historical development has prompted them to view the world in very different terms. Whereas the United States was safeguarded by the Pacific and Atlantic oceans for much of its history, Russia has constantly worried about attacks on its borders from China, the Ottoman Empire (the Islamic World’s great empire that fell after the First World War), and from Western Europe. Part of Stalin’s justification for seizing territory after the Second World War was that Russia needed a buffer zone to defend itself and he wasn’t off-base in this assumption. Napoleon invaded Russia in 1912 and the German army twice invaded Russia through Polish territories in 1914 and 1941. Russian foreign policy thinkers have typically believed that expanding its territory provides more security for its center. It has also sought to expand territory to acquire warm water ports for commerce, which is what prompted its wars against the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries.
For its part, the United States has typically had an internal divide over whether it is best to export democratic ideals and individual liberty abroad or be a good model for democracy at home. Indeed, this divide is still expressed in U.S. foreign policy as those who prefer disengagement from international affairs argue that America should use its resources to be a strong beacon for democratic institutions. After the costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans have shied away from new international commitments and part of this is reflected in Americans opposing President Obama’s drive to bomb Syria last year and why fewer than 33% of Americans, according to DefenseOne on March 27th, a blog about American defense issues, support overt American action in Ukraine. Still, among America’s political class there is a willingness to retain America’s commitment to international institutions to maintain peace and stability in the world. Also, while Americans want the U.S. to relax its commitment as the “world’s policeman” and make other countries pay for a greater share of their defense, the reality is that when a global superpower steps away from the scene problems typically emerge. The lack of a strong superpower guiding the world’s international system is what produced the Second World War and critics of President Obama point out that if the U.S. relaxes its role in global affairs that problems will flare in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
Putin vs. Obama in Foreign Policy
What will really aid your analysis in discussing U.S.-Russian relations is explaining to your audience how Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama view the world and why they have these views. Doing so will allow you to explain to your audience why events have transpired as they have and will allow you to make more accurate projections of what could come next in U.S.-Russian relations.
President Obama’s foreign policy has been marked by his willingness to disengage America from entangling commitments that have stationed U.S. troops abroad. The two biggest theaters of operations where this has taken place is Iraq and Afghanistan. After failing to secure a status of forces agreement with Iraq in 2011, Obama withdrew U.S. troops and the same may occur in Afghanistan since President Hamid Karzai refuses to commit himself to a stationing of U.S. troops in the area after 2014. The potential withdrawal from Afghanistan has sparked criticism from former Bush administration officials like Donald Rumsfeld, who told FOX News recently that “a trained ape” could have a better foreign policy than the Obama administration (as reported in The New York Daily News of March 25th). Der Spiegel on March 26th writes that President Obama has also demanded more help from America’s European allies in shouldering the burden of defense commitments and has preferred to focus on domestic instead of international issues. The Obama administration has also opened itself up to criticism domestically because it has typically shown itself uncomfortable with American nationalism. The Washington Post on March 23rd writes that President Obama has sought to encourage shared interests in U.S. foreign policy discussions rather than emphasizing American exceptionalism, which is the idea that America’s brand of democracy and individual freedoms are unique in world history.
Another tenet of President Obama’s foreign policy has been the use of international institutions to facilitate American foreign policy aims. In contrast to President George W. Bush, who disdained international institutions and viewed them as impediments to his ability to act, President Obama has emphasized more negotiation and deal making within established international organizations like the United Nations. The United Nations General Assembly recently found Russia’s annexation of Crimea illegal by a vote of 100-11 and the Obama administration has used international cooperation to broker sanctions against Russian officials responsible for the Ukrainian crisis. Sanctions have also been used against Iran and the punitive nature of those sanction is seen as one of the reasons why Iran was willing to broker a nuclear deal at the end of last year. The problem with these approaches, though, is that they can take a great deal of time to accomplish their aims and it can be difficult for a president to sell their policies as working before an American body politic that is traditionally impatient. The other problem is that if the other party betrays the negotiations then the sitting president appears weak and outmaneuvered. This was a problem President Obama initially had with Iran, who refused his initial overtures to negotiate and it has also been a problem with Russia, who has continued to supply Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with weapons after the U.S. and Russia brokered an accord with the Syrian regime to dismantle its chemical weapons program in return for avoiding a U.S. military strike. Finally, favoring negotiations can be a challenge if your partner rejects some of the tenets of international law that the entire system of negotiations is based on. The Christian Science Monitor on March 26th writes that with Ukraine, Russia’s leadership is challenging the principles of international law by annexing the territory of another nation. If the nation you are negotiating with rejects the assumptions behind your position, it makes acquiring a lasting deal very difficult.
In terms of his relationship with Russia, President Obama reflects the mindset of younger Americans who have very little knowledge of the Cold War. The Washington Post article previously cited suggests that the President believes that technology, globalization, stateless terrorism, and the emergence of global powers like India and China have ended the Cold War. The Christian Science Monitor on March 29th reveals that President Obama also emphasized the non-existent nature of the Cold War by saying that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Russia does not have a global ideology on which to oppose American interests, and that the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) do not want a conflict with Russia. This article points out that while older Americans are more likely to believe the U.S. is entering a new Cold War, younger Americans disagree and are hardly paying attention to Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
The Brookings Institution on March 16th provides a very insightful overview of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy motivations and what he has sought to do as Russia’s president. According to Brookings, Putin has six identities that work together: statist, history man, survivalist, outsider, free marketer, and case officer. These cause Putin to act like a classic Russian conservative and position himself as a nationalist figure that is seeking to re-establish Russia as a strong international player through a combination of territorial acquisitions, international deal making, and economic reform. Putin sees Russia as a pole of civilization that is unique in history and that Russians have typically been socially conservative. This is why Putin has supported the Russian Orthodox Church and it is why he refuses to recognize Ukraine’s legitimacy, since the Kievan Rus were the peoples who built Russia (which means that Ukrainians and Russians are the same people). Putin celebrates Russia’s triumph in the Second World War, often referred to in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War” and his survivalist mentality explains why he has built up Russian reserves of oil, livestock feed, and military equipment in case an economic crisis or war emerges. Finally, Putin saw the East German government and Soviet Union collapse due to battles between hardliners and reformers in the late 1980s and early 1990s and this is why he is skeptical of political opposition or anything resembling radical change.
Putin’s nationalism and support of conservative Russian institutions is what has put him at odds with the West and other parts of the international community. Putin’s justification for possibly sending Russian troops into Eastern Ukraine is that Russian speakers there are being discriminated against and threatened by Ukrainian forces. In fact, The Economist on April 19th writes that Putin has made a demand that Russian-speakers everywhere should be protected and that Russia has the right to intervene to protect them. Since there are Russian minorities in Transdniestria (a breakaway province in Moldova), Kazakhstan, and the Baltic countries, these could be future targets of Russian expansion. The Baltics are protected by NATO, but Moldova and Kazakhstan or not. The Tehran Times of April 16th notes that Poland also has fears of Russian expansionism since it has been a historical target of Russian aggression. Putin’s demands mirror those of Adolf Hitler before the Second World War, who used the pretext of protecting ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland as an excuse for annexing territories into the Third Reich. Additionally, Putin’s championing of conservative values is what has produced a clampdown on homosexuals in Russia, which was an issue before the recent Winter Olympics. The opinion of this author is that Putin is seeking to establish a set of socially conservative Russian values that appeal to those in the developing world who are opposed to the more liberal ideas of the West and the United States that are more tolerant of homosexuals, emphasize multiculturalism, and lean towards secularism. African nations have illustrated this resistance to Western ideals by enacting harsh anti-homosexuality laws and encouraging the growth of evangelical churches. These nations and other like-minded ones might find that Putin’s brand of conservatism is worth investing in and thereby form a bloc to counterbalance Western interests. The Washington Post on April 15th postulates that Putin’s support of “sovereign democracy” where nations can develop their own understandings of democracy that fit their traditions and history can have large appeal in a world that is growing resentful of Western-led institutions (e.g. African nations and their arguments against the International Criminal Court). As a result, Putin is possibly the vanguard of what is becoming a Global Culture War rather than a sequel to the Cold War and if so, he is seeking to challenge the ideological tenets upon which Western civilization has been based in recent decades.
Putin has also shown himself to be a rational international actor and using Russia’s foreign policy establishment against his foes. Foreign Policy on April 8th writes that Putin tends to keep his demands localized and focuses on battles that he can win. In Georgia in 2008, he invaded quickly and seized territory because he knew that the coming global economic crisis limited Western options against him. Similarly, with Ukraine he has recognized that the West does not have the stomach to commit itself to a prolonged Ukrainian intervention and even the Obama administration admits there is not much that can be done to make Russia leave Crimea. Putin has also borrowed a great deal from American neoconservatives (those who have sought to remake the world in America’s image through diplomacy and military force), as The Atlantic points out on March 24th. Like neoconservatives, Putin sees foreign policy as a masculine field where weaker parties are taken advantage of. As a result, he seeks to portray himself as a strong, masculine figure who wins judo competitions and rides on horseback without his shirt. Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin remarked that “People [look] at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president (Barack Obama) as one who wears mom jeans.” Furthermore, Putin has shown a willingness, like neoconservatives, to bend international law for his own ends by advocating for ethnic self-determination in Crimea and justifying its annexation by the Russian Federation. Russia’s diplomatic experience has also helped Putin achieve his goals and Politico makes a convincing case on April 16th that Russia’s diplomats outmaneuver their American counterparts on a consistent basis. Whereas the United States staffs a large portion of its diplomatic corps with political appointments, Russia staffs theirs with people who have long-term experience in the countries they are stationed and their ambassadors and other officials typically speak multiple languages. Although the U.S. has a few advantages with its diplomats in terms of their social media usage and ability to make contacts outside of foreign ministries, the experience of the Russian diplomatic service enables Russia to play a longer end game than their American counterparts and they seek to wait out the United States in foreign hot spots because they will still be there when an American president’s term expires and the U.S. diplomatic corps is reshuffled.
A New Cold War & Domestic Political Fallout
The international media has been quick to label the rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia as a new cold war, but doing so would be pulling the trigger too quickly. First, as the analysis given above suggests, we might be witnessing a new conflict entirely based on cultural values that would be divorced from the old Cold War mindset of democracy versus communism. Also, Putin is not as strong as he appears. Slate on March 21st writes that if the United States aids Russian opposition activists like they did Serbian activists who wished to topple Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 that Putin’s grip on power could erode. The Russian economy is also based on high oil and natural gas prices and if these plummet then Russia could find itself in dire economic straits again. According to the Associated Press on April 13th, his would weaken Putin’s popularity and weaken its plans to spend more than $700 billion on modernizing its military equipment, technology, and industry by 2020. Further aggression may also prompt more punitive sanctions against Russian industry. Although Putin has sought to divorce Russian investments from the West as much as possible, The Christian Science Monitor on March 28th writes that sanctions on Russian metals mining, banking, finance, and energy could weaken the Russian economy and also serve to undermine Putin. However, these sanctions would take a great deal of time to go into effect and they also have to take into consideration the dependence that Western European countries like Germany have on Russian natural gas in the short-term. Also, Reason notes on March 20th that Putin’s annexation of Crimea will hurt Russia in the long run because the territory is poor, underdeveloped, and rife with organized crime and that now becomes Russia’s, rather than Ukraine’s, problem.
A new Cold War is also not likely in the short-term because the Obama administration needs Russia to accomplish several of its foreign policy objectives. The Business Insider on March 21st points out that Russian cooperation is needed in Iran, Syria, and with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. If Russia were to pull out of any of these accords it would potentially weaken America’s attempt at derailing Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon, reducing the violence of the Syrian civil war, and brining adequate pressure on the Palestinians to make a peace deal with the Israelis. Additionally, the Obama administration knows that it is overextended and The Detroit Free Press on March 19th emphasizes that money that would arm Ukraine would be better spent at home. The U.S. public would likely not support heavy U.S. involvement in Ukraine and it would place the Obama administration in the same position that they found themselves in during the Syrian chemical weapons debate last fall where public opinion was heavily against military action (however, that has not stopped Senator John McCain from adding Ukraine to his list of countries to send U.S. military aid to).
With regards to Ukraine, foreign policy officials from the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, and European Union (EU) met in Geneva last week and hashed out a plan to “de-escalate” the Ukrainian crisis. The Christian Science Monitor on April 17th says that the agreement tells both sides in Ukraine to refrain from violence and provocative actions, calls for an amnesty for protesters (except for those charged with capital crimes), pledges the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to track de-escalation measures by both sides, and Ukraine pledges to engage in a constitutional process to engage Ukrainian minorities and all political groups. However, the agreement may not be worth much as Haaretz on April 18th says that Ukrainian separatists in the east say that the Kiev government is not legitimate and The New Republic on April 17th says that the agreement has loopholes for what constitutes “illegal armed groups” (since Western and Russian forces blame the other side for being illegal), that the OSCE has no real power to enforce the accord, and the Kiev government cannot disarm groups or dislodge anyone that is opposing its rule at present time. Extempers should continue to follow Ukraine closely, especially because a presidential election is due on May 25th. The results of that election and any violence before it will give an indication about Russia’s ambitions in the region. A great deal of unrest in the east prior to the election or attempts to subvert the election date could signal Russian willingness to send troops into Eastern Ukraine. However, doing so could come at a cost. As Foreign Policy on April 14th notes, Ukraine could engage in a costly insurgency with Russian forces and a prolonged fight in Ukraine could cause Western European governments to increase their defense budgets to such a level that Russia could not keep up without facing serious economic problems. Increased U.S. defense spending in the 1980s was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine could become in the twenty-first century what Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
For those extempers who already have an eye on 2016 presidential election questions, the failure of the “reset” with Russia could have an impact. The Defense One article cited earlier points out that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could experience problems since she presided over the “reset” and it will be tough for her to distance herself from the Obama administration’s decisions. Still, Secretary Clinton has taken to comparing Russia to Nazi Germany and is going back to the hawkish foreign policy she has typically supported (and which cost her the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination against the more doveish Obama). Republicans have their own problems with Russia as one of the perceived frontrunners, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, has a history of opposing strong U.S. engagement with the world (which he is gradually retreating from). If U.S. foreign policy setbacks continue by 2016, which could involve not only Russian interference in the Ukraine but also Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon or another significant attack by al-Qaeda, it will be a notable issue on the campaign trail and candidates from both parties could be trying to seem more aggressive than the other to win the White House. If so, it could serve as a danger for global cooperation since a president elected on a hawkish platform would need to demonstrate their capacity for action.
In the end, U.S.-Russian relations remain complicated and shrouded by two very different worldviews. Russia believes in re-establishing itself as a global power and returning to a multipolar world, whereas the United States seeks to preserve the international system that has brought stability to Europe since the Second World War. Although President Obama has sought to withdraw some of America’s international commitments, this could be a mistake as The Washington Post on March 2nd writes that military strength still matters in today’s world and the United States must reassure its allies in Europe and Southeast Asia that it will be there for them is a crisis erupts with their neighbors. The trick is to use American power, diplomatically, militarily, economically, or otherwise, in such a way that avoids the possibility of armed conflict between the U.S. and Russia and accomplishes American policy objectives.