There have been numerous articles on the authoritarian strengthening of power in Russia and Putin’s backsliding from democracy throughout the 2000s. Russian positions and initiatives in Syria, Iran, and Ukraine have been portrayed within media venues across the West as evidence of quasi-Soviet revanchism.
In the midst of this there has been very little consideration of the impact of American positioning on the Russian perspective. This article briefly examines that influence, whether it is the openly adversarial neoconservative foundation under George Bush or the Republican Party in general, the so-called ‘reset’ interaction under Barack Obama, or American foreign policy analysts and academics meant to be experts on Russia. What will be exposed is a fairly uninspired and non-innovative American policy that not only fails to consider Russian initiatives from Russia’s own national security interests, but aims to contain Russia within a continued Cold War box that not only sours opportunities for collaboration but guarantees the absence of partnership in important global security areas. The idea that Russia’s contemporary positions have not evolved beyond the residue of Cold War mentalities seems to be more a product of scholars and practitioners in the West rather than in the institutions of Russia itself. This piece examines the consequences of imagining Russia only as nemesis and whether the West is more responsible for this Cold War pathology than it is willing to admit.
There are numerous think tanks, both in the United States and Russia, which are deeply concerned about the state of Russian-American relations. Places like the Moscow Carnegie Centre or the Brookings Institute in Washington DC are regular go-to places for the media when seeking expert opinion and analysis. However, these centers have had a decided slant in allocating blame for the poor bilateral relations to the Russians, with the explanations ranging from the fairly simple to the rather mystically esoteric. What the American media outlets and think tank personalities fail to recognize is how much of this judgment is coming not from explicitly observable behavior or direct quotes from Russian actors but is placed upon Russia by the so-called experts themselves as they push a decidedly one-sided interpretation.
What Russia usually finds so irksome is that when it does what everyone else does in terms of exercising global power, it is judged as psychologically unstable or deficient. In short, if the United States does not trust Russia, it is because of how Russia behaves on the global stage and its untrustworthy history. If Russia does not trust the United States, that is simply Russian posturing and a case of political transference, wanting to blame its own self-made problems on someone else so that it can avoid any accountability. The problem is how readily this is unquestioningly accepted and how few so-called Russian experts are willing to step forward and shine a light on such intellectual superficiality.
Moving toward straight politics, while much hope was initially placed on the so-called Obama ‘reset’ in American relations with Russia in 2008, the reality is that enthusiasm quickly faded and subsequently placed the Democratic Party as squarely adversarial in its attitude toward Russia as the Republicans. Indeed, in today’s environment of divided government, having a problem with Russia seems to be one of the few happy consensus points in Washington. The problem, of course, is how that consensus is built more upon partisan posturing: each side trying to one-up the other in order to earn foreign policy merit points. There are some voices that decry a picture being painted about Russia that combines inaccuracy with heightened rhetoric while purposely ignoring mitigating contexts and less negative observations. However, those voices are extremely rare and at the moment easily drowned out by the drumbeat of American derision.
This perfectly matches what Stephen Cohen astutely characterized several years back as ‘Cold War Triumphalism.’ In basic terms, since Russia lost the Cold War it was and should be treated as a de facto defeated nation. This triumphalism has arguably never left American decision-making power given that the advent of this attitude began with President Bill Clinton and has lasted through three presidencies (two Democrat, one Republican), totaling six terms and 24 years. In other words, the American attitudinal perspective toward Russia has witnessed a literal generation passing where the United States has felt justified in selective cooperation, one-way bargaining, uneven playing fields and reluctance on its own part to bury the ghosts of the past because said ghosts give it a decided political advantage.
In a sense, the debate is one of degree: there is no doubt Russia has accepted that the end of the Cold War signaled a decided shift in the balance of power. It did not, however, allow that change to mean Russia was now permanently relegated to the status of nation-state also-ran. And quite frankly, too many voices in American institutions of power, both governmentally and academically, have taken that relegation as an unquestioned reality. As long as the two nations continue to engage each other with this attitudinal chasm, then the relationship will continue to be dogged by vast differences of opinion and massively divergent interpretations.
The opportunity to evolve American analysis on Russia has always been present but ultimately missed. This only makes other analyses that offer up platitudes about Russian mysticism seeking great power or the Russian bear needing to bare its claws or the innate inability of Russia to ever embrace democracy more troubling. Even fine scholars and commentators have all produced work in the last two years that continue this trend and thus have further concretized a vision of U.S.-Russia relations that seems doomed to animus. The issue at hand seems to be that too many powerful decision-makers in the West feel lately as if they were a bit bamboozled and outplayed, especially with the situation in Ukraine. They felt, rightly or wrongly, as if they ended up with proverbial diplomatic egg on their faces and they did not like it. Even worse, it seemed they could not stand the possibility that this game of chicken ended with only one round (Crimea) and there would be no opportunity to regain the upper hand with future rounds. Thus, this situation cannot be just about Crimea. Russia must not be satisfied with this as the end game. There simply must be another chess piece to be moved. Because, well, just because: because Russians aren’t supposed to be diplomatically agile and astute. And they most certainly cannot be strategically deft and subtle. At least, not when they are compared to their counterparts in the West, who think Russians are rash; Russians are emotional; Russians are capricious; Russians are sneaky; and quite frankly, Russians are a bit daft. All of these things they can be because all of these things suit the players at the other end of the chess board. This is the danger of Cold War pathology: it starts to warp observation so that it caters to the desired opinion outcome.
Conflicts are never clean. War has always been this way and it is unlikely that war will be something different any time soon. But Syria, Ukraine, and now Iran have been rather frustrating events for many in the West, and especially for those who feel that Russia and the United States line up better as allies and not adversaries. The United States has not been able to come up with something innovative or progressive that might create a new thought process to stop the Cold War pathology with which it is afflicted. Faced by this political impotence, the players in the West seem to have fallen back on the tried-and-true tactic of conjuring a bogeyman. Clearly, that bogeyman is Russia. Alas, it is also somewhat lame because this tactic is not about stopping war or creating new dialogue or fostering true engagement, but rather just about assigning blame. It is about treading down old paths well-worn with miscommunication and purposeful animosity. It is an AFFLICTION, not an ANALYSIS.
