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bne December 2020
Opinion 65
general, that “America should signal our readiness to work with a Russian government only when it is clear that Moscow doesn’t view the United States as the enemy.”
This was a fairly predictable division between what one could call “realists” and “hawks.” Neither side consider Putin’s Russia to be anything other than a kleptocracy, a threat and
a problem, but they had an honest disagreement as to how best to respond.
Hawking their wares
Since the election, though, there has been a distinct hardening of the tone from much of the individual op-eds and policy pieces. Whether this is simply because that is the side of the debate that feels most confident, or conversely whether it is because it seems the “realists” are in the ascendant and they
“Neither side consider Putin’s
Russia to be anything other than
a kleptocracy, a threat and a problem, but they had an honest disagreement as to how best to respond”
must shout their case all the more loudly, remains to be seen. Nonetheless, this is an alarming escalation, even though there are also of course many more positive interventions, on topics such as arms control and “stopping the new Cold War.”
Just to pick a few examples, in Foreign Policy, David Kramer – a prime mover behind the second Politico letter – asserted flatly that “Russia under Putin poses an existential threat to the United States and other countries of the West, Russia’s neighbours and his own people.” Let’s just pause there for
a moment: existential threat? A threat to the very existence of not, say, American democracy (which itself would be quite an admission of fundamental doubt in the system), but America and the West? This implies something not just about Russian capability but also intent, and it is hard to see any evidence that Putin is trying to destroy – not weaken, or challenge,
or chasten, but destroy – the United States.
In the Washington Examiner, Janusz Bugajski warned against the “mistaken assumption repeated by incoming administrations is that Washington can work constructively with Putin’s Kremlin in confronting global challenges.” In other words, it is a fallacy even to try to work with Russia on even the most egregious areas of common interest.
Meanwhile, to give a final example, Thomas Kent, the former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, delivered
a call for America to reach out to the Russian people not
with scholarships and visa relaxations but with a propaganda campaign that could – and in fairness, he says could, not should – even be used for “inflaming popular discontent
in Russia, already on the rise, with the goal of sparking
a “colour revolution” that would bring down Putin’s regime.” He goes on to admit that “any hope that Western messaging to the general Russian population can chase Putin from office is probably fanciful” but simply to raise the notion plays into every Kremlin concern about Western gibridnaya voina.
The fundamental assumptions of these interventions are:
1. Putin and Russia are essentially to blame for the worsening in relations, and to delve too deeply into why the Russians act and believe as they do is somehow a step towards accepting the undeniably aggressive and sometimes vicious Kremlin behaviour. Yet to ignore why they themselves
feel aggrieved and under threat is to risk worsening the situation.
2. Putin’s legitimacy rests on his aggressive foreign policy. This is only half true; unable at present to offer Russians an improved quality of life in return for loyalty, he tried initially to win it with empire – Crimea – but as it became clear that was a one-off case, now instead he seeks to demand it as the price for defending the Motherland from a hostile outside world. The tougher the Western rhetoric, the better for him, in that respect.
3. Under Trump, US policy was soft on Russia, and so the answer is to toughen up. Whatever The Donald’s peculiarly fanboyish utterances about Vladimir, at no point did he exert political capital to hinder sanctions or otherwise
cosy up with Moscow. US-Russian relations are more confrontational than at any point since 1991, and so the notion that the problem has been simply a lack of toughness seems hard to sustain.
It is not that there are no virtues in all the specific policy prescriptions embodied in all these articles. Attacking Russian dirty money, something both Kramer and Bugajski discuss,
is not going to have any meaningful impact on Kremlin
policy, but it is worth doing on its own merits. (And hopefully attacking Chinese, Saudi and even American dirty money soon will follow.) Likewise, there is value in demonstrating
a certain information warfare capability, and certainly striking back directly at troll farms and other purveyors of toxic misinformation, as Kent suggests.
However, the leitmotif is too often both that Putin’s regime ought to be brought down and also that this is part of asserting that America is back as the world’s best and only superpower. In Kramer’s words, to “send a strong signal that there is a new sheriff in town.”
Russia policy ought not to be national psychotherapy after four years of Trumpian dysfunction. It also needs to be careful
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