Our Russia Problem
RUSSIA’S place in American politics used to be (relatively) simple. The further right you stood, the more you feared Ivan and his Slavic wiles. The further left, the more you likely thought the Red Menace was mostly just a scare story.
Now things are more complicated. In just 15 years, the Republican Party has had a president who famously claimed a soul-to-soul relationship with Vladimir Putin … followed by two consecutive nominees who took a starkly hawkish stance on Russia … and now a presidential candidate in Donald Trump who has a palpable man-crush on Putin and promises closer ties with his regime.
.. At the root of this uncertainty is the fact that neither the United States nor Russia seems certain exactly what kind of power it intends to be. During the Cold War, we were (mostly) a status quo power — practicing containment, building intricate alliance networks, propping up bad actors for fear of something worse — and the Russians were the revisionists, promoting socialist revolution from Havana to Hanoi.
.. Under George W. Bush America was a revolutionary power, preaching the messianic faith of liberalism and democracy, while Moscow was a friend of strongmen, stability and the Saddam-era status quo.
.. Our primary interest in Syria and elsewhere is not, as it was decades ago, containing Russian expansion. It’s containing jihadi terrorism, ending the refugee crisis, restoring some kind of basic order — and in all these tasks we need a way to work with Moscow if we hope to see them through to any kind of finish.