It is Time to Stop Looking for a Reset with Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 7, 2021. (Kremlin photo, https://tinyurl.com/56f5jf4m; CC BY 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) On April 15, President Biden issued an executive order authorizing sweeping new sanctions against Russia in response to Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the SolarWinds hack. These new designations include sovereign debt prohibitions , as well as sanctions on companies and individuals connected to the Russian intelligence services and cyber activities , Russian illicit financial networks , Russian disinformation outlets and Russians involved in the occupation of Crimea . These measures signify the start of a tougher U.S. policy on Putinism, especially alongside the $125 million in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds that the Department of Defense approved earlier this year.  As Biden himself noted , his administration’s push could have gone further—and it probably should have. Biden chose to prioritize de-escalation. He opted for the most limited prohibitions on Russia’s sovereign debt, and some experts have already pointed out that U.S. organizations can still buy Russian debt on the secondary market. The additional sanctions also left Putin’s circle of oligarchs and their families unscathed. But whatever the shortcomings of the Biden administration’s actions, its approach so far suggests that Biden is not looking for a comprehensive reset in relations with Russia. This is a clear, and welcome, departure from Biden’s predecessors. President Bush found Putin to be “straightforward and trustworthy” after looking “the man in the eye” and getting “a sense of his soul”—sentiments which have proven unfounded. President Obama pursued a “reset” that ended in failure. And President Trump spearheaded a listless diplomatic agenda that primarily resulted in American disengagement from international institutions and acquiescence to Russian interests. In contrast, Biden—who, like Bush, reportedly once stared into Putin’s eyes but, unlike Bush, told him he had no soul—appears to be taking a different approach.  Biden seems to recognize that common interests and shared values are necessary for durable bilateral relations—and that the United States shares neither with Russia.  Yet some U.S. allies are still struggling to abandon the temptation of a Russia reset. In February 2021, High Representative of the EU Josep Borrell traveled to Moscow in the latest effort by a Western leader to reset relations with Russia. Previous resets have lasted a few years; less successful efforts have lasted months; this effort lasted mere hours. During his short visit, Borrell was so humiliated by his Russian counterparts that it imperiled his brief tenure as high representative. Following this failure, Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and a fixture of the European foreign policy establishment, criticized the reset efforts as futile and even counterproductive so long as the Kremlin refuses to reset its own policies.   Although there is work left to be done, Biden has spearheaded an important change from futile resets. Other Western leaders must follow his lead and recognize that irreconcilable differences with Russia will not go away in the foreseeable future—they come from domestic policy positions that are endemic to the Putinist regime. These irreconcilable differences come from a variety of stances taken by the regime. Andrew Radin and Clint Reach’s 2017 Rand report, “ Russian Views of the International Order, ” highlights several key areas where these differences shine through: defense of the regime; non-interference in domestic affairs; great power hegemony over the near-abroad; and Russia’s desire to preserve its geopolitical power. Based on the Kremlin’s current policies in these spheres, any hopes of a reset remain a fantasy. In terms of national defense, the Putinist regime frames Western liberal values and democracy as an existential threat. The Kremlin understands that democracies along its border will invariably assert their sovereignty and advance their national interests. To combat this possibility, the Russian government portrays democracy as an inherently chaotic and unstable enterprise. If these democracies were to flourish, however, this would undercut the Kremlin’s narrative. This would endanger the regime’s carefully constructed image of resurgent Russian power guided by the stable hand of authoritarianism. So, the Kremlin is incentivized to oppose the expansion and development of democracies. The Putinist regime also wants Russian hegemony to be unchallenged in Eurasia. The Kremlin amplifies foreign threats to both a domestic audience and the near-abroad to support this goal. For instance, the regime claims that the West perpetually interfere s in Russia’s domestic affairs and in the near-abroad. This disinformation is primarily designed to distract Russians’ attention from the domestic determinants of discontent: rampant corruption, failure to satisfy basic needs, declining standards of living and overreach of the security services. Since the Kremlin perennially refuses to address these systemic issues, it needs to fuel conspiracy theories to keep its constituents’ attention focused outward, rather than inward. By that logic, any resistance to the government is characterized as a foreign threat. In one of the most recent manifestations of this trend, the Russian government is attempting to ban Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and campaign offices. The regime is labeling these organizations as “extremist” for their alleged role in plotting to stage “color revolutions,” while supposedly operating on behalf of foreign entities. And in another example, on April 17, Russian intelligence claimed —without any evidence—that Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka was the target of a U.S.-backed coup and assassination plot. In light of ongoing domestic issues, this vilification of Western influence and the West’s principled approach to accepting sovereign states which aspire to join the Western liberal order is unlikely to subside.  With this government-induced focus on foreign affairs, many Russians still cling to notions of Russian great power and exceptionalism drawn from the legacy of the Czarist Empire and the Soviet Union. These notions translate into their attitudes towards the near-abroad. According to survey data from the Levada Center—an independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research institution in Russia— more than 80 percent of Russians consistently express support for the annexation of Crimea, while less than 10 percent of Russians support the unconditional return of the separatist-controlled Donbas to Ukraine. Putin exacerbates this issue with an ongoing irredentist agenda. His worldview dictates that only great powers are sovereign, while smaller states belong to privileged spheres of influence. Putin has even declar ed that some of Russia’s neighbors are not real states. As such, the Putinist regime advances a central strategic objective of regional supremacy in a multipolar world.  In Putin’s mind, a Russian Eurasia pole necessitates , at minimum, control over neighbors’ foreign policy, incorporation into the Eurasian Economic Union, and inclusion in the Collective Treaty Security Organization. But Putin’s ambitions have come crashing down thanks to an overinflated sense of his own strategic abilities. During the annexation of Crimea and the failed Novorossiya project —wherein Putin sought to absorb the southeastern half of Ukraine into the Russian Federation—Ukrainian loyalties were not cleanly split along ethnolinguistic lines. Instead, the existence of a pro-Russian East turned out to be a myth. As a result, the Kremlin failed to establish the so-called Russian World ( Russkiy Mir ), Putin’s alternative to the Western liberal order that, according to political scientist Taras Kuzio , encompasses populations supposedly bound by a shared language, religion, culture, history and worldview. Nevertheless, there is little doubt of Putin’s continued desire to bring Ukraine and other former Soviet states under Russian control. The U.S. and its European allies have professed commitments to supporting democracy in these countries, so this remains an explosive point of policy divergence. To compensate for the stillborn Russian World, Putin has shaped Russia into an inveterate spoiler to retain geopolitical prestige and influence. Russia’s economic malaise and waning power require an asymmetric approach that employs military aggression, vast illicit finance and criminal networks, and interference in foreign elections . The resulting discord and instability abroad bolster the regime’s image as a foil to caricatures of democracy. These actions are born out of Putin’s view of geopolitics as a zero-sum game. Since Russia is incapable of “winning” in its current state, others—namely the West—must “lose.” These issues do not just result from Putin’s personal worldview. The Russian eli
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