[Peace-discuss] Good historical perspective on U.S./Russia relations

[David Green]

 Why Every President Tries to Make Nice With Russia and Why It Never Worksby
 Benjamin Studebaker

One of the things I find odd about the way the press is covering the
Trump/Putin relationship is how devoid of context and historical memory it
is. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, four new
presidents have come to power, and each has tried to create a good
relationship with Russia. Bill Clinton was briefly successful, but the way
Clinton used his success poisoned the well and made it very difficult for
his successors to replicate his performance. Today I’ll tell you the story
of how America has tried to turn Russia into an ally and why this effort
has yet to succeed.

*Bill Clinton: The Roots of a Bond Broken*

[image: Image result for bill clinton boris yeltsin]

Bill Clinton was very good friends with the first president of the Russian
federation, Boris Yeltsin. They met eighteen times. Yeltsin was strongly
committed to liberalising the Russian economy, and Clinton was very cool
with that. But Yeltsin’s liberalisation program was not popular. Under
Yeltsin, per capita incomes in Russia plummeted and Russian oligarchs were
able to seize a massive percentage of Russian wealth and income:

<https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2018/07/20/why-every-president-tries-to-make-nice-with-russia-and-why-it-never-works/russia-per-capita-income/>

<https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2018/07/20/why-every-president-tries-to-make-nice-with-russia-and-why-it-never-works/russia-top-1-share/>

It wasn’t until 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union that
average incomes recovered to the late Soviet level, and when they had
recovered the distribution was much less equal, such that the average
income could be propped up by small numbers of super rich individuals. It
is still the case today that many ordinary Russians are worse off
economically than they were in the late Soviet period.

Russians blame Yeltsin for this. By the time Yeltsin left office, his
approval rating was frequently as low as 2%
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/23/russia.marktran>. By
contrast, President Trump’s approval rating is presently around 42%–he’s 21
times more popular. The Russians regard the 90s as a dark, miserable decade
in which their wealth was stolen by oligarchs. Yeltsin was America’s man,
and America’s man was blamed for all of this. Today, when academics talk
about the 90s in Russia, the discussion is about how poorly the transition
away from communism was managed and how this mismanagement created the
conditions which led to the rise of Putin–a super oligarch ruling over a
harem of smaller fish.

But it wasn’t just economic policy that went wrong in the 90s. The Russians
see Clinton as having taken advantage of their famously drunk,
<https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82447&page=1> inept leader
on the world stage. In 1999, Clinton admitted Poland, Hungary, and the
Czech Republic to NATO. The Russians see NATO as an anti-Russian military
alliance. By admitting former Warsaw Pact members to NATO, Clinton
assimilated countries which Russia considered to be in its sphere of
influence into the western sphere. Beset by a collapsed economy and
ineffective, incompetent leadership, Russia was in no position to
meaningfully challenge NATO expansion in the 90s.

So the Russians feel that during the decade in which their relationship
with the Americans was warmest, they were economically robbed and
brutalised on the world stage. Their experience of the 90s has taught them
not to trust us, and they are extremely suspicious of everything we say and
do. The effect is especially profound when you consider that we are still
dealing with Vladimir Putin–Boris Yeltsin’s immediate successor, a man who
defines himself politically entirely against Yeltsin. Where Yeltsin brought
disorder, Putin brings order. Where Yeltsin allowed the Americans to walk
all over Russia, Putin stops them. That’s his brand.

*George W. Bush: Gazing into Putin’s Soul*

[image: Image result for george w bush vladimir putin 2001]

George W. Bush wanted to cooperate with Vladimir Putin on terrorism. Putin
was fighting nationalist Islamic factions in Chechnya, and after 9/11 Putin
was rather hopeful that he could leverage the War on Terrorism into a more
balanced, respectful friendship with the United States. Even before 9/11,
Bush and Putin seemed to get along. Two months before 9/11, Bush said
<https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/18/world/cordial-rivals-how-bush-and-putin-became-friends.html>
:

I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and
trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his
soul.

Joe Biden–then a senator–expressed reservations:

I don’t trust Mr. Putin.

The trouble is that while the Bush administration frequently expressed a
willingness to cooperate with Russia on terrorism, it continued to take
advantage of Russia in other areas. In 2004, Bush expanded NATO further,
incorporating Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and
Slovenia. This included two countries which share land boundaries with
Russia. All were at one time part of the Soviet sphere:

[image: A map of Europe with eight colors that refer to the year different
countries joined the alliance.]

Not only did Bush enlarge NATO, but he then started putting military
installations in Eastern European countries, negotiating the construction
of a missile base in Poland. Talks about bases in the east began in 2002,
and formal negotiation began in 2007. We all remember how upset we were
when the Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba. The Russians were horrified by
the Polish plan.

Putin–suspicious of us to begin with because our behaviour in the 90s–took
Bush’s behaviour badly. He decided to draw a line in the sand–those
countries which remained in the Russian sphere of influence would stay in
that sphere, even at the cost of deploying military force.

In 2008, Bush called for Georgia to begin taking steps to join NATO. Putin
responded by doing everything he could to punish Georgia. Separatists in
the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia began acting up–perhaps
with Putin’s encouragement. He also began establishing formal ties between
Russia and these regions, beginning to treat them as independent states.
When Georgia responded by attacking the separatists, Russia responded by
invading Georgia. Georgia lost the war, Russia formally recognised Abkhazia
and South Ossetia as independent states, and Russian military bases were
established in each of the territorial enclaves. The message from Putin was
clear–further efforts to admit Georgia to NATO would result in further
military intervention from Russia.

At the end of Bush’s presidency, relations with Russia were a shambles.
This would be the beginning of a trend.

*Barack Obama: Repeating Bush’s Blunders*

Barack Obama began his presidency focused on what his administration called
“the pivot to Asia”. Obama was concerned by the rise of China and wanted to
build strong relationships with countries in its vicinity. Relations with
Japan and South Korea were already good–Obama was looking to partner with
countries like India, Vietnam, and yes, even Russia. To that end, Hillary
Clinton went to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to offer
him a “reset” on US-Russian relations:

[image: Image result for hillary clinton reset button]

The Russian word on the button was mistranslated–instead of saying “reset”,
it said “overcharged”. Like Bush, Obama wanted something from Russia, and
like Bush, he was unwilling to recognise that for the Russians, everything
is tied together. If we do something they don’t like in one area, they
withhold cooperation in other domains. In Obama’s case, the mistake was
very similar to Bush’s in Georgia–Obama began trying to admit Ukraine into
the western sphere. The difference was that the move here was to associate
Ukraine with the EU rather than admit it to NATO. The pro-Russian
government was removed in what the Russians consider to be a US-backed
coup. American public officials–like Senator John McCain
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict>–were
quoted in support of the Euromaidan protests which eventually produced the
collapse of Ukraine’s government. Putin believes the America did more than
just express verbal encouragement–he thinks
<https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-05/ukraine-usa-maidan-finance/seite-2>America
bankrolled the whole thing.

Regardless of whether and to what extent we were involved in the regime
change in Ukraine, the Russians believe we were deeply involved and they
were not willing to permit Ukraine to leave their sphere of influence, so
they invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, and continue to provide support to
rebels in the Eastern region of Donbass. That conflict continues to this
day.

The Ukraine crisis got going in 2013. Barack Obama attempted to avoid
further antagonising Russia in the final years of his presidency. As his
former Europe adviser Karen Donfield told *Die Zeit:*

Shortly after the annexation of Crimea by Putin there was the policy of not
doing anything to provoke the Russians

An unnamed “high ranking adviser” adds:

We can’t deal with the Ukraine problem in an isolated fashion, since there
are other interests as well. We want to keep open our lines of
communication with the Russians on topics such as Syria, Islamic State,
Assad or Afghanistan.

[image: Image result for obama putin meeting]

However, the United States imposed sanctions on Russia and has provided
military advisers to Ukraine. Russia wasn’t happy about that. It also
wasn’t happy when Hillary Clinton said
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/03/05/hillary-clinton-says-putins-action-are-like-what-hitler-did-back-in-the-30s/?utm_term=.3cbe88ee0ce8>
 that Putin’s actions were “what Hitler did back in the ’30s”. To make
matters worse, while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had insinuated
that Russia’s elections are unclean in 2011, when Russia was dealing with
heavy pro-democracy protests. Putin–highly suspicious, as always–took this
as an indicator that Hillary Clinton seeks regime change in Russia:

Putin came to see Hillary Clinton as an existential threat to his regime,
and he was likely determined to do everything he could to ensure she did
not become president. It is likely that the leaking of Clinton’s emails to
Wikileaks and the Russian presence on social media were motivated by this.

*Donald Trump: Trying this Again*

[image: Image result for trump putin]

Every American president since the collapse of the Soviet Union has tried
to turn Russia into an ally on terrorism. Increasingly, American presidents
also want Russia as a bulwark against the rise of China. These geostrategic
interests in a good relationship with Russia haven’t changed. What has
changed is the attitude of the American media, which now sees Russia as an
essentially villainous state and therefore views all efforts to revive
relations as potentially treasonous. Trump must, for the good of the
national interest, attempt to once again get the relationship with Russia
right. Usually, new presidents have support from the public and the press
when they try to fix the US-Russian relationship. But Trump must attempt to
do it without that support, and with sanctions from the previous
administration still in force. If Trump tries to lift those sanctions, he
will be painted as a traitor, and so Trump is backed into opposing the
Russians even as his administration recognises the need to cooperate with
them.

It is in this respect that the Mueller investigation has caused the most
damage to the United States–it has interfered in our ability to once again
attempt to reset the Russian relationship. Without that reset, our
antagonistic relationship with the Russians ensures that they drift into
China’s sphere of influence, weakening the long-term geostrategic position
of the United States. America’s greatest Cold War success was splitting the
Sino-Soviet alliance. If we continue down our present path, that alliance
maybe reconstituted, and the work of Richard Nixon undone.

It’s not very likely that Trump would succeed in any case. To have a good
relationship with Russia, we have to make concessions to the Russians which
we have been unwilling to make. We’d need to recognise that Russia has
certain core interests in its immediate neighbourhood and stop trespassing
in it. At minimum, this would mean keeping countries like Ukraine, Belarus,
and Georgia neutral, and perhaps even leaving them saddled with corrupt,
pro-Russian governments. It might also mean tolerating Russia’s bid to
restore the Assad regime in Syria. Previous American presidents have been
unwilling to pay the cost of friendship with Russia. Trump would have to
make big concessions–concessions which would look like a betrayal to many
old foreign policy heads–to stand any chance of bringing the Russians
onside. Based on the media reaction to his first meeting with Putin, Trump
likely has very little room to move. China is the beneficiary.
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