Obama’s long-term approach to Russia uses containment strategy
WASHINGTON — Even as the crisis in Ukraine
continues to defy easy resolution, President Barack Obama and his
national security team are looking beyond the immediate conflict to
forge a new long-term approach to Russia that applies an updated version
of the Cold War strategy of containment.
Just as the U.S.
resolved in the aftermath of World War II to counter the Soviet Union
and its global ambitions, Obama is focused on isolating President
Vladimir Putin’s Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties
to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own
neighborhood, and effectively making it a pariah state.
Obama has
concluded that even if there is a resolution to the current standoff
over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, he will never have a constructive
relationship with Putin, aides said. As a result, Obama will spend his
final 21/2 years in office trying to minimize the disruption Putin can
cause, preserve whatever marginal cooperation can be saved, and
otherwise ignore the master of the Kremlin in favor of other foreign
policy areas where progress remains possible.
“That is the
strategy we ought to be pursuing,” said Ivo Daalder, formerly Obama’s
ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs. “If you just stand there, be confident and raise the cost
gradually and increasingly to Russia, that doesn’t solve your Crimea
problem and it probably doesn’t solve your eastern Ukraine problem. But
it may solve your Russia problem.”
The manifestation of this
thinking can be seen in Obama’s pending choice for the next ambassador
to Moscow. While not final, the White House is preparing to nominate
John Tefft, a career diplomat who previously served as ambassador to
Ukraine, Georgia and Lithuania.
When the search began months ago,
administration officials were leery of sending Tefft because of concern
that his experience in former Soviet republics that have flouted
Moscow’s influence would irritate Russia. Now, officials said, there is
no reluctance to offend the Kremlin.
In effect, Obama is
retrofitting for a new age the approach to Moscow that was first set out
by the diplomat George Kennan in 1947 and that dominated U.S. strategy
through the fall of the Soviet Union. The administration’s priority is
to hold together an international consensus against Russia, including
even China, its longtime supporter on the U.N. Security Council.
While
Obama’s long-term approach takes shape, though, a quiet debate has
roiled his administration over how far to go in the short term. So far,
economic advisers and White House aides urging a measured approach have
won out, prevailing upon a cautious president to take one incremental
step at a time out of fear of getting too far ahead of skittish
Europeans and risking damage to still-fragile economies on both sides of
the Atlantic.
The White House has prepared another list of
Russian figures and institutions to sanction in the next few days if
Moscow does not follow through on an agreement sealed in Geneva on
Thursday to defuse the crisis. But the president will not extend the
punitive measures to whole sectors of the Russian economy, as some
administration officials prefer, absent a dramatic escalation.
The
more hawkish factions in the U.S. State and Defense departments have
grown increasingly frustrated, privately worrying that Obama has come
across as weak and unintentionally sent the message that he has written
off Crimea after Russia’s annexation. They have pressed for faster and
more expansive sanctions.
The prevailing view in the West Wing,
though, is that while Putin seems for now to be enjoying the glow of
success, he will eventually discover how much economic harm he has
brought on his country. Obama’s aides noted the fall of the Russian
stock market and the ruble, capital flight from the country, and
increasing reluctance of foreign investors to expand dealings in Russia.
The
two sides have not completely cut off ties, though. U.S. troops and
equipment are still traveling through Russian territory en route to and
from Afghanistan. Astronauts from the two countries are in orbit
together at the International Space Station. A joint program
decommissioning old Russian weapons systems has not been curtailed.
Still, the relationship cannot return to normal either, even if the Ukraine situation were settled soon, specialists said.
“There’s
really been a sea change, not only here but in much of Europe about
Russia,” said Robert Nurick, a Russia expert at the Atlantic Council. “A
lot of the old assumptions about what we were doing and where we were
going and what was possible are gone, and will stay that way as long as
Putin’s there.”
Peter Baker,
The New York Times
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