Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping attend a Bilateral Meeting on Nov. 9, 2014 in Beijing, China. (Photo by HOW HWEE YOUNG - Pool/Getty Images)

5) Work With Russia in Asia

Containing China is an impossible task in today’s world. Instead, the next president should pursue flexible coalitions with other major powers to channel Chinese energies in ways that don’t endanger America’s core interests or, better, work to Washington’s benefit. Russia could be one of those partners if the United States is able to avoid forcing the Kremlin into a position of de facto commercial and strategic dependence on Beijing.

Despite its attempts in the wake of Western sanctions to reduce its dependence on European energy markets by building up ties with China, Russia remains deeply concerned about Beijing’s growing influence along its borders. Moreover, the economic promise of Moscow’s own “pivot to Asia,” particularly in penetrating the Chinese market, has so far failed to unfold as the Kremlin had hoped, with trade and investment slow to materialize. In East Asia, Moscow has sought to diversify its commercial relations, including with South Korea and Japan, two major U.S. allies, to reduce the risks that the development of Russia’s far eastern provinces will become hostage to Chinese markets. South Korea and Japan also view Russia as a potential economic and security partner in managing their concerns about China. This leaves an opening where American and Russian interests can align in forging new coalitions that give each party more leverage in relations with China.

Former Soviet Central Asia is another area where Washington’s and Moscow’s interests could actually align on China. Russia is unsettled by the rapidly growing Chinese presence within what the Kremlin considers its own backyard. Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a massive network of roads, railways, and pipelines, has brought billions of dollars’ worth of investment into the region and dwarfed Russia’s projects, like the Eurasian Union. The Kremlin has so far welcomed the emergence of other regional players, such as India and Japan, to counterbalance China. The United States could play a role here if it reversed its policy since the end of the Cold War of seeking to reduce Russian influence in Central Asia. Recognizing that China’s expansion into the region poses more of a long-term challenge to U.S. interests than Russia’s continued presence, Washington should not work against Russian initiatives in the region and promote other regional powers in Central Asia.

Syrian civilians and rescuers gather at site of government forces air strikes in the rebel held neighborhood of Al-Shaar in Aleppo on Sept. 27. (Photo by KARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Images)

6) Recognize That Syria Is About More Than Syria

With the collapse of the U.S.-Russia negotiated cease-fire and the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Aleppo, the Syrian crisis demands urgent attention. Like it or not, the United States has no better option than to keep trying to work with Russia, which inserted itself into the region with a dramatic military intervention in September 2015. Moscow has the wherewithal to maintain its military deployment for a prolonged period, and regional powers like Iran, and perhaps even Turkey, support its continued presence. The more forceful options that some are now advocating — such as a no-fly zone or the destruction of the Syrian air force — carry too large a risk of outright military confrontation with Moscow in the region and elsewhere.

Discussions with Moscow on Syria, however, will have no greater chances of success unless they include a new willingness to discuss the broader relationship with Russia, especially in Europe. In its statements and proposals, Moscow has effectively linked the situation in Syria to the Ukraine crisis and the larger issue of European security, but Washington has so far refused to recognize this linkage. Instead, the Obama administration has followed in the missteps of its predecessors and doubled down on trying to compartmentalize issues from one another. Only by acknowledging that the links among the various regional challenges posed by Russia are real can the next president extract a favorable balance for U.S. interests.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Col. Gen. Oleg Salyukov during the Victory Day military parade on May 9, 2015 in Moscow. (Photo by Host photo agency / RIA Novosti via Getty Images)

7) Show America’s Promise

As in the Cold War, there is an ideological element to U.S.-Russia competition today. However, rather than advocating Communist class struggle, Moscow is focused on diminishing American credibility. Russia will be most effective where U.S.-led economic and political initiatives fail to serve the needs of the American people. This theme has been evident in the disconcerting overlap between damaging cyber-leaks from apparent Russian-related sources to favorable coverage in the Russian press of Trump’s harsh attacks on the U.S. establishment.

How the next U.S. president tackles the well-known domestic and global challenges of wealth inequality, cultural pluralism, migration, resource insecurity, and climate change will determine the degree to which the United States is actually vulnerable to Russia’s political and propaganda broadsides. As George F. Kennan, the U.S. diplomat who mapped out America’s Cold War containment policy toward the Soviet Union, recognized in his famous Long Telegram, if Americans demonstrate vision and resolve to address the United States’ most pressing challenges, the country can have far greater influence on developments in Russia than it ever could through direct confrontation.

The Cold War ended to a great degree because Russians saw the United States as a successful and prosperous society, whose model they hoped to emulate. By contrast, today’s deterioration in relations has been deepened by American failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the still lingering consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, which shattered Russians’ faith in the American model for economic development. An aura of renewed success and growing power will go a long way toward restoring the United States as an attractive partner, and perhaps eventually as a leader by example.

For the moment, America’s priorities must be on putting out the fires of regional conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and preventing the simmering threats of WMD proliferation and a new arms race from igniting. But success on any one of these issues cannot occur in a vacuum and depends on the credibility and effectiveness of the U.S. approach to other regions and issues where Russia holds important cards. By weighing the value of cooperation and competition with Moscow in terms of what matters most to the United States, the next presidential administration has its best chance to come out ahead in dealing with the Kremlin.

Photo Credit: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images