Debaters Matthew Rojansky is director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center. He teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and serves as the U.S. executive secretary of the Dartmouth Conference.

Kathryn Stoner, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and faculty director of the Ford Dorsey Program on International Policy Studies at Stanford, is the author of “Resisting the State, Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia.”

The U.S. Tried Working With Putin. It Didn’t Work. Donald Trump, defending his peculiar admiration of Vladimir Putin, has declared as though it were his own idea, “Wouldn’t it be nice if actually got along, as an example, with Russia?” In fact, it has been nice – for the United States and for Russia, and it has happened many times over the last 30 years. There is no structural reason why Russia and the U.S. cannot get along. The problem is the Russian leader. The United States and the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev signed the most sweeping arms reduction agreements in history. Under Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, Russia entered the Group of 8 with American support and joined peacekeeping forces in Kosovo, while the United States supplied aid to the Russian economy. When Yeltsin’s successor Vladimir Putin came into office in 2000, the relationship between Russia and the United States continued to be relatively close, although relations soured over NATO expansion and the invasion of Iraq. Still, in his first administration, Putin was the first foreign leader to express condolences to President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, and vowed to help the United States in its war on terrorism. Under Putin’s successor (and then predecessor), Dmitri Medvedev, and the tenure of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, a “reset” in relations resulted in the New Start Treaty, further reducing nuclear weapons, and on the Northern Distribution Network, which enabled supplies to flow through Russia into Afghanistan for U.S. efforts there, and the American support of Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization. But when Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, cooperation with the U.S. ended. It was not the U.S. that declared game over, it was Trump’s friend. As the long history of cooperation demonstrates, there is no structural reason Russia and the U.S. cannot get along. They have and did for over 30 years. It was Putin’s offer of asylum to rogue U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, followed by his unanticipated demand that the U.S. Agency for International Development leave Russia the same year, harassment of the U.S. ambassador and other embassy officials since, and finally his seizure of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014 and support of a low boil conflict in eastern Ukraine that ended cooperation. The next U.S. president will inherit not a “Russia problem” but a Putin problem, which makes Trump’s position not only odd, but dangerous.

Diplomatic Isolation of Russia Is Counterproductive The current U.S. approach to Russia has failed. Moscow is ostensibly isolated and subject to sanctions. Yet it has not appreciably changed its course on Ukraine or Syria; instead it is escalating and broadening the conflict via nuclear saber rattling, cyber attacks and information warfare. Meanwhile it has re-established considerable influence throughout the Middle East, the former Soviet region, and even East Asia and Latin America. What is to be done? Stop obsessing over Putin, stop expecting true democracy in Russia and re-establish dialogue as a vital tool for advancing our national interests. First, we need to stop obsessing over Putin. Our problem is with Russia. Putin stands in the mainstream of a centuries-old Russian foreign policy tradition and worldview and he enjoys broad elite support and popular consent for his policies. Any approach premised mainly on "being tough" with Putin (as Hillary Clinton promises) or on charming him into making a deal (as Trump does) misses the point entirely. Second, we need to stop pursuing policies with the expectation either that Russia will change into a friendly democracy or that it can be fully defeated and sidelined. Neither is remotely likely in the foreseeable future. Instead, we need an approach to engaging Russia that extracts the best balance of cooperation and competition from across a web of interrelated issues. How we deter Russia in the Baltic will influence how hard Russia pushes in Syria, just as how we frame a deal on Ukraine and sanctions relief will shape Russia’s options for energy and economic engagement, whether with China and Iran, or with U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia. Finally, we need to re-establish dialogue. Not for its own sake, but as an indispensable tool for advancing our national interests. Closing the door on previously established bilateral channels was a mistake, yet another case of the "we talk to reward good behavior and don't talk when we disagree" syndrome in U.S. diplomacy. When Washington declares it will no longer talk to Russia about Syria, that doesn't change the reality that Russia holds the keys to stopping the humanitarian catastrophe and re-launching negotiations aimed at a durable settlement. When we seek to impose diplomatic isolation, it creates an incentive for the Russians to raise the risk level — such as with near-miss incidents at sea and in the air — until we are forced to talk. Most of all, we need coordination and consistency on our side. The worst kind of policy is the kind that every official, politician and analyst understands differently. The next president will need a trusted senior figure to serve as the main channel between the White House and the Kremlin. That job is needed when relations are going well just as much as when they are going badly.

The Problem With Russia Is Personal, Not Structural Matt raises some important issues, but the problem isn’t structural and isn’t, therefore, about Russia, as much as it is about Russia’s current leader and the situation in which he has put himself and his countrymen. As the past examples of U.S.-Russia cooperation I provided initially demonstrate, working together to mutual benefit has not always been the problem that it is now. Putin has harkened back to Russian nationalism, but this doesn’t mean that this is his motivation. His motivation is power. The relationship has, of course, been troubled at times, but there is lots of blame to go around. It is a mistake to point the finger exclusively at the United States and a purported misunderstanding on the part of American policy makers of Russia’s vital “historical” interests. We have understood those interests pretty well over time and often supported them – including supporting Russian membership in the World Trade Organization and the G-8, and working closely with Russia to come to an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program even as it helped the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad stay in power in Syria. Matt is wrong, therefore, in insisting that we have a Russia problem more than a Putin problem. As Russia has become more aggressive in projecting its authority abroad, Putin’s policies have become more repressive within. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Russia’s economy began to contract after the global financial crisis of 2008, well before U.S. and European sanctions were imposed in 2014. There was modest recovery, but by 2012, the decline was clear and steady. This had everything to do with poor choices by Russian leaders to continue to build an economy based on oil rents, rather than focusing on developing less volatile sources of revenue. When oil prices crashed in 2014, so did the Russian economy. With the economic downturn came a downturn in Putin’s popularity – until he invaded and seized Crimea. His approval rating jumped and it has stayed there since, as he has rattled nuclear sabers, flooded the airwaves with purported successes in Syria, and backed cyberattacks on the U.S. elections to sow doubt about our system. Putin’s concern is with maintaining himself and his cronies in power.



Putin has harkened back to Russian nationalism to justify his actions internally, but this doesn’t mean that this is actually his motivation. Dmitri Medvedev, as recently as five years ago, tacitly supported NATO actions in Libya. As for whether Putin is expressing the will of the Russian people, the media by and large projects uncritically the line the administration pushes, and public opinion polls are difficult to interpret. And Putin’s approval rating is relative to an opposition that he has eviscerated. Focusing on Putin is not “obsessing,” as Matt puts it. Gennady Zyuganov, the longtime head of the Russian Communist Party recently noted in a meeting of newly elected parliamentarians that the current Russian president can exercise “more power than that of the general secretary of the Soviet Union.” That was not true of any previous presidents of Russia – not Boris Yeltsin, whom the Russian Duma attempted to impeach; and not Medvedev, who was reliant for his support and legitimacy on his prime minister, Putin. Thus, the authority within his country that Putin has amassed is not structural; it is personal. Civil society organizations are effectively banned from political expression. Therefore, the next U.S. president must focus on Putin since our best information is that he has made his own interest in staying in power and maintaining the system he has built in the last 16 years is what dominates Russia’s foreign policy choices at the moment.