Summary

The U.S.-Russian relationship is broken, and it cannot be repaired quickly or easily. Improved personal ties between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin may be useful, but they are not enough. The Trump administration needs to temper expectations about breakthroughs or grand bargains with Moscow. Instead, the focus should be on managing a volatile relationship with an increasingly emboldened and unpredictable Russian leadership. The real test for any sustainable approach will be whether it advances U.S. interests and values, especially in the wake of Moscow’s reckless meddling in the November presidential election.

Key Themes

The breakdown in U.S.-Russian relations is a product of long-standing disagreements about the fundamentals of each country’s national security interests and policies.

The Kremlin’s political legitimacy is increasingly predicated on stoking fears of external threats and anti-Americanism.

Moscow’s relationship with its neighbors will be inherently unstable due to persistent Russian attempts to dominate their political and economic orientation, and a yawning power and wealth differential.

Better U.S.-Russian relations are impossible without a major course correction by either or both sides. It is unlikely that Putin will compromise on core Russian interests. Thus, unless Trump is prepared to cave on U.S. principles and interests, relations will remain largely competitive and adversarial.

Policy Recommendations

Four principles should guide U.S. policy toward Russia and its neighbors:

The United States’ commitment to defend its NATO allies will remain unconditional and ironclad. America should fully implement the measures it has announced to bolster deterrence and to defend NATO’s eastern flank.

The United States and its allies will defend the norms that underpin European security. These include the Paris Charter for a New Europe and the Helsinki Final Act.

The United States will continue its strong support for Ukraine. Halting the conflict in Donbas, deterring further Russian aggression, and supporting Ukraine’s domestic reforms will be top priorities for U.S.-EU diplomacy.

Engagement with Russia will not come at the expense of the rights and interests of Russia’s neighbors. The United States must recognize, however, the limits on its capacity to promote democracy and human rights in this region.

The following problem areas should be addressed without delay:

signaling to Russia that its interference in the domestic politics of the United States or its allies is unacceptable and will be met with a strong response;

reducing the risk of an accidental or unintended NATO-Russian military confrontation;

achieving a durable, verifiable ceasefire in eastern Ukraine; and

working together on Iran and other countries of proliferation concern to keep WMD and nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists and dangerous regimes.

Introduction

Turbulent events over the past year have compounded the already difficult problem of fashioning a sustainable long-term U.S. policy toward Russia, Eurasia, and Ukraine. The unprecedented presidential campaign in the United States, the British vote to leave the European Union (EU), and the rise of nationalist, populist, and antiglobalization forces elsewhere in Europe have formed a very different strategic landscape from the one that then U.S. president Barack Obama inherited eight years ago. The new U.S. administration will confront an exceedingly complex set of challenges. These include a global rebalancing of economic, political, and military power; a vast region in turmoil from North Africa to China’s western border; and uncertainty about the most important U.S. relationships with allies and partners in Europe and Asia. More fundamentally, the liberal international order that the United States and its European allies have upheld since the end of World War II is in danger of unraveling, and there is mounting concern that the United States may abandon its commitment to preserving this order.

Eugene Rumer Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council, is a senior fellow and the director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program. More >

Russia looms especially large on this landscape, and the task of formulating a sustainable policy toward Russia has risen to the top of the national security agenda for the new U.S. administration. But the attention devoted to Russia by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic should not obscure the fact that Russia is not the principal challenge facing the United States and its allies. Any long-term U.S. policy framework must assess how the U.S. relationship with Russia represents only a subset of the broader global challenges posed by forces of national fragmentation and division; the rise of other centers of power and nonstate actors; the problems emanating from a broken, an angry, and a dysfunctional Middle East; the growing political appeal of populism and nativism; and sweeping technological changes.

The West’s relationship with Russia is and for the foreseeable future likely to remain largely competitive and oftentimes adversarial. But Russia is not the cause of the turmoil in the Islamic world, of the tensions between the United States and China, or of the crisis in the European Union. It may seek to capitalize on these developments or aggravate them, but Russia is not their driver or root cause. Solving the West’s Russia problem will not solve the numerous strategic challenges it needs to confront. At the same time, Russia can be part of the solution, and a more constructive U.S.-Russian relationship could help to produce better outcomes. But it cannot be the solution or an end in itself.

With that caveat in mind, it is hard to challenge the proposition that the rise of a more assertive Russia and the collapse of the post–Cold War security order in Europe in the wake of the Ukraine crisis have far-reaching implications for U.S. national security interests and those of its allies and partners around the world. In Ukraine, the Kremlin mounted the first land grab since World War II and launched a bloody, covert war that shows no signs of ending any time soon. Russian military intervention in Syria has prevented the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime and seriously constrained the options of the United States and its partners to influence the future direction of the conflict. The Kremlin’s unprecedented meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election via a multifaceted cyber and information operations campaign highlights the difficulty of establishing new norms for cyberspace. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s reliance on anti-Americanism and unrelenting crushing of internal dissent continues.

As disturbing as these developments have been to Western audiences, U.S. policymakers cannot lose sight of America’s strengths and advantages. Without downplaying the dangers inherent in the Kremlin’s risk-taking brand of foreign policy, there can be no mistaking the long-term weakness of the hand that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is playing. In the coming decades, Moscow will face political, economic, demographic, security, and geopolitical problems that can hardly be wished away or swept under the rug.

The West’s relationship with Russia is and for the foreseeable future likely to remain largely competitive and oftentimes adversarial.

But bearing in mind what John Maynard Keynes said about the long run, it is essential to take a cold, hard look at the near-term challenges that an emboldened Russian regime represents for U.S. interests as well as the potential areas that still exist for cooperation. Any appraisal will reveal that Russia, far from being just a regional power, to paraphrase Obama, figures prominently in numerous important issues and parts of the world.1 That will not change. Even if Russia were a declining power, history teaches us that such states can be extremely disruptive and do considerable damage as they descend. And if there is one thing known about Putin, he is a remarkable opportunist, capable of forcing the outside world to reckon with him—usually on his terms.

Richard Sokolsky Richard Sokolsky is a nonresident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program. His work focuses on U.S. policy toward Russia in the wake of the Ukraine crisis.

In recent years, discussion of U.S. policy options toward Russia has focused heavily on creating the right combination of pushback and containment. Such ideas enjoyed great appeal in the days before President Donald Trump’s upset victory. Notwithstanding the remarkable change in tone by the new administration, there is a need for abundant caution in dealing with Moscow, given the downside risks of stumbling into a possible direct confrontation. Putin has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to escalate disputes with the West in dangerous and irresponsible ways in order to throw his adversaries off-balance. The risk of a collision or military incident involving Russia has reached unacceptably high levels in recent months. By the same token, Russia’s resilience in the face of domestic challenges, economic sanctions, and international pressure over the past three years has confounded U.S. and EU policymakers.

These realities point to the necessity of carefully managing differences with the Russian regime—and standing firmly when U.S. vital interests are threatened. Steadiness and deliberation, therefore, must be at a premium, given that abrupt shifts in U.S. policy toward Russia and the broader Eurasia region could have a lasting negative impact on the fragile transatlantic relationship, contribute to the chaos in the Middle East, and erode the global preeminence of the United States and the durability of the international order that greatly benefits American security and economic prosperity.

Even if Russia were a declining power, history teaches us that such states can be extremely disruptive and do considerable damage as they descend.

Absent an abrupt change in the fundamentals underlying U.S. policy toward Russia or Russia’s policy toward the United States, it will be all the more daunting to create a productive relationship with Moscow in the coming years; this is due in no small measure to the lingering effects of a destabilizing crisis that has wiped out fundamental aspects of the post–Cold War security order and, along with it, any semblance of trust on either side. At the same time, it would be naive and irresponsible for any U.S. administration to try to close its eyes to the Russian regime’s responsibility for a costly, pointless war in Ukraine; its ongoing crackdown on civil society and other vulnerable groups; and its brazen attempts to subvert the democratic institutions and the integrity and sources of information that are at the heart of the liberal international order.

The Boom-and-Bust Cycle of U.S.-Russian Relations

Since 1991, the relationship between the United States and Russia has alternated between high expectations and bitter disappointments. The Obama administration’s experience of dealing with Russia fit the pattern established by its predecessors over the course of the previous two decades.

Elements of the boom-and-bust cycle in bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington became visible in the final years of the Soviet Union. The rapid thaw in relations between the two Cold War adversaries and political change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s gave rise to hopes for a new U.S.-Soviet partnership to serve the interests of global peace, stability, and security.2 Those hopes were quickly dashed as the Soviet Union unraveled, and the United States was left with the task of bailing it out rather than relying on it as a partner in building the new order.

Paul Stronski Paul Stronski is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program, where his research focuses on the relationship between Russia and neighboring countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. More >

Then U.S. president Bill Clinton inherited a relationship with a Russia in the throes of a seemingly never-ending political and economic crisis, a relationship that fell well short of its potential, even as support for Russia’s democratic and market reforms became one of the top priorities for the Clinton administration’s foreign policy. The West’s partnership with Russian reform was not merely an act of charity. A stable, democratic, and capitalist Russia would become a reliable partner to the United States and its allies. Moreover, restoring stability in Russia was essential for carefully managing the safe disposition of the Soviet Union’s nuclear legacy, which was scattered across several newly independent former Soviet republics. Securing and consolidating that deadly arsenal in a stable Russia under responsible leadership and avoiding a violent, Yugoslavia-style breakup were vital to U.S. national security interests. Thus, Russian reform became a top-tier U.S. security interest.3

In 1993, at the first summit meeting between presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in Vancouver, the United States committed to assist Russian reform across a wide range of areas.4 A U.S.-Russian partnership was launched as the two presidents “declared their firm commitment to a dynamic and effective U.S.-Russian partnership that strengthens international stability.”5

In retrospect, the relationship launched at Vancouver proved largely disappointing to the Russian side. The United States and other international donors may have delivered billions of dollars in foreign aid and technical assistance at a time when Russia was running on empty, but the promised benefits of rapid price liberalization and privatization came only after many years of severe economic hardship. In the security realm, the United States made it possible for Russia to consolidate and secure the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal—a complex and costly task that likely would have been beyond the reach of the struggling Russian state. The United States benefited, too—the threat of nuclear proliferation from the remnants of the Soviet state was largely averted.

But the relationship proved far from smooth and nearly from the very beginning was punctuated by a series of disagreements—over Russia’s heavy-handed treatment of neighboring states like Georgia and Moldova; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) enlargement; NATO’s interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo; Russia’s war in Chechnya; concerns in the United States about Russian neo-imperialist tendencies; and fears in Moscow of U.S. encroachment on the sphere of influence Russia claimed around its periphery. The relationship owed much to the personal chemistry between Clinton and Yeltsin and their ability to smooth over disagreements during personal meetings. However, as frictions accumulated and mutual frustrations grew, personal chemistry proved insufficient to keep the relationship from deteriorating.

For Russia, which opposed NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, U.S. leadership of that campaign signaled that America was prepared to act unilaterally to advance its vision of order in the Balkans and disregard Moscow’s concerns and objections. Moreover, for the national security establishment in the greatly weakened and diminished great power, the intervention in Kosovo raised the specter of potential U.S. intervention not only in the Balkans but also inside Russia.6

U.S. attitudes toward Russia had changed by the late 1990s in large measure as a result of the brutal campaign waged by the Russian government to restore its control over the breakaway province of Chechnya. The Russian government was widely criticized for its indiscriminate tactics in that war and the widespread violations of human rights. Hardly any voices in the United States called for a direct intervention in Chechnya similar to the U.S. intervention in Kosovo, but that did little to alleviate Moscow’s concerns about its vulnerability in the face of America’s unchallenged dominance on the world stage.

The resignation of Boris Yelstin at the end of 1999 deprived the deteriorating relationship of an essential element—the personal Yeltsin-Clinton chemistry that had steadied it during much of the 1990s. The rise of Vladimir Putin with his KGB credentials marked the beginning of a new chapter in the bilateral relationship between Moscow and Washington, which at the end of Bill Clinton’s term in office had fallen far short of achieving the goals set forth in Vancouver eight years earlier.

The administration of then president George W. Bush thus inherited a damaged relationship with Russia. Despite some initial misgivings, it launched its own reset with Moscow in 2001—an initiative that was precipitated by the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the urgent requirement to build an international coalition for the War on Terror. The appeal to join this war struck a responsive chord in the Kremlin, which had long maintained that its own war in Chechnya was part of the global antiterrorist struggle.7 U.S. officials had muted their criticism of the war in Chechnya and, as in the previous decade, the U.S. and Russian presidents established a personal bond,8 and once again a U.S.-Russian partnership animated the bilateral agenda.9

Andrew S. Weiss Weiss is the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees research in Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia. More > @AndrewSWeiss

Notwithstanding such progress, the relationship soon suffered from renewed disagreements. The list of mutual complaints included some familiar themes: Russian criticism of the war in Iraq launched by the United States, without Moscow’s consent or the approval of the UN Security Council; opposition to further NATO enlargement; concerns about U.S. missile defense plans, exacerbated by America’s abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and U.S. support for the “color” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. The United States, for its part, was critical of Putin’s retreat from democracy and Russian hardball tactics in dealing with its weaker neighbors. As many elements of the desired partnership—energy, trade and investment, and World Trade Organization accession for Russia—failed to materialize, the irritants outweighed the benefits, even if the personal ties between Bush and Putin provided the essential ballast for the relationship.

The break, which no personal relationship between the two leaders could overcome, occurred when Russian troops crushed the tiny Georgian military in August 2008. Russian tanks smashed not only Georgian forces but also the remaining hopes for partnership between Washington and Moscow.10 Washington branded Moscow an aggressor whose actions had grossly violated the founding principles of the post–Cold War European order. The relationship between the United States and Russia reached a new post–Cold War low.

This was the legacy inherited by the Obama administration in 2009. With relations between Washington and Moscow in tatters, U.S. policymakers felt the ripple effects in a number of collateral areas—for example, the U.S. pursuit of comprehensive sanctions on Iran to stop its nuclear program; in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, where the task of supplying U.S. and coalition troops demanded alternatives to routes through Pakistan; and in nuclear disarmament, which Obama singled out as one of his priorities.

There was also a new president in Russia—Dmitry Medvedev, a younger and seemingly more progressive leader than Putin—whose public acknowledgment of the need to modernize Russia held out hope for a new course in Russian domestic politics and foreign policy. To test the new Russian leader and restore a measure of cooperation with Russia in key areas of interest to the United States, the Obama administration attempted to reset the relationship with Russia. Once again, personal chemistry between the two presidents proved essential to thawing the relationship and moving the two governments to resume cooperation in several key areas. The early results—the signing of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the establishment of the Northern Distribution Network, the cancellation of the sale of the S-300 air defense system to Iran, the imposition of new UN Security Council–mandated sanctions on Iran, the accession of Russia to the World Trade Organization—rekindled hopes for a new and lasting partnership.

However, the relationship continued to suffer from numerous irritants: U.S. criticism of Russia’s democracy deficit and human rights violations; congressional moves to impose sanctions on Russian officials connected with the death of Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky; disagreements over plans for U.S. missile defense deployment in Europe; Russian criticism of NATO’s intervention in Libya; Russian resentment of perceived U.S. intervention in Russian domestic politics; pressure on former Soviet states to curb their relationship with Western economic and security structures; and disagreements over Syria’s future.

The turning point occurred in late 2011 and early 2012, when Vladimir Putin decided to reclaim the presidency from Medvedev. Large-scale protests erupted in Moscow and other major cities in the aftermath of that switch and amid allegations of vote rigging in the December 2011 Duma election.11 American officials were perceived in Moscow as capitalizing on the election dispute to encourage unrest, feeding suspicions in Russia that Washington was opposed to Putin’s return to the presidency. The latter development left the bilateral relationship without a critical ingredient—a strong personal bond between the U.S. president and his Russian counterpart. The political crackdown that followed Putin’s re-election and the criticism it triggered from the United States accelerated the cooling trend in the relationship.

The final break occurred with the crisis in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Maidan revolution pitted the United States and Russia against each other, with Washington expressing support for the antigovernment protesters clamoring for closer ties with the West and Moscow backing the pro-Russian government. The chain of events that followed, culminating in the fall of the Viktor Yanukovych government in Kyiv, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, and Moscow’s undeclared war in eastern Ukraine, dealt a severe blow to the entire post–Cold War European security order and brought the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationship to its lowest point since some of the coldest days of the Cold War.

The Trump administration has inherited a relationship at its lowest nadir in many decades.

The experience of the three post–Cold War U.S. presidencies—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—highlights some of the persistent trends in bilateral relations between Washington and Moscow. These include: (1) inflated expectations at the outset of each new U.S. presidential term; (2) the critical and irreplaceable role of personal ties between U.S. and Russian presidents; and (3) the enduring potency of long-term irritants in the relationship—for example, human rights and democracy, the nature of U.S. and Russian relations with Russia’s neighbors, and U.S. use of military force to topple regimes despite Russian objections.

The Trump administration has inherited a relationship at its lowest nadir in many decades. Although it will have to tackle some new and extremely complicated issues arising from recent events—Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential campaign and the impasse over Syria—the underlying challenges to better relations between the United States and Russia will not change. The Trump administration’s approach to issues of democratic governance, relations between Russia and its neighbors and U.S. ties to those neighbors, and the United States’ unilateral use of force will be pivotal to the quality and direction of U.S.-Russian relations.

Russian Realities

Is Russia an authoritarian regime? An oligarchy? An illiberal democracy? More than a quarter century after the infamous Article VI of the Soviet constitution, which guaranteed the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, was repealed, Russia’s political system eludes an easy characterization: it is much easier to say what it is not, than what it is. It is not a democracy.12 Although it has many features of a rigid, closed, and controlled political system, it is not a totalitarian regime. Many aspects of the modern political system in Russia have their roots in Soviet and Russian history. At the same time, Russian society has embraced many aspects of life in the twenty-first century that invite comparisons with many other countries in Europe and Asia with decidedly different political systems and cultures.

The easiest definition of modern-day Russia is that it is a society and political system in transition. It left its communist, totalitarian system behind in the twentieth century. However, it is not clear what it is transitioning to—a more open and democratic political system, an autocracy with a market economy, or some hybrid form yet to be defined. The direction and speed of this transition is uncertain, and just as with the breakup of the Soviet Union, it could result in a sudden and unforeseen change, or it could remain frozen for years or even decades.

Domestic Politics

Amid this uncertainty, there is little dispute that power in Russia resides in the executive branch, overwhelmingly at the expense of the legislature and the judiciary. These are not equal branches of the Russian government. The presidency is the dominant institution; much like the czar in pre-1917 Russia, it towers above the cabinet, the Duma, and the courts. The president has the authority, given to him by the constitution, to rule by decree, bypassing the legislature. The prime minister and the cabinet have no standing independent of the president and take their guidance from him. The head of state is also effectively the head of government.

The transition from Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin at the turn of the century demonstrated the importance of personalities in Russian politics and the flawed nature of a system that leaves so much at the mercy of individuals. Boris Yeltsin’s confrontation with parliament in 1993 paved the way for the new constitution’s unequal treatment of the executive and the legislative branches, empowering the former at the expense of the latter. Yeltsin’s relatively tolerant attitude toward the opposition had left room for the Duma to obstruct his policies throughout much of the 1990s. Putin’s decidedly less tolerant attitude toward the opposition eventually transformed the Duma into a docile institution ready to rubber stamp the Kremlin’s legislative initiatives with few, if any, checks and balances.

The power of the presidency extends well beyond the confines of the federal government, into Russia’s regional governments. The status of regional governors has been changed several times since 1991, alternating between elected and appointed officials. In the most recent iteration, they have become once again effectively presidential appointees, thus reaffirming the president’s authority to govern at the regional as well as the federal level.

The country’s parliament—the Duma—has long lost its ability to function as an independent branch of the Russian government. Nominally home to several opposition parties, it lost all traces of independence quite early during Putin’s tenure. The most recent parliamentary election conducted in September 2016 resulted in Putin’s United Russia party gaining more than 70 percent of the seats. The victory gave the party a constitutional majority, enabling it to change the constitution without consulting the few token opposition parties—the Communists, the so-called Liberal-Democrats, and A Just Russia. None of the political parties likely to challenge the Kremlin’s policies is represented in the Duma.13

There is still genuine political opposition to the Putin government in Russia, but it has been marginalized and denied a voice in the domestic arena.

There is still genuine political opposition to the Putin government in Russia, but it has been marginalized and denied a voice in the domestic arena. The series of legislative measures adopted by the Russian government in the aftermath of the mass protests in Moscow in 2011–2012 have severely restricted the ability of the opposition to mobilize its potential electorate, to stage protests, and to reach out to the Russian people through the mass media. Some, like the famous anticorruption campaigner Alexey Navalny, have been placed under house arrest; others have been threatened with court action or physical violence by pro-government vigilantes or have chosen to go into exile. In addition to the lack of access to state-controlled television and serious administrative obstacles that prevent entry into the political arena, Russia’s few remaining independent movements and parties are beset by internal rivalries and are seemingly incapable of forging a common platform.

On several recent occasions, some segments of the Russian public have launched protests against government actions—largely involving economic grievances or local issues. Russian truck drivers have attempted to organize large-scale protests against new government-imposed tariffs; residents of a Moscow city district have protested actions of local authorities that would deny them access to a local park; pensioners, healthcare workers, and teachers in several Russian cities have protested declining socioeconomic conditions.14 However, the government has taken swift action to defuse these local crises and prevent them from growing into large-scale protests.

Putin himself has come under criticism from reactionary right-wing elements for allegedly not being sufficiently hardline in domestic policies and for his lukewarm support of the Russian-inspired separatist movement in eastern Ukraine. The right wing, however, is not a new challenge for the Kremlin. When its own plans called for it, the government has mobilized and financed such groups. This was the case with the undeclared war in Ukraine, which was launched and conducted with critical participation by Russian nationalists and members of military veteran and radical organizations. The Kremlin has a long record of using right-wing, nationalist movements when it suits its purposes, as evidenced by its manipulation of the Rodina party in the 2003 Duma election, the use of the Nashi movement in the 2000s, and the appointment of separatist leaders in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, such as Igor Strelkov and the recently assassinated Arsen Pavlov (better known by his nom de guerre, Motorola).15

The weakened state of the domestic political opposition and the Kremlin’s monopoly on political power in the country, ironically, leave it facing an uncertain political future. Its dominant political position, demonstrated forcefully in the results of the September 2016 Duma election, has left it with few, if any, transmission belts to society at large.16 The Duma election, which recorded a turnout of below 50 percent and was conducted by the country’s political elite in accordance with its own preferences, can hardly be described as a reliable reflection of the mood of the Russian public. (Turnout in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg was even lower at 35 percent and 33 percent, respectively.) As Russian domestic politics increasingly become an intra-elite affair, the elite’s ability to anticipate, let alone respond to challenges to its power and authority from below, is likely to suffer. Thus, the tendency toward Soviet-style conformism, political consolidation, and concentration of power and authority in the hands of the small Kremlin elite could over time undermine its ability to respond to domestic challenges, which could emerge with little warning. (The 1962 killing of twenty-six working class protesters in Novocherkassk is an important illustration of how the actions of regional governments can destabilize the central government.)

The weakened state of the domestic political opposition and the Kremlin’s monopoly on political power in the country, ironically, leave it facing an uncertain political future.

One of the biggest challenges facing the ruling Russian elite is the lack of an ideological foundation on which it can rely for domestic political mobilization. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the demise of the official Communist ideology, the new Russian government had initially embraced democratic pluralism and capitalism as its guiding principles. The traumatic experience of the 1990s had undermined both in the eyes of the Russian public, and when Putin took over the reins of power from Yelstin, he sought to distance himself from the market-democratic experiment of the 1990s. Instead, the Kremlin sought to develop coherent concepts that would combine its own authoritarian preferences with elements of democratic governance and the Russian historical tradition of a strong executive.

The Kremlin’s reluctance for a long time to abandon entirely the remnants of the democratic legacy of the 1990s can probably be attributed largely to its desire to sustain its engagement with the West, which required maintaining some semblance of democratic governance. In addition, the Putin regime has consistently focused on shoring up the sources of its legitimacy. There also were segments of Russian society that held out hopes for a more representative government and for broader political liberalization, as demonstrated by the mass protests of 2012. These hopes were crushed with the start of Putin’s third presidential term in 2012, which also marked a major turning point in Russia’s relations with the West and an equally significant ideological shift. The break with the West, culminating in the Ukraine crisis, was not only a foreign policy matter. The Kremlin’s declaration at the time that “Russia is not Europe,”17 and the October 2014 assertion by its chief political strategist Vyacheslav Volodin that “If there is no Putin, there is no Russia,”18 marked the final rejection of Western liberal ideology.

The Kremlin has since struggled, however, to come up with a substitute ideology. The most obvious candidate is Russian nationalism, which has already been used by Putin on a number of occasions. However, the Kremlin has never been fully comfortable with Russian nationalism in the past: Russia remains a multinational state, and the Kremlin’s unconditional embrace of Russian nationalism as its ruling ideology would carry with it the danger of a backlash from the country’s many ethnic minorities. (Elites in the countries that emerged from the Soviet collapse would also be quite wary of any such moves.) The Kremlin is no doubt mindful of the experience of the USSR in the 1980s, when the revival of nationalism across the Soviet Union’s constituent republics led to its dissolution; another painful reminder came in the 1990s, when the Russian government fought the separatists in Chechnya and struggled to restore its power and authority in other parts of the federation, which were less militant but nonetheless eager to assert their autonomy from Moscow. The search for a new ideological foundation is no doubt one of the Kremlin’s top priorities as it prepares for the presidential election of 2018 and—most likely—another six-year term for Putin at the helm.

The Kremlin faces no organized political opposition.

Notwithstanding several weak points in the Kremlin’s domestic political circumstances—notably the lack of a guiding ideology and the disconnect between grassroots and elite politics—its position appears to be quite strong. The Kremlin faces no organized political opposition. It has a vast and reportedly well funded, well equipped, and loyal security apparatus. It has the support of an elite that is beholden to the Kremlin and dependent on it for economic benefits—and this loyalty is reinforced by a particularly close relationship between political power and property in Russia, where proximity to the Kremlin has long been essential to the country’s oligarchs’ ability to hold property and to operate.

Several other factors contribute to the Putin regime’s stability. Russia’s open borders make it possible for those who are not content with the status quo to leave the country. The availability of consumer goods and the ability to travel abroad for those who can afford it provide additional safety valves for what otherwise would have been pressures for change. The free flow of information through the Internet and access to global culture, including literature, cinema, and other forms of art, allow the Russian intelligentsia a great deal of personal freedom and provide ample opportunities for distraction and the pursuit of interests other than politics. Ample freedom for artistic expression and the rich cultural life in major metropolitan centers create additional outlets for channeling the energies of the most dynamic segments of the population.

For the majority of the population, television remains the essential source of information. The Kremlin’s control of that medium is arguably the most important tool at its disposal, enabling it to exercise control over the population and channel its discontent away from the regime’s vulnerabilities toward safe areas that contribute to political consolidation around the regime. The Kremlin’s sprawling propaganda apparatus constantly parades alleged threats before its vast and largely passive audience—for example, Western subversive organizations seeking to destabilize Russia under the guise of promoting democracy, Western-funded nongovernment organizations and LGBT groups that are purportedly inimical to traditional Russian values and culture, fascist groups and neo-Nazis in Ukraine, devious Western leaders such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and the deployment of NATO troops and weapons near Russian borders.

A quarter century after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia is ruled by a well-established authoritarian regime that is proving quite resilient. Its longevity cannot be predicted with confidence, as Russia’s trajectory over the past several decades has defied all prognostications. However, the regime faces no visible opposition either from the population at large or from the elite. In the absence of an organized grassroots opposition movement, the elite, rather than the population at large, appears more likely to be the source of any challenge to Putin’s continued rule.

A quarter century after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia is ruled by a well-established authoritarian regime that is proving quite resilient.

The impetus for such a challenge is hard to pinpoint. The elite discourse over the past few years has been dominated by concerns about the country’s lackluster economy and the prospect of indefinite economic stagnation. The Putin era has also given rise to a series of clans within the security services whose leaders frequently compete for state budgetary resources and control over legal and illegal revenue streams. Putin’s establishment of a National Guard overseen by longtime personal bodyguard Nikolai Zolotov appears to be aimed at keeping close tabs on the security services and ensuring the loyalty of security forces that are crucial for the survival of the regime.

Of course, a challenge to Putin personally from within the elite is unlikely to lead to an opening of the political system to broader popular participation. Instead, it is more likely to foster competition and rivalry among various vested interests at the expense of any authoritarian successor to Putin who might emerge (whose outlook could very well be more conservative and nationalistic than Putin’s) or, alternatively, usher in a period of political instability and high-level political jostling. In theory, such scenarios could result in—relatively speaking—a more competitive domestic political environment, but they are still a far cry from a participatory, law-governed political system. A meaningful shift toward democracy in Russia appears to be a long way away.

The Economy

No country of Russia’s size is as dependent as it is on the extraction of natural resources, particularly hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbon revenues have amounted to around 50 percent of total government revenues for many of the years between 2006 and 2016.19 Russia’s exports are dominated by natural resources to an even greater extent; all finished manufactured goods were less than 10 percent of the total. Among G20 countries, only Saudi Arabia—a country with one-fifth the population and a gross domestic product (GDP) half the size of Russia’s—is more resource-dependent than Russia.

The striking Russian economic recovery of the 2000s is to a very great extent a story of rising global commodities prices and the resulting resurgence in Russian production volumes. The result of this massive tailwind was impressive: the Russian economy grew at an average rate of 7.4 percent per year in real terms in the decade after 1998 and,20 thanks to the real appreciation of the ruble (itself the result of rising commodity prices), by a remarkable 27.2 percent annual rate in dollars over the same period, a faster rate of dollar GDP growth even than China. The dollar value of Russia’s oil and gas output in 2014 was nearly three times total Russian GDP in 1999, though oil and gas measured in dollars was a similar share of GDP in both years.

Democracy in Russia appears to be a long way away.

The surge in commodities prices during the 2000s benefited all sectors of the economy. Manufacturing rebounded as monetary conditions eased, government spending increased, and domestic demand surged. While continuing to export raw materials, Russia also expanded the processing and refining of its own commodities, and revived other industries such as automobile manufacturing by encouraging foreign direct investment. Put simply, it does not fit the caricature of an “oil and gas company masquerading as a country,” in the words of Senator Lindsey Graham.21

Another benefit of Russia’s commodity wealth is that during the 2000s it enabled the country to repair its fiscal and financial balance sheet after the economic collapse and sovereign defaults of the 1990s. After the default and devaluation of 1998, the sudden influx of export revenues stabilized the ruble exchange rate and allowed the Central Bank to start rebuilding its international reserves, from a low of less than $12 billion in early 1999 to nearly $600 billion at the peak in mid-2008.22 The surge in commodity-related tax revenues enabled Russia to clear wage and pension arrears, restructure its defaulted sovereign debt, and repay the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ahead of schedule.

One clear downside of Russia’s commodity dependence, however, is the repeated cycles of macroeconomic instability that have battered the Russian economy since the 1980s, though those cycles were exacerbated by policy mistakes. The subsequent financial crises in 1998, 2008, and 2015 were also the result of sharp declines in oil prices. No less importantly, however, was the government’s fateful decision to remove capital controls in 2006, just as the global credit bubble was nearing its peak. The result was a flood of speculative capital inflows, as Russian companies gained access to the international capital markets. As commodity prices tumbled and credit markets abruptly dried up after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 1998, Russia experienced one of the sharpest output declines in the world—GDP fell at an annual rate of 19 percent in the first two quarters of 2009.23

The commodity price collapse of 2014 again took a severe toll on the Russian economy, this time exacerbated by international financial sanctions in the wake of the Ukraine intervention. The Central Bank took the courageous decision to stop intervening in the currency market and to allow the ruble to weaken to a level at which supply equaled demand. The ruble depreciation, along with Russia’s sanctions on food imports, drove up inflation and caused a sharp drop in living standards. But inflation is now falling rapidly, the weaker exchange rate has boosted the competitiveness of Russian companies, and in principle it has left the country less exposed macroeconomically to commodity price volatility in future.24

If Russia wishes to grow more rapidly than the advanced countries and to resume its gradual convergence to their income level, it will need to diversify its economy away from commodities. While commodity production and exports were the engine of Russia’s growth for much of the 2000s, commodities are highly unlikely to drive the economy going forward. In fact, the commodity-recovery growth model had already exhausted itself in the second quarter of 2012, a full two years before the imposition of international financial sanctions and the fall in oil prices. Between the second quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2014, Russia grew by just 0.9 percent annually, despite oil prices averaging a near-record $109 per barrel.

The challenge Russia faces is that it has largely exhausted its opportunities for low-cost oil production growth: while the recovery in the 2000s involved expanding output at existing fields in the highly developed region of Western Siberia, the traditional oil regions will experience a gradual decline in production over the coming decades, which can be slowed but not reversed by the application of advanced recovery techniques. Further production growth was predicated on exploring and developing new, highly challenging regions, such as the Eastern Siberian permafrost region and offshore in the Arctic and Far East. Even without energy sanctions, those regions would be extremely costly to develop and hence economically viable only if oil prices remained high. U.S. and EU sanctions have blocked Russian access to technologies critical for the development of those regions, technologies that Russia will not be able to procure from other sources. Hence unless oil prices again resume their double-digit annual increases for a number of years, a prospect that appears highly improbable, it is likely that Russian oil production will not rise much above its current level of 10.6 million barrels per day, certainly not by enough to drive a broader economic expansion.25

The Russian government argues that the current environment provides ideal conditions for economic diversification. Russia’s food sanctions and a range of other measures aimed at foreign suppliers are creating opportunities for domestic manufacturers to produce substitutes for imports. It is true that all of these factors are likely to be positive for Russian growth in the near term on the margin, and that they will largely support growth in the noncommodity sectors of the economy, promoting diversification. But Russia’s economy will continue to confront a number of profound structural challenges that will limit the pace and the extent of that trend.

First, Russia’s cost advantage is likely to erode over time, especially after international sanctions are eventually rolled back. Investors are unlikely to invest in industries reliant on low labor costs in Russia in the foreseeable future, given the potential for exchange-rate movements and inflation to eliminate that competitive advantage very rapidly.

Second, Russia’s food sanctions, along with its local-content requirements in the automobile sector and other protectionist measures, also do not provide a basis for long-term investment in domestic production in Russia, since it is unclear how long they will be in place. The food sanctions are unlikely to outlast the Western financial sanctions on Russia. Many other measures will need to be phased out in the coming years under the terms of Russia’s 2012 protocol of accession to the World Trade Organization.

Third, despite the marginal recent improvements, Russia remains a challenging place to enforce contracts, protect intellectual property, defend one’s property against corporate raiders, and deal with its rent-seeking bureaucracy. Moreover, its storied education system is now delivering results that put the country disappointingly far below the average for members in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of educational achievement.

Russia is likely to continue to succeed in industries downstream from the commodities that it produces, such as refining, chemicals, and steel, due to lower transportation costs and other synergies with commodity production. But for Russia to make headway in higher-end twenty-first century knowledge industries, it will have to make significantly more progress in reform of its governance, education, and judicial systems. The prospects for a renewed reform drive ahead of the 2018 elections look dim, and even after that there is little assurance that the Putin regime would opt for risky economic reforms that would require curbing the power of the state—or even that they could execute such reforms credibly without fundamental changes to the political system.

Foreign Policy

When the Cold War ended, Soviet leaders embraced a broad and inclusive vision of foreign policy enshrined in the 1990 Paris Charter for a New Europe—a continent without dividing lines, ideological competition, and military confrontation. Although the leaders of the new Russian state endorsed that vision upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the reality has proved quite different. Almost since the launch of the new Russian state, Russian foreign policy has followed a different course and a different guiding philosophy. Nearly three decades later, Russia finds itself drifting toward a new Cold War with the West. Far from rejecting the idea of great power competition, ideological and military divisions, and spheres of influence, successive Russian governments have seen themselves as leading a temporarily diminished great power and have pursued a clear goal in the international arena of restoring Moscow’s sphere of influence and its place in the concert of major powers responsible for the fate of the world.

Soon after the Cold War ended, the United States and Europe embarked on an ambitious project—the expansion of Western institutions into Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Russia’s role in this enterprise was left somewhat ambiguous. The West’s declaratory policy treated Russia as a partner and even hinted that it could eventually join the same institutions as its former Warsaw Pact satellites. The policy of the twin enlargements of the European Union and NATO was built on the premise that a reforming Russia would see the two processes as a friendly move and would embrace them as a beneficial expansion of the zone of stability, security, and prosperity toward its borders. However, along with the spirit of partnership and hints at a future alliance, advocates of the twin expansion had argued that the move would also serve as a hedge against Russia’s potential resurgence as a neo-imperial power.

Successive Russian governments have seen themselves as leading a temporarily diminished great power and have pursued a clear goal in the international arena of restoring Moscow’s sphere of influence.

This was not lost on Russia’s foreign policy establishment, where the expansion of the EU and especially NATO had always been viewed as a hostile move by the West, designed to expand its sphere of influence at the expense of Russia. From Russia’s perspective, NATO enlargement was simply a redrawing of the boundaries between the West’s and Russia’s respective spheres of influence to take advantage of the latter’s temporary weakness. In the simplest and most direct Russian interpretation of events, Russia had abandoned both its outer and inner empires—the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union—and the West took advantage of it to expand its empire further east, where it had never before had a foothold.

Russian policymakers have always viewed the states of the former Soviet Union as the essential security belt along Russia’s periphery that needed to be defended fiercely at every available opportunity. Western presence there—political, economic, or military (with or without boots on the ground)—was not seen by Moscow as either stabilizing or friendly. As soon as Russia was ready, it would engage in a geopolitical tug of war with Washington and its European allies.

Russian opposition to NATO and EU expansion was not missed or ignored in the West. But throughout most of the past quarter century, Russia was seen as either too weak or too interested in good relations with the West to do anything about it. Russian interest in trade, investment, technological and economic modernization, and participation in key Western clubs—the G8 meetings, EU-Russia summits, special Moscow-Washington-Berlin relationships, and the P5+1 (the UN Security Council plus Germany)—were thought to outweigh the Kremlin’s raw geopolitical ambition. The hope underlying the policy of twin enlargements was that the internal dynamics inside Russia and progress on domestic reforms would ultimately make it realize that the expansion of the West right up to its borders served Russia’s interests.

But as Russia’s domestic trajectory veered away from democratic and market reforms, and its foreign policy moved toward challenging the West, the key irritants in the relationship came more sharply into focus. These included the West’s criticism of Russia’s own democracy deficit and Russian suspicions that Western efforts to promote democracy in and around Russia were intended to destabilize, encircle, and weaken Russia and marginalize it geopolitically. U.S.-led NATO military operations in the Balkans in the 1990s raised the specter of humanitarian intervention inside Russia itself, which the West had accused of gross violations of human rights in Chechnya. Russia’s national security establishment saw the war in Iraq as further evidence of U.S. unilateralism and lack of restraint. And the democratic, color revolutions on the periphery of Russia in the 2000s were seen as Western handiwork intended to conceal the real goal: Western geopolitical expansion at Russia’s expense.

The notion that NATO might expand to include Ukraine and Georgia violated both Russian ideas about the right geopolitical balance in Europe, which included a cordon sanitaire on Russia’s periphery, and the Kremlin’s vision of how European security should be managed as a concert of major powers. With Georgia or Ukraine in NATO, not only would the alliance position itself on Russia’s doorstep but Kyiv and Tbilisi would also be seated at the table of Europe’s only remaining military alliance without Russia. Neither of those two outcomes was acceptable to the Kremlin, a state of affairs that ultimately prompted the Kremlin to intervene militarily in both countries.

Mistrust of NATO, no matter how well intentioned it appears in its declaratory policy, is unlikely to fade among Russian elites.

Opposition to NATO enlargement appears deeply entrenched in Russian domestic politics. It has persisted throughout the entire twenty-five years of post-Soviet Russia and across a wide range of political parties and movements. It was opposed, resented, or actively resisted by Russian elites during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the tenures of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. Mistrust of NATO, no matter how well intentioned it appears in its declaratory policy, is unlikely to fade among Russian elites, even if a sudden radical change occurs in Russian domestic politics and a new team more friendly to the West takes the helm in the Kremlin.

Russian Grand Strategy

The grand strategy of Russia that has emerged from this worldview has been consistent and—from the Kremlin’s perspective—successful. It has prioritized preserving domestic stability and the current political regime in Russia, projecting and protecting its great power image abroad, and driving wedges and fostering disruptions within the Western camp. The strategy has effectively matched Russia’s means to these goals.

Inside Russia, the Kremlin has implemented an extensive campaign to minimize the prospects of the country’s internal political opposition ever gaining a foothold in Russian domestic politics. It has sought to limit and wherever possible eliminate the influence of foreign actors in Russian political life, the media, and the nongovernmental sector. It has also carried out a massive propaganda campaign intended to brand remaining opposition voices and groups as unpatriotic and agents of foreign influence and to mobilize support from the electorate for the Putin regime.

On the global stage, Russian foreign policy has pursued a series of partnerships—most notably with China—that help Russia counterbalance perceived U.S. hegemony and constrain its ability to act unilaterally. Russia’s permament membership in the UN Security Council has proved indispensable in challenging the United States and asserting itself as America’s near-peer competitor. The ability to act in concert with China to block U.S.-led attempts to put pressure on Syria’s Assad regime has enhanced Russia’s image as a major power capable of stopping the United States in its tracks.

In yet another application of this strategy in Syria, Russia has built on its partnership with the Assad regime and Iran to position itself as an indispensable actor whose military deployment—limited in scope and against a far inferior adversary—has changed the course of the conflict. The military move has demonstrated Russia’s new capabilities to project power beyond its immediate periphery, but was undertaken without undue risks, since the United States had effectively signaled its reluctance to become heavily involved militarily in the Syrian civil war. Thus the possibility of a direct military confrontation with the United States was minimized. The added benefit of this deployment was to cement Russia’s leading role in any political process on Syria and to enhance its image throughout the Middle East as a major power that, unlike the United States, comes to the rescue of its clients.

Around its immediate periphery, Russia has flexed its muscles with considerable economic, political, information, and, when necessary, military resources that are no match for its weaker neighbors. The ability to capitalize on the stream of Central Asian migrant workers to Russia gives it significant leverage vis-à-vis some of its neighbors whose economic well-being and political stability depend, as shown in figure 1 below, on the flow of remittances from Russia.26 The supply of gas and electricity, the imposition of tariffs, and access to the Russian market are all sources of strategically important leverage for Moscow. The dominant role of Russian-language media in the information space of the former Soviet states serves the same purpose.

And when those nonmilitary assets are not enough, military means, both overt and covert, are deployed, as was the case with Georgia in 2008 and since 2014 in Ukraine. Here too, the Kremlin has been careful not to overreach: neither Georgia nor Ukraine is in NATO and therefore neither has the alliance’s security guarantee that the Baltic states have. Both are important to Russia as buffer states that must be kept outside of NATO. And both have been targets of active U.S. and European policies intended to bring them into the Western sphere. Thus, keeping both out of that sphere is also symbolically important as an indicator of Russia’s ability to thwart U.S. and European foreign policy designs.

Elsewhere, in the West, including the Baltic states, where an outright conflict against a superior adversary is fraught with risk and its economic leverage is limited, Russia has pursued its strategy with nonmilitary means that have proved quite effective. It has engaged in information, disinformation, and cyber operations; supported populist political parties and movements to undermine the cohesion and resolve of Western governments; and used intimidation, including nuclear threats, to influence public opinion in the West. The Kremlin intervened in the U.S. election to tilt the outcome in favor of President Trump, to undermine the credibility of the electoral system in the eyes of the American public, and to damage U.S. credibility as a supporter of democratic values abroad.27 All of these efforts have been relatively low-cost and low-risk activities. They are inherently difficult to defend or retaliate against and thus carry a low probability of confrontation. Yet, they have been extremely effective in projecting Russia’s image as a major power on the world stage and—just as important—deflating the image of the United States and its allies.

All signs—domestic and foreign—point to Russia’s continuing rapprochement with China.

In Asia, Putin’s grand strategy is imbued with the same sense of calculating realism as in Europe and Eurasia. Throughout his presidency, and especially since the break with the West in his third term, the Russian president has pursued a close partnership with China. Putin’s embrace of China is both a matter of necessity and a deliberate choice borne out of Russia’s domestic circumstances and standing in the international arena. For Russia, with its population of 145 million, GDP of some $1.3 trillion in 2015,28 bleak economic prospects, and alienation from the West, an adversarial relationship with China would pose insurmountable military, economic, and political burdens. Good relations with China are also based on a shared aversion to Washington’s fondness for democracy promotion and unilateral military intervention. Moreover, Beijing’s lack of enthusiasm for challenging Washington directly and its willingness to take a back seat to Russia in the Syrian crisis have enhanced Russia’s leadership claim on the global stage.

However, Chinese officials maintain privately and sometimes publicly that, from their point of view, ties with Russia do not represent either a partnership or an alliance. Rather, this is largely a transactional and mutually convenient relationship. To Putin’s chagrin, overblown Russian expectations of a Chinese-sponsored financial and commercial windfall that would lessen the impact of U.S.-EU sanctions have not been realized. None of this is lost on Russian officials, but they appear content to carve out a role as Beijing’s junior partner and to accept the unequal nature of this relationship since it apparently suits both countries’ interests.

Since the break with the West over the annexation of Crimea and the undeclared war in Ukraine, Russia has drawn even closer to China. Beijing has not endorsed Russian actions in Ukraine, but it has withheld its criticism, too. It has not joined the U.S.-led sanctions regime to punish Russia even though Chinese financial institutions are careful not to run afoul of Western regulators. And it has not criticized Putin for Russia’s democracy deficit. These Chinese positions, coupled with Russian aspirations for expanding economic relations with China as a substitute for trade with the West, have fueled Russian enthusiasm for a deeper relationship with China. Although expanding those ties has proved challenging, the strategic rationale for partnership with China has not diminished. In fact, all signs—domestic and foreign—point to Russia’s continuing rapprochement with China.

The Russian Military

Although the transformation of Russia’s armed forces continues to be hampered by technological, manpower, and training problems, Russian military capabilities have seen steady if not spectacular improvement since 2008, when Moscow embarked upon a comprehensive military reform and modernization program underwritten by significant increases in defense spending. As a result of these efforts and a more assertive foreign policy, Russia poses a major challenge to European security and to countries of the former Soviet Union. However, Russia remains outclassed militarily by the United States and its allies, both globally and in the three most critical regions of Eurasia: the European theater, northeast Asia, and the Middle East. This balance is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. As seen in figure 2 below, the United States and its European and Asia-Pacific allies outspend Russia on defense by a margin of 10:1 ($1 trillion to $100 billion), and their combined GDP is over $37 trillion compared to Russia’s $1.3 trillion.29 America and its allies, moreover, enjoy technological superiority over the Russians, the Russians have no militarily powerful allies, and the United States maintains access to a global network of military bases and facilities.

Nuclear Capabilities

Russia’s strategic and to a somewhat lesser extent nonstrategic nuclear weapons are the crown jewels in the Russian armed forces. They will for the foreseeable future threaten the United States and its NATO allies on the alliance’s eastern flank, as well as preserve Russia’s status as an equal nuclear power to the United States. The paramount role assigned to Russia’s nuclear forces is reflected in its official nuclear, defense, security, and foreign policy doctrines. Together, these statements maintain that a large and modern nuclear arsenal is essential to preserving strategic deterrence with the United States, global strategic stability, and Russia’s great power status. Moscow also places heavy reliance on its nuclear forces to compensate for what it perceives as Russian inferiority in conventional forces vis-à-vis the United States/NATO and the threat that NATO’s conventional, missile defense, nuclear, and prompt strike capabilities pose to Russia’s nuclear deterrent. In short, this arsenal is essential to Russia’s grand strategy.

The paramount role assigned to Russia’s nuclear forces is reflected in its official nuclear, defense, security, and foreign policy doctrines.

The importance of nuclear weapons in Russian grand strategy is also reflected in an ambitious nuclear force modernization program launched nearly a decade ago. Under this program, every leg of Russia’s nuclear triad will be modernized with new delivery vehicles and several categories of improved weapons, resulting in a much more capable ballistic missile submarine force and a larger number of mobile ICBMs equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles.30 Although the size of Russia’s stockpile of nonstrategic nuclear warheads will shrink, the remaining missiles will have longer ranges, carry more warheads, and possess greater accuracy. The pace of the program may slow down as a result of stagnant economic growth and cuts in defense spending, and trade-offs may need to be made between spending on conventional and nuclear forces. But the overall trajectory of Russia’s strategic forces’ development and the doctrine governing their use will not be altered within the next several years—a doctrine that, based on Russia’s exercises, operations, and force planning, suggests that Moscow may be lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in NATO contingencies.

Conventional Capabilities

Russia’s conventional capabilities are also improving in a slow and steady manner, albeit from a very low base following the hollowing out of these forces in the 1990s. Under the 2020 State Armament Program, more sophisticated training, a higher quality of new equipment, more realistic exercises, changes in personnel policies, reforms in military organization, and the experience gained from Russian military operations over the past decade have all created greater combat capability. Russia’s forces are now far more professional, ready, and mobile and they are under better command and control than they were when its defense modernization and reform program was launched eight years ago.

Russia’s conventional force improvements have not, however, created the capability to project and sustain military power around the world, and the country is a long way off from attaining military “peer competitor” status with the United States on a global scale. Nor are Russian conventional forces without their shortcomings. While Russia maintains a small force of well-led, highly ready, and well-trained and -equipped units, most of the 260,000 ground troops operate less modern and capable weapons and are at a lower state of readiness. Moreover, although some sectors of Russia’s defense industry are modern, efficient, and productive, the industry has many facilities that are antiquated, inefficient, and unproductive. As a result, Russia’s conventional forces will continue to lag behind the United States and even some NATO allies in important technologies that are critical to the success of modern warfare, including state-of-the-art command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance abilities and conventional precision strike weapons. In addition, a declining population base and other problems with recruitment and retention will make it difficult for Russia to meet its target of 1 million members in its armed forces comprised mainly of nonconscripted and contract personnel. These problems are reflected in continued reports of low morale, high desertion rates, and lack of discipline.31

Russia’s forces are now far more professional, ready, and mobile and they are under better command and control than they were when its defense modernization and reform program was launched eight years ago.

Over the last several years and in the face of slow economic growth and budget cuts, Moscow has maintained defense spending at 3.5 to 4.0 percent of GNP.32 To date, there has been strong political and public support for these expenditures, but stubborn economic and demographic realities will likely put the brakes on defense spending within the next few years. In fact, the Kremlin recently announced a 30 percent cut in defense spending in 201733; low oil prices, a continuation of Western sanctions, the loss of defense industrial capacity in eastern Ukraine, and a precipitous drop in foreign direct investment also raise doubts about Moscow’s ability to sustain high levels of defense spending over the next several years as well as the capacity of Russian defense industries to provide weapons and equipment comparable to what is in U.S. and Western inventories.

Hybrid Capabilities

Russia has also improved its capabilities at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict. Indeed, as demonstrated by its military and information and cyber operations over the past few years in Georgia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, various EU countries, and the United States, it has an impressive arsenal of hybrid capabilities.34 Russia’s development and use of hybrid means of warfare is not necessarily new, innovative, or revolutionary. It may be of some utility in understanding Russia’s conceptual framework for the nature of modern conflict and future Russian military operations.35 However, it also appears that reliance on hybrid warfare is, from Moscow’s perspective, a response to its concerns that U.S. and Western efforts to promote democracy and human rights in Russia and post-Soviet states are a form of hybrid warfare directed at Russia. None of this should obscure the reality that Russian use of hybrid warfare techniques poses a unique challenge for the West. Moscow is likely to use those tools to advance its interests whenever it sees low-risk and low-cost opportunities.

Eurasia

Eurasia—more specifically the states of the former Soviet Union—has been the principal zone of competition between Russia and the West since the breakup of the USSR, even if both sides have not always acknowledged it. The collapse of the Soviet Union left Russia greatly weakened at home and diminished on the world stage. In this context, the newly independent states in Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and Eastern Europe assumed special significance as the essential security belt against external threats and what was viewed by Moscow as its last remaining sphere of influence—where Russia could compete with the West, which was seen by the Russian national security establishment as pursuing geopolitical expansion at Russia’s expense.

Russian use of hybrid warfare techniques poses a unique challenge for the West.

For the United States and its European allies, the states of the former Soviet Union had acquired primarily political and ideological significance as they launched unprecedented transitions toward democratic, market-based systems; they were also eyed as participants in the new, inclusive Western-led security, political, and economic architecture that accompanied the process of NATO and EU enlargement. There was no expectation at the outset of this process that the states of the former USSR would join the two organizations, but all were offered opportunities for partnership and assistance to make it happen.

In the West, Eurasia held far less geopolitical significance for Western interests than Russia. The United States and its allies viewed Russia as the pivotal state in Eurasia. If it succeeded at reforming itself, joining the West, and accepting the peaceful breakup of the USSR, its neighbors would all benefit; if not, then Russia and the West would revert to their previous adversarial relationship. While this approach placed greater emphasis on relations with Russia than with its neighbors, the West’s policy has always stressed that these were independent, sovereign states rather than Russia’s satellites. Engagement with them, from the West’s perspective, was never intended to undermine or displace legitimate Russian interests.

Some of Moscow’s former satellites stressed the importance of bringing the states of the former USSR into the West’s sphere of influence as a hedge against Russia’s failure to reform and its potential resurgence as a neo-imperial power. But the practical consequence of that thinking was effectively the same—to engage with these countries, to assist their reforms, and to support their efforts to establish themselves as sovereign and independent states fully integrated in the international community. Achieving this goal, it was thought, also required active Western efforts to promote the development of new oil-and-gas export routes from the region that were not subject to Russian control.

The two approaches to the states of the former Soviet Union—Russia’s geopolitical orientation and the West’s largely values-based policy—have defined the standoff between Russia and the West throughout the entire post–Cold War period. The standoff eventually culminated in the annexation of Crimea and the undeclared Russian war against Ukraine, leading in turn to the present crisis in European security.

For the United States, as well as its European allies, Russia remains by far the most important state of the former Soviet Union. In terms of its impact on the world stage, military might, economic footprint, and sheer size, it eclipses all of the states of the former USSR combined. A stable, peaceful, and friendly Russia is the most important guarantee of stability, security, and development in Eurasia, and a valuable partner to Europe and the United States. An unstable and weak Russia, or a powerful and belligerent Russia, is a source of insecurity for Europe and the United States. For reasons of geography and history, the vast region is of much greater importance to Russia than it is to the United States, although for the same reasons Eastern Europe and the Caucasus are of great importance to the United States’ European allies.

If the United States and Europe are confronting a hostile Russia, then Eurasia, especially Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, becomes an area of greater geopolitical competition for the transatlantic community and a mirror image of what it is for Russia—a buffer to protect it against the threat from the east. This is exactly what the states of Eurasia have become in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine and the Russian annexation of Crimea. They have assumed greater strategic importance for the United States—the principal architect and enforcer of the post–Cold War security order—after that order was threatened and effectively undone by Russian actions in Ukraine.

A stable, peaceful, and friendly Russia is the most important guarantee of stability, security, and development in Eurasia, and a valuable partner to Europe and the United States.

The eleven states of the former Soviet Union surrounding Russia can be grouped into three distinct geographic categories—Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and Ukraine-Belarus-Moldova. Despite vast inter- and intraregional differences, they share a great deal in common. All have made significant strides in establishing their independence and sovereignty. At the same time, none has been able to shed the lasting legacy of their shared Soviet past. All have complicated relationships with Russia, seeking to escape its geopolitical footprint. None has succeeded in doing so. Some have made big strides toward markets and democracy, while others have hardly moved in that direction. Most are still somewhere in between, with their post-Soviet transition still a work in progress (see figure 3).36

For all of these former Soviet states, partnership with the West has been a demand-driven process, in which their internal momentum for reform has been the key factor. Thus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova have made the most progress toward integration into European and transatlantic structures even though each has faced major obstacles over the past quarter century. All three have suffered from Russian military interventions and lost parts of their territory to Russian-sponsored separatist regimes. All three have frozen conflicts on their territory and are unlikely to realize their full sovereignty in the foreseeable future. All have experienced the familiar ills of post-Soviet transition—corruption, weak rule of law, powerful oligarchic interests, weak economies, and erratic domestic politics. Yet all have managed to cope with and even achieve significant progress toward overcoming these ills.

The experience of these three countries, the most successful of the post-Soviet states, is indicative of the scale and scope of the challenge facing all the states of the former Soviet Union, and the importance of sustained, long-term engagement with the West to assist their transitions. Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia have signed association agreements with the EU despite strong pressure from Russia. Their experience also demonstrates how far Russia is prepared to go to keep them in its orbit. The combination of two factors—their push toward the EU and Russia’s pull toward its sphere—ensures that these states will remain contested territory between Russia and the West for the foreseeable future.

Moscow’s resolve to maintain its sphere of influence in Eurasia has been further demonstrated in its dealings with two other countries that have a special relationship with Russia—Armenia and Belarus. Both are members of the Russian-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), yet both are trying—quietly—to put some distance between themselves and Russia.

Armenia was on the verge of signing its own association agreement with the EU in 2013, but cancelled the signing abruptly due to strong pressure from Russia.37 Instead, it has joined the EAEU,38 while quietly seeking to maintain ties to both the EU and NATO, where it has long been an active participant in the alliance’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program.39 Armenia is locked in a tense military standoff with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and the surrounding territories conquered by Armenia over two decades ago. Armenia shares a border with Azerbaijan’s partner, Turkey, which has never acknowledged the massacre of ethnic Armenians over a century ago. For Armenia, surrounded by enemies, good relations with Russia are not an option but a matter of national survival.

Belarus has been Russia’s closest partner among the former Soviet states. It has signed a union treaty with Russia and extracted as much aid for its troubled economy from Moscow as possible; at the same time, it has preserved its own statehood, building up its national identity and seeking to carve out as much independence from Russia as possible within these constraints. Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed the last remaining dictator of Europe, has proved adept at maintaining domestic political calm, while manipulating Moscow to provide subsidies in exchange for the pretense of partnership. Lately, in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis, he has even succeeded in creating a modest opening with Europe and the United States, seeking to capitalize on their apparent interest in enticing Belarus to gravitate closer to the West and further away from the Russian orbit.

Neither Armenia nor Belarus is likely to risk an outright break with Russia. However, both demonstrate that even Russia’s closest partners chafe under its heavy hand and are interested in expanding their ties with the West—quietly and within the boundaries they define as safe and acceptable to Moscow. It is in the West’s interest to pursue these opportunities, leaving it to the countries themselves to set safe limits for engagement.

Azerbaijan is another neighbor of Russia that is unlikely to leave its orbit in the foreseeable future. As in other parts of the former USSR, Azerbaijan’s own reform momentum is likely to serve as a barometer of its relations with the West. Its initial rapprochement with the United States and Europe in the wake of the Soviet breakup was driven by its oil wealth and desire—reciprocated in the West—to find an outlet for its oil bypassing Russia. However, early hopes for reforms in Azerbaijan, spurred by this rapprochement, were crushed by an increasingly authoritarian, oppressive, and corrupt Ilham Aliyev regime. With the collapse of oil prices, the country’s economy has suffered a major blow and the political system has become even more oppressive. Azerbaijan’s internal conditions—the degree to which the government is prepared to pursue economic reforms and allow a more tolerant political environment—will be the critical factor shaping its relations with the West at a time when the country’s strategic significance is eclipsed by more urgent developments in the Middle East and Europe. Considering its record to date, Azerbaijan is likely to remain in Russia’s orbit for the foreseeable future with Turkey as its other principal geopolitical partner. The ongoing rapprochement between Russia and Turkey as Europe’s outcasts can only solidify Azerbaijan’s place in Russia’s orbit.

The influence of Europe and the Euro- Atlantic community on Central Asia is likely to diminish, and the role of Asia, and especially China, will probably increase.

In Central Asia, U.S. and EU engagement, never particularly strong, is likely to further diminish in the years to come under the pressure of the region’s internal dynamics and larger geopolitical and economic trends. With the exception of Kazakhstan, reform in Central Asia has not gained traction. In the absence of strong internal momentum for reform in most Central Asian countries, Western engagement has never been strong either. It manifested itself most actively in Kazakhstan’s resource-rich economy, particularly its energy sector, and in the conduct of the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

Central Asia is facing a challenging future. Economic conditions will test even the most capable managers of state finances. Political systems throughout the region are facing generational change, an Islamic revival, and an uncertain security environment. The conflict in Afghanistan shows no signs of a negotiated settlement, and the spillover impacts of the conflict continue to be felt across the porous border with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The withdrawal of most of the U.S. and allied military presence from Afghanistan has obviated the need for the United States to act as the region’s preeminent security provider—the role it had played during the previous decade and a half. The West’s reach into Central Asia is likely to remain limited in circumstances where China is the preeminent economic actor in the region, Russia continues to insist on its role as Central Asia’s security manager, and there are few opportunities for the United States and Europe to engage beyond high-level political contacts. In these conditions, the influence of Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community on Central Asia is likely to diminish, and the role of Asia, and especially China, will probably increase.

However, even in these conditions, the West should pursue opportunities to sustain political contacts and broaden engagement with Central Asia. Squeezed between China and Russia, the region’s leaders may try to loosen their geopolitical constraints through cautious outreach to the West. For the United States and Europe, this could result in new opportunities for carefully calibrated engagement, building on demand coming from the region while recognizing their resource constraints and limits on the West’s capacity to push the region toward greater democracy, rule of law, better governance, and markets. This includes high-level political consultations and assistance in areas of mutual interest and practical utility, where Western involvement can produce tangible results: trade and investment, support for economic reform, programs to improve quality of life for the region’s populations, and reform of less sensitive areas of security sectors. The region’s authoritarian brand of governance will not, however, provide fertile ground for Western efforts to promote democracy and human rights.

The region’s authoritarian brand of governance will not, however, provide fertile ground for Western efforts to promote democracy and human rights.

For Eurasia as a whole, the break between Russia and the West represents a difficult challenge. Even in the best of times, navigating between Russia’s pursuit of a sphere of influence and the region’s desire for closer ties with the West was a complex task. The new adversarial relationship between Russia and the West will test the skills of the most creative and persistent diplomats in the region. Defusing the current tensions between the West and Russia—but not at the price of ceding a sphere of influence to it—would also help the states of Eurasia in meeting their difficult challenge of managing their unbalanced relations with a revisionist and unpredictable Russia.

Ukraine

Ukraine occupies a special place in the post-Soviet space. With its capital, Kyiv, often described as the cradle of Russian statehood, it was the part of the former USSR, and the Russian Empire prior to that, that was most similar to Russia. Ukraine’s unequivocal vote for independence in 1991 played the pivotal role in catalyzing the peaceful dissolution of the USSR. The two revolutions—in 2004 and 2013—symbolized Ukraine’s desire to secure its place in the West. The annexation of Crimea by Russia and the undeclared war in eastern Ukraine signaled Russia’s resolve to keep it in its orbit, even at the price of destroying the post–Cold War security order in Europe. Ukraine has thus become the pivotal state in the East-West geopolitical standoff.

Since the earliest post-Soviet days, Ukraine has struggled to find its footing as a unified, prosperous society and modern European state. The country’s size and remarkable diversity have made it difficult to consolidate its identity as part of the European mainstream and fostered patterns of dysfunctional governance and state capture by elite groups. The presidency of Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014) was marred by unprecedented predatory crony capitalism and increasing coziness with Moscow.

Pessimism has ebbed and flowed in the West for more than a decade about Ukraine’s ability to change. Yanukovych was elected to the presidency in 2010 after a disappointing performance by a reformist government that came to power following the 2004 Orange Revolution and quickly became mired in corruption and factional squabbles. However, this pessimism was dispelled by an unprecedented and unforeseen outburst of civil society activism when Yanukovych, under pressure from Russia, abandoned his pledge to sign the association agreement with the European Union. Ukrainian civil society was further energized by the revelation of a behind-the-scenes deal between Putin and Yanukovych in which the Ukrainian president appeared to have traded his country’s control over its own economic orientation and foreign policy for a loan of $15 billion, plus sizeable discounts for gas purchases. The deal appeared to be nothing less than a down payment on Yanukovych’s reelection campaign.40 The anger of Ukrainian civil society in response to Yanukovych’s betrayal of its European aspirations proved the critical factor that led to the downfall of his government in early 2014 and has played a critical role in Ukrainian politics since then.

Ukraine’s record since the revolution has also demonstrated that achieving those goals will be difficult, time-consuming, and frequently maddening. Besides the unresolved conflict in eastern Ukraine, the country faces many other obstacles—a powerful and entrenched oligarchy; disruptive, dysfunctional factional politics in the legislature; widespread corruption; weak rule of law and stalled judicial reform; a Russian economic blockade; an underperforming, unreformed economy; and the ever-present threat of Ukraine fatigue among key Western partners and international donors, to name just a few.41

The IMF currently forecasts that Ukrainian GDP will grow by 1.5 percent in 2016 and 2.5 percent in 2017.42 In 2015, when the economy shrank by a whopping 10 percent, inflation soared, and foreign reserves dwindled, the withholding of IMF loans could have led the entire country to unravel. To be sure, current conditions remain fragile, and the stop-and-go pace of reform has stoked frustration among Western policymakers. Nevertheless, the current government has greater room for maneuver. Debt relief gives the economy important breathing room. The cleanup of the financial sector has been remarkable, with important banks being recapitalized and tens of shady ones shut down. The energy sector, long a source of far-reaching corruption, is slowly being reformed.

Throughout this tumultuous period, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has steadily consolidated power. A self-described kamikaze government led by radical reformers and expatriates has been replaced by less high-profile players who largely owe their position and influence to the president and his entourage.43 Nearly all branches of government are in the hands of trusted allies (for example, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who established his reputation as the progressive mayor of Vinnytsia, Poroshenko’s home base). Western demands for dramatic anticorruption moves, political decentralization, and modest reform of the energy and state-owned sectors often run into fierce opposition from vested interests and Poroshenko’s closest associates. To break the logjam, the West has turned to increasingly stringent forms of conditionality.

The grip of the old system is hard to break. Average Ukrainians despair at plummeting living standards, the lack of serious efforts to curb pervasive corruption, and a culture of impunity that runs directly counter to the spirit of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity (see figure 4).44 Despite Western financial and technical assistance, reform of existing institutions has proven far less effective than creating new ones such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Western-equipped patrol police.45 Privatization of large swaths of the economy, a key priority for the international financial institutions and Western donors, is long overdue, but faces rearguard opposition from insiders in control of budgetary cash flows.

Leaving aside the evident difficulties of the transition, most members of the ruling elite and Ukrainian society as a whole have no interest in trading their hard-won gains to become part of a Russia-centric political and economic order. Moscow’s gamble that military intervention, economic pressure, and covert forms of subversion would force Ukraine back into its sphere of influence has backfired in the most dramatic fashion. For an entire generation of Ukrainians and likely their descendants, Russia is no longer a friend. Rather, it is the biggest threat to their country’s survival, sovereignty, and independence. The rupture between Ukraine and Russia will be long-lasting and broad-ranging.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine has taken on the characteristics of a long-term stalemate. Moscow via its proxy forces and military and security personnel is able to manipulate the level of violence up or down depending on near-term objectives. Moscow is insisting that Kyiv reintegrate the separatist-controlled enclaves with special autonomous status that would provide an effective veto over Ukraine’s geopolitical and security orientation, as well as domestic politics and policy choices.

High-level diplomacy led jointly by Germany and France has stopped large-scale fighting in eastern Ukraine, but full implementation of the Minsk accords is unlikely, given Moscow’s reluctance to implement a lasting ceasefire or withdraw heavy weapons along the line of contact. For its part, Kyiv may be considering the option of writing off separatist-controlled Donbas and sticking Putin with the bill for its inhabitants. Implementing the political aspects of the Minsk agreements (for example, parliamentary approval of constitutional amendments granting the separatist-held territories far-ranging autonomy) would be tantamount to political suicide for the Poroshenko government. However, Kyiv wants to avoid the blame for the failure of Minsk and seeks to use Russian failure to comply with the accords’ security provisions as the basis for the indefinite extension of U.S.-EU economic sanctions.

The West’s engagement has played and will continue to play a key role in Ukraine’s transition. Its financial support has been essential to Ukraine’s ability to avoid an even worse economic contraction and to begin putting its economy back on a growth path. The conditionality attached to the West’s financial support has been critical to Ukraine’s reform progress and overcoming resistance from powerful, entrenched interests. The West’s political and diplomatic engagement with Ukraine has catalyzed further domestic reforms and is an essential element of its progress to date. Notwithstanding many other internal challenges and distractions Europe and the United States are facing, their ability to stay engaged with Ukraine will be critical not only to its success but also to the future of the European and transatlantic political and security order.

The Russian Problem in the Next Four Years

Russia’s aggressive posture on the world stage will remain a challenge for the United States and its allies for the foreseeable future. Putin’s domestic popularity and legitimacy depend to some degree on his image of standing up to the West and his appeal to Russian nationalism and patriotism. He also equates Russian muscle flexing with achieving his goal of restoring the country’s great power status. Moreover, Moscow’s perception that the United States and the West pose a threat to Russian national security impels it to act aggressively and to see its competition with the United States and the West largely in zero-sum terms. All these factors portend a more dangerous relationship with the West and an escalating risk of a direct confrontation; they should also temper the West’s expectations that Putin is a man it can do business with while protecting core Western interests, values, and principles.

Military Threat

For most of the past twenty-five years, the United States and the West dismissed the Russian military (with the exception of its nuclear forces) as a dilapidated force plagued by inferior equipment and poor training, leadership, organization, morale, and discipline. In the last eight years, the Russian armed forces have mounted a comeback, and the next four years will likely witness a continuation of this trend, even if it slows down due to domestic economic constraints. Equally important, Russia has asserted its interests more aggressively over the past decade and has demonstrated the will and a growing capacity to use force to defend those interests in Russia’s immediate neighborhood and beyond.

Barring some unforeseen development inside Russia, Putin will be in command for the next eight years, and while he has demonstrated a rational and calculating streak, he has also been less risk-averse and more unpredictable than previous Russian leaders. He is, moreover, determined to achieve great power status, to challenge U.S. leadership of the liberal international order, and to restore Russian control of what it considers its sphere of special influence in the post-Soviet space. When openly challenged by the United States and the West on matters that he considers vital to Russian national security and his political survival, Putin will not back down. And because Russia lacks the economic and financial clout and soft power of the West, it will in these circumstances push back with military means and especially its tools for hybrid warfare.

Nonetheless, the Russian conventional military threat over the next four years will be limited in scope. Putin is unlikely to hesitate in using force to prevent post-Soviet states from joining Western security institutions, engaging in large-scale mistreatment of Russian ethnic minorities, or retaking territory that is now in Russian hands (for example, Crimea and the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia). He will also use whatever military force is required to prevent a collapse of the Assad regime, to put down threats to the existing order and other important Russian interests in Central Asia, and to defend the Russian homeland against Islamic jihadists. Sustained power projection on a global scale, however, will continue to be difficult and, given the risks and likely consequences, it is unlikely though not inconceivable that Russia will launch direct conventional attacks against any member of NATO. But the threat of possible Russian aggression and meddling will continue to focus minds and stir worries along its vast periphery, including among the Baltic states, NATO members in Central Europe, and the Nordic countries. Russia is unlikely to engage in large-scale military operations in the greater Middle East outside Syria, reflecting the lack of appetite in Moscow for supplanting the Pax Americana in the Middle East with its own security guarantees. But it will seek opportunities to expand its influence beyond Syria.

Over the next four years, Russia’s use of hybrid warfare will pose the most serious military challenge to the United States and its allies and partners.

Over the next four years, Russia’s use of hybrid warfare will pose the most serious military challenge to the United States and its allies and partners. As Eugene Rumer has observed elsewhere, “Surrounded by weaker neighbors, Russia can intimidate them, violate their sovereignty, and meddle in their internal affairs in ways that are well short of a full-fledged military crisis. . . . This