When Barack Obama began his first term as American President in 2009, the U.S.’s ties with Russia were at a historical low, partly due to Moscow’s intervention in Georgia. There were already discussions in U.S. strategic circles about the threats a resurgent Russia posed, but the Obama administration deliberately played down such warnings, and adopted a new ‘reset’ approach to deal with Russia. The objective was to improve overall relationship with Russia and have better cooperation on complex global issues such as the Iran nuclear crisis. The reset had some immediate positive effects on bilateral ties. Washington abandoned the Bush administration’s plan to build a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, while Moscow opened Russian airspace for U.S. planes carrying supplies for forces in Afghanistan. The two countries also signed a >New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 2010, aimed at cutting nuclear weapons.
But almost eight years down the line, the reset lies in a shambles and talk of a new Cold War is back. The U.S. and Russia are involved in a proxy battle in Ukraine and leading two competing military missions in Syria. Washington wants a probe into >Russia’s “war crimes” in Aleppo , while Russian media threaten a nuclear war. The U.S. has even accused Russia of >interfering in its presidential elections . Mr. Obama will go down in history as a President who oversaw a >dangerous deterioration in U.S.-Russian ties post-Cold War. And perhaps the greatest foreign policy risk the new U.S. President will face is tackling an angry, resurgent Russia. So what actually went wrong?
The fundamental problem was the Obama administration’s perception of Russia. Mr. Obama neither appreciated the depth of insecurity Moscow felt in the wake of NATO’s eastward expansions, nor foresaw its determination to defend its security interests. He saw Russia’s intervention in Georgia as an aberration, rather than as the beginning of a strategic comeback.
In a 2012 presidential debate, Mr. Obama slammed his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, for saying Russia was “the greatest geopolitical threat America faces”. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years,” he then said. Mr. Obama appeared confident that the Cold War was a thing of the past. Even the rationale of the reset was to create an environment where the U.S. could work together with its erstwhile rival in the unipolar world.
Restoring old doctrine But on the other side, Russia felt >consistently threatened by NATO’s expansion , to Eastern Europe and also to the former Soviet region right in its backyard. This insecurity is historical. Despite its huge land mass, Russia is geographically vulnerable as its core that runs from St. Petersburg through Moscow to the Volga region lies on plains. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.” Historically, this has been at the centre of Russia’s security strategy — defend the heartland through a land buffer. During the Soviet years, Siberia, and the Central Asian republics did this job. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, in the ensuing economic collapse and anarchy, Moscow was not in a position to respond to NATO intervention in and expansion to its sphere of influence. But Vladimir Putin revived this old doctrine after his regime stabilised Russia in the early 2000s. Its first military manifestation was the intervention in Georgia a few months after NATO offered membership to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008.
The same holds true for Ukraine. When the pro-Russian Ukraine President >Viktor Yanukovych was toppled by pro-Western protesters in 2014, Mr. Putin took that as a setback to Russia’s interests. Ukraine is strategically more important to Russia than even Georgia. Where the U.S. and other Western nations which supported anti-regime protests in Ukraine erred was in gauging the Russian response. Mr. Putin had seen the lame response from the West to his Georgia intervention. And in Ukraine, he sought to meet two objectives: stop the country from joining NATO, and protect the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol in Crimea which was part of Ukraine. Mr. Putin annexed Crimea to Russia, which would protect the Black Sea Fleet, and triggered armed conflicts in eastern Ukraine, which would put any NATO plans on the backburner.
To be sure, this is not acceptable in an ideal world. And the Obama administration was obviously taken by surprise by the extent of Russia’s response. But there are two things that made Mr. Putin take this extreme step of annexing a part of another country. First, the Iraq war, waged by the U.S. on the false pretext of weapons of mass destruction and in violation of international norms, had already damaged the moral fabric of the post-Cold War world order. Second, the U.S. was so preoccupied with its own wars in West Asia and Afghanistan that it was not in a position to respond militarily to Russian aggression.
Limited superpower Having failed to foresee the Russian moves, the Obama administration had limited options — accept the outcome of the Russian annexation of Crimea like the Russians accepted the Iraq invasion; escalate the conflict by arming the Ukrainian government; or take non-military counter-actions. Mr. Obama chose the last one. Despite the high decibel anti-Russian rhetoric, the U.S. sent a clear message to Russia that it didn’t want to escalate the crisis militarily. But being the “sole superpower”, it couldn’t let Russia get away with the annexation either. So the U.S. and Europeans suspended Russia from the G-8 and imposed sanctions on the country in an apparent bid to isolate Russia and weaken Mr. Putin’s grip on power.
This was the least effective strategy even among the limited options. The sanctions fed into Mr. Putin’s narrative that Russia was being threatened by the West, making him more powerful at home. Washington’s reluctance to arm the Ukrainian government underscored his conviction that there are limits to the U.S.’s power and it’s overstretched elsewhere. This allowed him to raise the bar, this time in Syria. Russia’s decisive intervention in Syria in September 2015 not only prevented a seemingly imminent collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but also check-mated Washington. It was now almost impossible for Mr. Obama to order a military operation against the regime as it would naturally escalate the conflict.
Mini Cold War Be it in Georgia, Ukraine or Syria, Russia has showed willingness and capability to use force in a limited manner to protect its interests and expand its reach. It doesn’t mean Russia is on the march to become another imperial power. It faces mounting problems, the biggest among them being the economic crisis. The sanctions have also hurt Russia economically, and its ties with Germany have deteriorated. But in the great game, this was short-term collateral damage. The long-term goal is to try to restore Russia’s lost grandeur. Whether the next U.S. President likes it or not, a mini Cold War is already born.
stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in
