As 2016 draws to a close and along with it the presidency of Barack Obama, it is perhaps time to reflect on the relationship with Russia during the eight years of his presidency and consider what might have been different. It is fair to say relations between the United States and Russia at the moment are the worst they have been since the end of the Cold War and perhaps worse than some periods during the Cold War. The risk of accidental conflict seems higher now than in many years, with U.S. and Russian war planes conducting combat sorties in close proximity in Syrian airspace, repeated harassment of U.S. and NATO aircraft and ships in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere, and the open discussion of nuclear war by the Russian government and civil defense drills being conducted in Moscow. This on top of aggression in Ukraine, cyber intrusion in the U.S. electoral process, incremental aggression into the Republic of Georgia, and possible Russian sponsorship of a failed coup in Montenegro to depose a Prime Minister intent on bringing that country closer to the EU and into NATO.
To be fair, relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia were deteriorating when Obama took office. The Russian's felt betrayed by U.S. actions in the war in Iraq and the perceived failure to live up to promises to withdraw military forces from bases in Central Asia established to defeat al Qaeda after 9/11, among a litany of other Russian grievances real or perceived.
Nonetheless, there may have been an opportunity in the early years of the Obama presidency to reset relations to a more relevant paradigm for the 21st century given the relative economic, military, and social/political influence of the two countries. The "reset" announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 failed to recognize the world view and value set of the president on the other side of the reset, Putin, who was perfectly happy to reset U.S.-Russian relations, but reset them to 1947 and not 1998. In the intervening seven years since the Clinton reset, it should be clear President Barack Obama was never advised or chose to ignore counsel that would have helped him understand, and perhaps interact and influence more effectively, his major geopolitical adversary, Putin.
It has often been noted that Putin is a former KGB officer, but it is rare to find commentary on what that means in shaping the world view and value set of a leader. KGB officers, particularly those of the Andropov era which would include Putin, were instilled with three basic governing principles: the ends justify the means; the world is a zero sum game, what benefits my adversary must harm me; and all compromise is tactical and transitory. These principles continue to dominate Putin's thinking (Putin: "There is no such thing as a former KGB man.").
Moreover, Putin's generation of leaders now governing Russia—rightly or wrongly—feel a special sense of grievance over the collapse of the Soviet Union (Putin: "...it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.") and the expansion of NATO into the Baltic States. It is reasonable to assume they would, as circumstances permitted, aggressively attempt to recapture influence lost by Russia with that collapse and prevent the further eastward expansion of NATO by force if necessary.
Had Obama understood Putin better, the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008 would have been all the indication needed to signal how Putin would react to Ukraine, as the Maidan Square demonstrations in Kiev ultimately led to the ouster of the Russian supported President Viktor Yanukovich and seemed to put Ukraine on a path toward accession to the EU and potentially NATO. One should not be surprised with the annexation of Crimea and subsequent conflict in the Don Basin.
Similarly, the reaction of Putin to the Arab Spring was quite different than that of the U.S. President, and again, the U.S. seemed surprised when Russia intervened militarily in Syria, ostensibly to fight ISIS but in reality to support the regime of Russia's surrogate Basher al Assad. As Putin looked at the chaos around the region and focused on the failure of the U.S. to stand by their allies, notably Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Arab Spring message of regime change and instability must have alarmed him. Moreover, as U.S.-led regime change efforts first in Iraq and then Libya seemed to spread instability to Syria from Iraq, Putin, who was already of the opinion that military power is relevant in the 21st century, was not going to risk compounding the instability in the region by allowing the government of Assad to collapse, moved decisively to apply Russian military power to support Assad under the pretext of combatting ISIS. Putin was certainly confident there would be no military response from the U.S.
Compounding his failure to understand Putin and thus to deal with him effectively, Obama made what Putin interpreted as a classic and unforgivable failure of leadership: the famous "red line" statement about the U.S. intent to take action against Assad's regime if that regime was to use chemical weapons against civilians. Obama's failure to carry through on his implied threat, and worse, to let Putin engineer an unverifiable deal for Assad to turn over his chemical weapons stockpiles in return for U.S. restraint, convinced Putin beyond a shadow of a doubt that Obama was not a U.S. President to be either respected or feared and likely set the stage for the tragedy in Ukraine, as well as the humanitarian catastrophe now unfolding in Syria.
Obama's response in the case of sanctions following the annexation of Crimea again showed his failure to understand his adversary. As a senior retired Russian KGB officer told the author, "Putin's people come from Saint Petersburg. They were starved by the Nazis for over 300 days in the Second World War. Sanctions are not going to affect his thinking or his strategy. He would rather eat grass and so would most Russians, than back down to the United States." Thus the sanctions, if their purpose was to influence Russian policy toward the Ukraine, have abjectly failed. Moreover, the U.S. President's off-handed reference in 2014 to Russia as a "regional power" could not have been more damaging to any prospect of Putin moderating Russia's approach to the Ukraine or embarking on geopolitical challenges to the United States. As Putin seems happy to demonstrate, he is the President of the one regional power with the military capability to destroy the United States.
So what might have worked to make Obama’s approach to Russia less dysfunctional? The President would have been better served to understand a leader like Putin respects power, not proportionality. A good example of that application of power that would have been meaningful to Putin would have been to take decisive military action against Assad’s regime, either as promised, after his use of chemical weapons, or as a “linked” response to the annexation of Crimea. At the start of his second term, Obama could have reversed his decision to delay deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe following his open mic “gaffe” with then Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Lastly, NATO troops should have been immediately deployed to the Ukraine after the Crimean action to send an unmistakable message to Putin in a language he understands. Any or all of the above actions would likely have caused Putin to reconsider his assessment of Obama.
A critical function of a nation’s intelligence service is to provide insights into the motivations and world view of the strategic adversaries of the United States. It is the responsibility of the president alone to understand, accept, and act on those insights. This has not been the case in the Obama Administration’s approach to Russia under Putin.
