WHY IT MAKES SENSE TO RE-ENGAGE RUSSIA ?

1. Russia is simply too big and too important for the United States to attempt to isolate. A right balance must be found that takes into account Russia’s interests.
2. Engaging Russia is not about trust but rather the alignment of interests.
3. Resolving numerous international issues would be difficult without Russia.
4. The U.S. cannot contain or isolate Russia, nor can it build a partnership. But there are several things that can be done:
   • reopen channels of communication to avoid dangerous misunderstandings;
   • tone down the rhetoric;
   • put a trusted senior official in charge of Russia policy;
   • think of Russia in a global context.
5. When U.S. and Russian interests align, the two countries can achieve successful cooperation: fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan; building a global partnership to fight nuclear terrorism; securing the Iran deal; signing the START treaty.
6. At the moment, the U.S. needs to remove geopolitical competition with Russia, diffuse tensions, and stop piling on sanctions, so that both sides can work on long-term issues. The real challenge for the U.S. is to “understand where is wants to be in five years.”
7. The U.S. needs to know how to structure its Russia policy and to develop a holistic approach; it cannot solve the current issues (Ukraine, Syria, et al.) with Moscow separately, because all of these issues are interconnected in Russia.
8. The U.S. has to accept the Russia that exists now and deal with it.
9. There is the issue of mutual mistrust between America and Russia, but the U.S. needs to have a better understanding of Russia’s interests and build a relationship based on that information.
10. The U.S. needs to develop and establish a diplomatic frame through which Russia’s issues can be addressed.

Note

Current EU policy toward Russia, as it pertains to the Ukraine crisis, rests on several premises, each of them flawed.  The first is that President Putin’s progressive political isolation will force him to retreat and to settle the Ukraine crisis on the terms of the EU and the Ukrainian government.  The second is that Putin will be forced to change course by EU economic sanctions, and that the punishment they inflict will hurt Russia but not necessarily Europe, or if they do, then not as much.

Economic punishment, far from inducing Putin to back off, has led him to slap sanctions of his own on the European Union. Thus sanctions have become a two-way street, something that should have been apparent at the outset. This matters because Europe’s economies are still ailing and because Europe does far more trade with Russia (nearly half a trillion dollars a year). How long before the EU becomes far less enthusiastic about squeezing Putin?