An analysis of how hope for a cooperative relationship between Washington and Moscow faded away

In the present day, the United States of America and the Russian Federation are bitter ideological adversaries. So hostile are Russo-American relations that comparisons to the relationship between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War are common. However, it wasn't always a given that America and Russia would have such an adversarial relationship at present.

The rise of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union marked a turning point in the Cold War. Western leaders such as President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher viewed Gorbachev as a younger Soviet leader who could be reasoned with to decrease Cold War tensions. In November 1985, Gorbachev and Reagan met in Geneva to discuss diplomatic relations and the arms race.

During the summit, discussions between the two leaders occasionally became heated as they discussed topics ranging from the proxy conflicts in Afghanistan and Nicaragua to America's development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, the proposed missile defense system meant to defend the United States from a nuclear missile attack which caused concern among the Soviet leadership. Despite the occasional tension, the summit ended with Reagan and Gorbachev agreeing to a joint commitment to avoid nuclear warfare and to meet for additional summits.

At the Reykjavík Summit in 1986, Reagan wished to discuss humanitarian issues such as the emigration of Soviet dissidents and the Soviet-Afghan War, even though Gorbachev wanted to limit the discussions to arms control. Talks stalled, in part, due to Reagan's unwillingness to make compromises regarding the Strategic Defense Initiative. Despite the shortcomings of the summit, it served as a significant breakthrough in that it proved human rights to be a productive topic of discussion between the two world leaders, and it helped set the stage for the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty at the Washington Summit in 1987.

Going into the Washington Summit, Reagan and Gorbachev faced criticism from more hawkish figures from within their own countries for pursuing nuclear disarmament. Nonetheless, both world leaders found disarmament to be mutually beneficial for both of their nations. On December 8th, 1987, both Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty prohibited the United States and the Soviet Union from possessing, producing, or flight-testing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of five hundred to five thousand five hundred kilometers. The treaty also prohibited the possession of ground-based launchers of such missiles. Furthermore, the treaty also required existing weapons of this kind to be destroyed, and the United States and the Soviet Union agreed upon a protocol for mutual inspection.

Further diplomatic progress came with the Moscow Summit in 1988. This summit saw the ratification of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Additionally, both sides signed multiple agreements regarding lesser issues at this summit, such as agreements related to student exchanges and fishing rights.

At first, Reagan's successor, President George H.W. Bush, and his advisors were suspicious of Gorbachev's intentions. That changed when Bush met with Gorbachev at the Malta Summit in December 1989, in which Bush came away believing Gorbachev was acting in good faith. For the remainder of his time in office, Bush would seek cooperation with Gorbachev.

As the Cold War concluded, American and Soviet officials were most concerned about German reunification, the Soviet Union's security concerns, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) future. By early 1990, it had become clear that German reunification was inevitable. But first, American and Soviet officials needed to do their part to help establish a path for East and West Germany to reunite.

There was an attempt to solve the questions of not only how East and West Germany could be reunited but also how the Soviet Union's security could be assured, as well as what the future of NATO would be during one fateful conversation between Gorbachev and Secretary of State James Baker on February 9th, 1990. During this conversation, Baker addressed Soviet security concerns by assuring Gorbachev that German reunification would not cause an expansion of NATO's military jurisdiction into Eastern Europe. Gorbachev left this conversation convinced that NATO wouldn't expand into Eastern Europe.

Despite the assurance that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, from the 1990s to the present, NATO has expanded to the point that it now contains several nations that border the modern-day Russian Federation. Historical context is important to understand how this has become possible. After all, this didn't happen in a vacuum.

Gorbachev’s economic reforms which rapidly liberalized the Soviet economy accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union. From the fall of the Soviet Union emerged the Russian Federation and various newly independent republics. And leading the Russian Federation was a former rival of Gorbachev’s, President Boris Yeltsin.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and, thus, the end of the Cold War came a dilemma for the armaments industry. The prospect of war with the Soviet Union no longer served as a justification for the kinds of defense spending that characterized the period from the conclusion of the Second World War to the fall of the Iron Curtain. Defense contracts fell to roughly half of what they were a decade earlier.

In 1993, Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Perry convened a meeting with executives from the largest defense contractors in the United States. At this meeting, Perry warned the executives that the post-Cold War budget cuts and falling demand for arms would spell doom for their firms. Perry's warnings to the executives helped set off one of the quickest transformations of any U.S. industry at that time, as about a dozen defense contractors merged into just four: Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon Technologies.

Following the merging of the various defense contractors, a race for new markets ensued. This race led the defense contractors to encourage the expansion of NATO, as NATO requires member states to be capable of operating together according to NATO standards, rules, and procedures and using similar equipment. In other words, the expansion of NATO would create a new market for the armaments produced by the defense contractors because NATO requires new member states to possess weapons used by Western forces.

Foreign policy experts opposed NATO enlargement. The most notable of these critics was George Kennan, the diplomat who formulated the policy of containment to prevent the spread of communism. Kennan opposed NATO enlargement out of concern that it would worsen relations with Russia.

In addition to Kennan's opposition to NATO enlargement, numerous other foreign policy experts signed an open letter to President Bill Clinton expressing concern about NATO expansion as unnecessary due to a lack of an external threat from Russia. Among the experts who signed this letter were Senator Sam Nunn, who served as chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, and Robert McNamara, who served as secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, among others. The letter described NATO enlargement as "a policy error of historic proportions."

Despite the warnings concerning NATO enlargement, NATO's expansion commenced when the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined the alliance in 1999. The following year, Robert Gates, who served as the director of central intelligence under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, criticized the push for the eastward expansion of NATO because of the previous assurances to Gorbachev that this would not happen. Many Russians felt that NATO was trying to contain Russia's goals after the Cold War was already over by expanding eastward.

In addition to NATO enlargement, NATO's bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War also caused tension between NATO and Russia, as Russia believed the bombing campaign to be an act of aggression that violated international law. The bombing campaign concluded with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, under diplomatic pressure from Russian President Boris Yeltsin, agreeing to a ceasefire agreement, which required Yugoslav forces to withdraw from Kosovo and formally authorized NATO to maintain a peacekeeping force in Kosovo, which included peacekeeping forces from non-NATO nations such as Russia. NATO and Russian peacekeepers were supposed to work together to carry out their peacekeeping duties.

The day before the NATO peacekeeping force was due to enter Kosovo, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe learned that the Russian peacekeepers who were previously assisting NATO with peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina had already moved in and began occupying the strategically vital Pristina International Airport. Not wanting the Russians to be in control of the airport, American General Wesley Clark, who was NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe at the time, ordered British and French paratroopers to be flown in on helicopters to seize the airport by force even though the NATO peacekeepers were not supposed to enter Kosovo before June 12th. As the NATO operation had not yet legally begun, the French government suddenly withdrew its paratroopers, leaving the British paratroopers alone to congregate around their helicopters all day, waiting for the signal to commence the operation, which would not come until the following morning.

On June 12th, 1999, British paratroopers and a battalion of the Royal Gurkha Rifles were flown in on their helicopters to begin securing the route for the advance of the British 4th Armoured Brigade. Then, the brigade's leading reconnaissance troop, commanded by then-Lieutenant James Blunt, the British Army officer-turned-famous musician, was to race to Pristina. As the 4th Armoured Brigade advanced toward Pristina, the officer reporting to General Clark, British General Mike Jackson, flew to Pristina to confer with his Russian counterpart.

Jackson found that he got along well with the Russian general, but NATO knew that a much larger Russian force was being assembled at air bases in Russia to fly to the airport. To prevent additional Russian forces from being flown to the airport, Clark devised a plan to block the airport's runways with NATO helicopters, but the weather delayed this plan's execution. Clark would arrive at Jackson's headquarters in person to confer with his British colleague, where the British pointed out to Clark that the much larger Russian force assembling in Russia wasn't of concern as the Russians couldn't reinforce their isolated troops at the airport by air and that, given how vital Russian diplomatic efforts had been to get a ceasefire agreement in the first place, provoking them would be counterproductive.

Regardless of the information given to him by his British colleagues, Clark ordered Jackson to block the runways, to which Jackson refused, telling the American general, "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you." When again ordered to block the runway, Jackson suggested that British armored vehicles would be more suitable, secure in the knowledge that the British government would most likely not permit such an action. Clark agreed with Jackson's suggestion.

Jackson was ready to resign rather than carry out Clark's order. The British Ministry of Defence authorized the 4th Armoured Brigade to isolate the airfield but not block the runways. Clark's orders were not to be carried out, and the United States instead pressured various Eastern European nations into not allowing Russia to use their airspace to bring in reinforcements. This incident between NATO and Russia concluded with an agreement that Russian peacekeepers would deploy to Kosovo independently of NATO.

During the early years of Yeltsin's presidency, relations between the United States and Russia showed promise. In 1993, both nations signed the START II arms control treaty designed to ban the use of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles on intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the Russian Armed Forces assisted NATO with peacekeeping in the Balkans despite not being a member state itself. However, relations between the United States and Russia suffered somewhat due to the United States reneging on its previous assurances to Russia that NATO would not expand eastward when the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999, as well as NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and the subsequent distrust directed at Russia during the stand-off at the Pristina International Airport.

After Vladimir Putin became the president of the Russian Federation, he initially sought to improve relations with the West and the United States in particular. In 2000, he expressed a desire for Russia to join NATO to George Robertson, the then-secretary general of NATO, and he was the first international leader to call President George W. Bush to offer condolences and support to the American president after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. In response to the September 11th terrorist attacks, NATO invoked Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one NATO member state is considered an attack on all member states of the alliance, thus committing the other member states to support the attacked member state.

In response to the September 11th terrorist attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan. Russia assisted the United States and its NATO allies by allowing American and NATO forces to pass through its territory to reach Afghanistan and sharing intelligence with the United States. However, relations between the United States and Russia would soon suffer again.

Despite Russian attempts to cooperate with the United States and NATO, the Bush administration's belligerent foreign policy, lack of cooperation on nuclear arms reduction, and disregard for Russian security concerns would lead to increased tension between the United States and Russia. In June 2002, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an arms control treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972 intended to reduce pressures on building more nuclear weapons by limiting both parties to two anti-ballistic missile complexes, each of which was to be limited to a hundred anti-ballistic missiles. The United States followed up its withdrawal from the treaty by signing bilateral agreements with Poland and Romania to build ballistic missile defense systems on their territories.

Also causing tension between the United States and Russia was the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Russia, along with France and Germany, criticized, with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov stating that no United Nations Security Council resolution authorized the use of force against Iraq outside the Charter of the United Nations and that the Security Council had not received any information to indicate that Iraq posed a direct threat to the United States. Also, in 2003, another event that caused tension between the United States and Russia was the Rose Revolution, which occurred in Russia's neighbor, Georgia. The revolution came after a parliamentary election criticized for falling short of international standards for democratic elections.

During the election, the American and various European governments funded the inter-governmental organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to support foreign election observers, and the United States Agency for International Development spent $1,500,000 to computerize Georgia's voter rolls. In addition, the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute supported then-President Eduard Shevardnadze's opposition, Mikheil Saakashvili. The election's outcome caused mass anti-Shevardnadze demonstrations, which resulted in Shevardnadze's resignation and the calling of snap parliamentary and presidential elections, which resulted in Saakashvili's victory.

In the eyes of Russia, the United States had meddled in one of Russia's neighbor's elections. A year later, another color revolution that alarmed Russia occurred. It was called the Orange Revolution.

The Orange Revolution occurred in Ukraine after a 2004 election between the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko and pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, in which many claimed that the results were fraudulent and rigged in favor of Yanukovych, triggering protests backed by American-funded non-governmental organizations that aided the protests by lending technical expertise through mobilizing people and helping to plan demonstrations. The Orange Revolution resulted in a revote ordered by the Supreme Court of Ukraine in which Yushchenko was declared the winner. Once again, in Russia's eyes, the United States had meddled in one of Russia's neighbor's elections.

The roles of Georgia and Ukraine in European geopolitics further exacerbated tensions between the United States and Russia when Bush expressed support for Georgian and Ukrainian accession to NATO in 2008. Just four years prior, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined NATO. NATO now included former Soviet republics, much to Russia's chagrin.

The prospect of Georgia joining NATO was a motivating factor in Russia's decision to invade the neighboring country in 2008 to deter Georgia from joining NATO. According to Fiona Hill, the former senior director for Europe and Russia of the National Security Council, there wasn't an invasion of Ukraine at the time because Ukraine pulled back from seeking to join NATO. In 2010, Ukraine's parliament approved a bill that banned Ukraine from joining any military alliance, thus keeping Ukraine officially neutral.

A series of events in 2013 and 2014 renewed Ukraine's aspirations to join NATO. In 2013, Victoria Nuland, the former ambassador to NATO and former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, was appointed assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. In December of that year, while Ukraine was amid civil unrest directed at the country's government, she remarked that the United States had injected $5,000,000,000 into so-called "democracy-building projects" in Ukraine, which many have interpreted as proof that the United States was fueling regime change in the Eastern European nation.

Putin reacted to Nuland's remarks regarding the money the United States had invested into so-called "democracy-building projects" by placing pressure on the Ukrainian government to accept an aid package worth $15,000,000,000. By this point, Albania and Croatia had joined NATO. The unrest in Ukraine resulted in a pro-Western government coming to power.

The fate of Sevastopol, a port on the Crimean peninsula that had been an essential strategic choke point, was of particular concern to the Russian government. In the wake of Ukraine's revolution, a combination of pro-Russian militia forces and troops from the Russian Armed Forces would occupy the Crimean peninsula in early 2014. As Russian troops occupied the peninsula, there was a referendum to determine whether the predominantly Russian-speaking Crimean peninsula would remain part of Ukraine or become part of Russia, the results of which came back 95.5% in favor of joining Russia, however much of the West challenged the legitimacy of the referendum.

As tensions rose between Russia and the West, Putin suggested that other areas of Eastern Ukraine that were home to ethnic Russian majorities were welcome to join Russia. In April 2014, pro-Russian separatists accepted Putin's invitation to join Russia, overthrowing the Ukrainian government in the border regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Russo-Ukrainian War was mainly limited to the Donbas region of Ukraine from April 2014 to February 2022.

Montenegro joined NATO in 2017, followed by North Macedonia in 2020. As Ukraine's accession to NATO became increasingly likely, Russia invaded, seemingly to prevent Ukraine from joining the military alliance. The war is ongoing as of the writing of this article.

With this, it is essential to ask how relations between Russia and the West, particularly the United States, ended up in such a poor state. After all, it would be easy to write off the downward spiral of Russo-American relations in recent years as simply being the product of Russia's hostile conduct toward its neighbors to keep them within their historical sphere. It would be easy, but it would be a short-sighted analysis of Russo-American relations.

It's worth noting that the Russian government's current foreign policy and foreboding rhetoric are primarily the result of a general feeling of having their security interests continually ignored by the West. There is a sense within the Russian government that their options to make their security interests considered have been exhausted. The trend had been that of the West ignoring Russia's security concerns even as Russia had demonstrated a genuine desire for a cooperative relationship with the West.

In 1990, American leaders understood that considering Russia's security interests was crucial for a stable relationship between the United States and Russia, hence the assurance that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe. American leaders made this assurance after the Russians demonstrated their willingness to cooperate on matters such as arms control. And yet, the United States reneged on this assurance when NATO continued its expansion into Eastern Europe and the United States halted its cooperation with Russia on arms control, all the while ignoring Russia's legitimate concerns as though the United States was continuing to fight the Cold War despite the Cold War being over.

In this regard, one shouldn't view Russia's assertive foreign policy as merely a part of its nature but rather as a desperate plea for the world to hear Russia's security concerns. If the international community refuses to listen to the concerns of nations like Russia, these nations will abandon diplomacy in favor of more assertive means of making their voices heard. Had the United States considered Russia's security interests and never reneged on its previous assurances, Russia could have been a vital geostrategic partner that we could have worked with to help make our world more peaceful.

Republished from Grant Klusmann's Substack, with thanks!