In Echo of Cold War, Obama Strategy Writes Off Putin
By PETER BAKER
President Obama wants to isolate Russia by cutting off its economic and
political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions
and effectively making it a pariah state.
Pro-Russian Forces Work to Consolidate Power
WASHINGTON — Even as the crisis in Ukraine continues to defy easy resolution, President Obama and his national security team are looking beyond the immediate conflict to forge a new long-term approach to Russia that applies an updated version of the Cold War strategy of containment.
Just
as the United States resolved in the aftermath of World War II to
counter the Soviet Union and its global ambitions, Mr. Obama is focused
on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin’s
Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside
world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and
effectively making it a pariah state.
Mr.
Obama has concluded that even if there is a resolution to the current
standoff over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, he will never have a
constructive relationship with Mr. Putin, aides said. As a result, Mr.
Obama will spend his final two and a half years in office trying to
minimize the disruption Mr. Putin can cause, preserve whatever marginal
cooperation can be saved and otherwise ignore the master of the Kremlin
in favor of other foreign policy areas where progress remains possible.
“That is the strategy we ought to be pursuing,” said Ivo H. Daalder, formerly Mr. Obama’s ambassador to NATO
and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “If you
just stand there, be confident and raise the cost gradually and
increasingly to Russia, that doesn’t solve your Crimea problem and it
probably doesn’t solve your eastern Ukraine problem. But it may solve
your Russia problem.”
The
manifestation of this thinking can be seen in Mr. Obama’s pending
choice for the next ambassador to Moscow. While not officially final,
the White House is preparing to nominate John F. Tefft, a career
diplomat who previously served as ambassador to Ukraine, Georgia and
Lithuania.
When
the search began months ago, administration officials were leery of
sending Mr. Tefft because of concern that his experience in former
Soviet republics that have flouted Moscow’s influence would irritate
Russia. Now, officials said, there is no reluctance to offend the
Kremlin.
In effect, Mr. Obama is retrofitting for a new age the approach to Moscow that was first set out by the diplomat George F. Kennan in
1947 and that dominated American strategy through the fall of the
Soviet Union. The administration’s priority is to hold together an
international consensus against Russia, including even China, its
longtime supporter on the United Nations Security Council.
While
Mr. Obama’s long-term approach takes shape, though, a quiet debate has
roiled his administration over how far to go in the short term. So far,
economic advisers and White House aides urging a measured approach have
won out, prevailing upon a cautious president to take one incremental
step at a time out of fear of getting too far ahead of skittish
Europeans and risking damage to still-fragile economies on both sides of
the Atlantic.
The
White House has prepared another list of Russian figures and
institutions to sanction in the next few days if Moscow does not follow
through on an agreement sealed in Geneva
on Thursday to defuse the crisis, as Obama aides anticipate. But the
president will not extend the punitive measures to whole sectors of the
Russian economy, as some administration officials prefer, absent a
dramatic escalation.
The
more hawkish faction in the State and Defense Departments has grown
increasingly frustrated, privately worrying that Mr. Obama has come
across as weak and unintentionally sent the message that he has written
off Crimea after Russia’s annexation. They have pressed for faster and
more expansive sanctions, only to wait while memos sit in the White
House without action. Mr. Obama has not even imposed sanctions on a list
of Russian human rights violators waiting for approval since last
winter.
“They’re
playing us,” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on
the Foreign Relations Committee, said of the Russians, expressing a
sentiment that is also shared by some inside the Obama administration.
“We continue to watch what they’re doing and try to respond to that,” he
said on CNN on Friday. “But it seems that in doing so, we create a
policy that’s always a day late and a dollar short.”
The
prevailing view in the West Wing, though, is that while Mr. Putin seems
for now to be enjoying the glow of success, he will eventually discover
how much economic harm he has brought on his country. Mr. Obama’s aides
noted the fall of the Russian stock market and the ruble, capital
flight from the country and the increasing reluctance of foreign
investors to expand dealings in Russia.
They
argued that while American and European sanctions have not yet targeted
wide parts of the Russian economy, they have sent a message to
international businesses, and that just the threat of broader measures
has produced a chilling effect. If the Russian economy suffers over the
long term, senior American officials said, then Mr. Putin’s implicit
compact with the Russian public promising growth for political control
could be sundered.
That
may not happen quickly, however, and in the meantime, Mr. Obama seems
intent on not letting Russia dominate his presidency. While Mr. Obama
spends a lot of time on the Ukraine crisis, it does not seem to absorb
him. Speaking privately with visitors, he is more likely to bring up
topics like health care and the Republicans in Congress than Mr. Putin.
Ukraine, he tells people, is not a major concern for most Americans, who
are focused on the economy and other issues closer to home.
Since
returning from a trip to Europe last month, Mr. Obama has concentrated
his public schedule around issues like job training and the minimum
wage. Even after his diplomatic team reached the Geneva agreement to
de-escalate the crisis last week, Mr. Obama headed to the White House
briefing room not to talk about that but to hail new enrollment numbers
he said validated his health care program.
Reporters
asked about Ukraine anyway, as he knew they would, and he expressed
skepticism about the prospects of the Geneva accord that his secretary
of state, John Kerry, had just brokered. But when a reporter turned the
subject back to health care, Mr. Obama happily exclaimed, “Yeah, let’s
talk about that.”
That
represents a remarkable turnaround from the start of Mr. Obama’s
presidency, when he nursed dreams of forging a new partnership with
Russia. Now the question is how much of the relationship can be saved.
Mr. Obama helped Russia gain admission to the World Trade Organization;
now he is working to limit its access to external financial markets.
But
the two sides have not completely cut off ties. American troops and
equipment are still traveling through Russian territory en route to and
from Afghanistan. Astronauts from the two countries are currently in
orbit together at the International Space Station, supplied by Russian
rockets. A joint program decommissioning old Russian weapons systems has
not been curtailed.
Nuclear inspections under the New Start arms control treaty
Mr. Obama signed in his first term continue. The Air Force still relies
on rockets with Russian-made engines to launch military satellites into
space, although it is reviewing that. The United States has not moved
to try to push Russia out of the W.T.O. And the Obama administration is
still working with Russia on disarming Syria’s chemical weapons and
negotiating a deal with Iran to curtail its nuclear program.
“You
can’t isolate everything from a general worsening of the relationship
and the rhetoric,” said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and an
adviser to multiple administrations on Russia and defense policy. “But
there’s still very high priority business that we have to try to do with
Russia.”
Still,
the relationship cannot return to normal either, even if the Ukraine
situation is settled soon, specialists said. “There’s really been a sea
change not only here but in much of Europe about Russia,” said Robert
Nurick, a Russia expert at the Atlantic Council. “A lot of the old
assumptions about what we were doing and where we were going and what
was possible are gone, and will stay that way as long as Putin’s there.”
Mr.
Nurick said discussion had already begun inside the administration
about where and under what conditions the United States might engage
with Russia in the future. “But I can’t imagine this administration
expending a lot of political capital on this relationship except to
manage it so that the other things they care about a lot more than
Russia are not injured too badly,” he said.
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