The New Iron Curtain: Russo-American Foreign Policy in the 21st Century

In light of events including the U.S. Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the escalating political crisis in Crimea, it is evident that the United States is in a newly divisive situation with the Russian Federation. For scholars of foreign policy, this divide is seemingly contradictory to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” expected for world politics after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. From an era which suggested an end to the bitter hostility between the two powers through the reconciliation of liberal democracy has come a new age of counter-detente, which emphasizes the feuding goals of these states in the 21st century. However, beyond an obvious reversal of potential good times between Russia and the United States is a much more interesting phenomenon for modern foreign policy: the reinvention of the strategic goals of the Cold War. In this article, I will argue that major logic of Cold War geopolitical thought -- especially security discourse, containment, and power projection -- allow for a critical insight into current Russo-American relations, shedding light on the current strategies both nations are pursuing in their competing spheres of influence. 

Cold War Logic Revisited

A key framework for counter-Soviet politics in the Cold War was the American utilization of “security discourse.” Security discourse is a strategy in American geopolitical thought, popularized after the Second World War, which suggests that American national security is tied to “mutual security” of American interests abroad, which thus requires certain levels of military capability enhancement, and consequently, containment of foreign enemies.[1] An abundance of evidence ties this philosophy to the motivations of US-containment in the Cold War and afterwards. Key examples include American interventionism in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, where the mutual security ideal stressed the preservation of American allies combating the spread of communism. In this way, American involvement was justified by connecting broader American geopolitical interests with national security. The ideal of mutual security was further exemplified by the American coordination of broader strategic defense networks, especially NATO, as a deterrence against foreign initiatives that tried to uproot Western democratic capitalism.[2]

However, the politics of historic deterrence has now become increasingly politically salient. Intuitively, the continued management of NATO suggests that a broad security discourse is still at play. The fact that NATO exists, and still operates in key zones of interest, especially Eastern Europe, suggest that the definitive curtailment of a Russian threat was never achieved, or at least that Russia still has the capacity to seriously challenge the Western agenda of integration. This is especially concerning for contemporary American foreign policy, and is increasingly concerning in reviewing the challenges that NATO still manages in Eastern Europe.

 The pièce de résistance of the challenges of Western democratic maintenance is the ongoing insurgency in eastern Ukraine. The ex-commander of NATO’s European force, United States General Curtis Scaparrotti, offered key insight into the propagation of a current security discourse by advocating for more US-led funding, machinery, and oversight in Ukraine against an “increasingly aggressive” Russia to the east.[3] As conflict continues to echo from Russia’s sphere of influence in eastern Ukraine, the tumult of the security discourse is increasingly clear: Russian expansionism contra coordinated response from NATO under American command. 

However, five years after the Russian annexation of Crimea, insight from security discourse is especially prominent in describing political strategies for Russia. In this way, understanding the Crimean problem as a spontaneous strategy for a short-sighted Russian goal leaves key determinants out of calculation. However, analyzing Ukraine through the lens of containment offers unique insight into new-age geopolitical strategy. For Russia, Ukraine’s already sectarian political scheme demonstrated at Maidan is apt to develop a buffer zone for future integration. Moreover, with a significant Russian minority in the eastern region of the country, political legitimacy of intervention is easily and readily obtainable. Increasing dissent and the stakes of political mobilization in the Donbas gives Moscow a tactical advantage in the long game of moving Ukraine towards Putin. Such a strategy is precedented, especially by the Soviet strategy of tactically suppressing Central and Eastern European satellite states through coordinated Warsaw Pact intervention.[4]Containment is an interesting approach to American foreign policy in the region for the same reason. As American models of securitization during the Cold War sought to describe and predict political actions of the Soviet Union, those models should today reflect the goals of counter-expansionism and security geopolitics, which would offer insight into the potential long-term strategies of the Kremlin. In the context of NATO, long-term initiatives to engage in counter-expansionism offers potential pathways for action at the broader scale, which Ukraine has arguably legitimized in the Eastern European theatre by challenging the scale and strength of Western deterrence in the region since Crimea’s annexation. The issue of Ukraine thus underscores the basic logic of Cold War geopolitical calculation, and does so pragmatically, at least in allowing for more long-term calculation of the goals of the Kremlin in context to broader American foreign policy initiatives. 

What the Ukraine case demonstrates defiantly, though, is the emergence of a revisionist Russia with a focus on recasting hegemony over its past Eastern European and Caucasian spheres of influence. Moscow’s recent trend of assertiveness and its continued domination of the Central and Eastern European energy sectors presents a new iteration of Russo-American geopolitics and, it specifically presents major strategic issues for NATO.[5] These issues extend far beyond merely the maintenance of core Russian interests in Europe. More importantly, they involve Russia’s determination to extend its influence across the entire post-Soviet domain. The issues this spells for NATO are eerily similar to those identified by the practitioners of containment during the Cold War. These political trends also demonstrate the ongoing challenges of NATO’s defense networks across Russian spheres of influence. A particularly notable case, the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, demonstrated that the West “can hardly accept the Russian effort to gain formal acceptance of Russia’s ‘privileged interests’ … in the post-Soviet space without repudiating the very goals and values that have animated its policy throughout the postwar period.”[6] Thus, the animation of NATO and American-led policy is presented in a dangerously new light of European geopolitics: what was a weak and subservient Russia in economic ruin has, since Putin, become a revisionist power, seeking to again establish a dominant agenda of interstate influence and to destabilize American foreign policy goals. On Russia’s side in this matter is its large and influential state-owned energy sector and its continued political influence over Ukraine, leaving slim chances of either detente or Eastern European integration into a more capable NATO. Today, however, NATO is demonstrating its core containment issues first advocated in the Cold War era, and it is ostensibly cautious with engaging in a devastating, and at best Pyrrhic, military conflict with the Russian Federation.

The status quo of security discourse in American foreign policy is again one of containment and capability calculations against Russian interests. Both the peculiar rise of a defiant Moscow under Putin and the reinvention of combating spheres of influence, especially in Ukraine, represent key challenges that are calling American foriegn policy strategists to visit the annals of Cold War geopolitical strategy. However, politics in the United States is also critical for evaluating the extent and impact of strategies of current foreign policy agendas. The most meaningful change in such evaluation arrived in 2016: President Donald J. Trump.

Russo-American Engagement Under Trump

Although Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin is of notable controversy in shaping American politics today, a significant factor in the relationship is the hypothetical capacity for rapprochement. This may seem, at face value, to indicate that a strongly divisive international environment is not suitable for either nation, opening the potential for negotiation outside of the spectre of Cold War geopolitics. However, it is the very nature of Trump’s Russia policy which seems to reemphasize the nature of old gambles and to reiterate Trump’s commitment to American primacy. 

Trump entered office seemingly committed to a warming of Russian relations, especially in light of the crisis in Ukraine, iterating his desire to “get-on” with Russia against Democratic opposition. The development of this oppositional criticism came as Democrats charged Russia with interference in the Democratic National Convention’s operations in 2016 and broader presidential election interference, what would popularly become known as “Russiagate.”[7] Such a cataclysm across party lines regarding Trump’s relationship to Russia has become a major staging point for political opposition in the United States, but more importantly in this case has caused Trump to refine his approach on Russia to avoid controversy. In such a refinement, an interesting logic of Cold War politics has been revealed: the reiteration of American primacy directly to Moscow.

Trump’s emphasis on a sort of “transactional” politics between the two states revealed what he believed to be common interests at play, such as curtailing “Islamic terrorism.” Significantly, it also reiterated his desire to make an exclusively American “deal” through any parley with Putin.[8] Such a commitment seems to represent the rhetoric of a reformist interested in detente, reconciling differences between Russian and American interests, but Trump’s position is still endowed to American primacy abroad. Trump’s commitment is no different than that of the liberal internationalist order in the post-Soviet era, emphasizing American exceptionalism and American-led dealmaking. Trump has only extended offers of rapprochement to Putin in good-faith that Russia will realize the exclusive role of United States hegemony and cooperate at the basic level to relieve its economic stress (due to Western sanctions) and open up American-led foreign investment (especially in the context of its expanding energy sector).[9] This logic of primacy is underscored in a logic of Cold War diplomacy: cooperating at a level of engagement which only serves American interests, even if masked in the rhetoric of reformism. This, in relation to the security dilemma above, presents an international environment prone for Cold War politics. The Crimean issue, for example, presents itself as both as a security issue in American geopolitical arrangements in Eastern Europe but also as an extension of power politics. As Putin continually unveils his discontent with the international arrangement of the status quo, he demonstrates a singular commitment to pursuing Russian interests. In the increasingly controversial trend in bolstering international influence, Putin could have strategized the annexation of Crimea as a broadly political tool to represent Russia’s resilience in Eastern Europe. Such a “defender” in the Kremlin poses immediate threats to Western consolidation in Eastern Europe but also represents that the old order of international liberalism is merely suggestive in Putin’s geopolitical calculus. Such a challenge to the post-Cold War order illustrates that Russia’s emphasis on engagement is unidimensional and aligned with Russian power projection.[10]

Although Trump has presented himself as a friendly face to Russia, and even as scandal as suggested that Trump’s connections to Putin may be indeed more friendly outside of the international area, the dimension of politics worth analysis here is America’s Trump-led politics of engagement with Russia. The dimension of “transactional” dealmaking reasserts the nature of national interest in foreign policy for each state. As Trump’s goals emphasize the long-standing post-Cold War conception of primacy, Putin’s continually combatant politics underscore the Kremlin’s disenchantment with the status quo, echoed only by the continued power politics of expansionism emanating from Moscow. 

The major consideration elaborated this section is dualistic: 1) that a changing foreign policy under Trump has offered new rhetoric, but strengthened feuding conditions of engagement with Russia; and 2) that such a change has emphasized the relevance of the Cold War logic of interaction between the states. Such logic includes classical considerations, especially presented in American security discourse, but also includes the increasing importance of power projection, national interest, and broader strategies of containment. Even as Trump seems to greet Russian interests optimistically, he does so in a way which restakes American investment in the post-Cold War international order. If Putin’s actions are any indicator of the effectiveness of such a politics, we are currently witnessing the descent of a new Iron Curtain across Europe, with Russia’s audacious restaking of interest in shaping regional and world politics. 

Conclusion

The Cold War has obviously left a profoundly visible legacy on world politics. The fracturing of the Soviet Union and the emergence of American unipolar hegemony created a radically different international sphere at the beginning of the 21st century. However, as Putin has made strides to remobilize Russian interests abroad, the conventional wisdom of such a historical closure has been questioned. The relevance of Cold War geopolitics and foreign policy has arguably again made its stake in the shaping of Russo-American relations. Classical logic contained within American security discourse, containment, and power projection bare incredible relevance to the shaping of politics between the states today. Even as the stakes and political institutions have changed, the key grounds of influence and interest have seemingly again become politicized, targeted by each as a means of expansion: for the United States, as democratic maintenance, and for Russia, as territorial reclamation. 

However, such an understanding of contemporary foreign policy between Russia and the United States should not be read as merely an exercise in history. Rather, it has uniquely political effects that should be considered in the evaluation of continued foreign policy goals. Understanding Russian initiatives under Cold War logic opens up the space for critical evaluation of the Federation’s long-term political goals and strategies. This is beneficial in a purely pragmatic way, as it allows for greater calculative accuracy and estimation of threats for American policymakers and analysts. But it is also beneficial in the lens of history. As the Cold War demonstrated, the warlike nature of expansionist national interest posits inevitable violence. Understanding Russo-American relations in the modern world may require such critical, historical evaluation, but it should also be employed in finding diplomatic solutions and evidencing them through the lessons of historical engagement. It is in the best interest of each state to find political, not militaristic, solutions. Understanding Russian interests and pursuing American interests through such a lens is a progressive step which emphasizes the success of peaceful solutions and considers possibilities through the lens of history. 

[1] Dalby, Simon. “American Security Discourse: the Persistence of Geopolitics.” Political Geography Quarterly 9, no. 2 (April 1990): 171–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/0260-9827(90)90017-5

[2] Dalby, “American Security Discourse: the Persistence of Geopolitics.”, pp. 174: “NATO and the other military alliances were to provide the military power to ‘deter’ any aggressor from upsetting the smooth functioning of Atlanticism or the ‘western system’ of international capitalism. Deterring aggressors requires …  a convincing military capability to either destroy the aggressor’s invading forces or, at least, do damage disproportionate to any possible gains that the aggressor might hope to achieve as a result of military action.”

[3] Al Jazeera. “NATO Seeks to Bolster Ukraine Defences amid 'Russian Aggression'.” Ukraine News | Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, March 6, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/nato-seeks-bolster-ukraine-defences-russian-aggression-190306064651218.html

[4] Tálas, Péter. “Analytical Approaches to the Ukraine Crisis and the Recent Ukrainian Parliamentary Elections.” The Complex and Dynamic Nature of the Security Environment 1 (November 2014): 84–96. 

[5] Larabee, F. Stephen. “Russia, Ukraine, and Central Europe: The Return of Geopolitics.” JIA SIPA. Columbia University Journal of International Affairs, August 30, 2016. https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/russia-ukraine-and-central-europe-return-geopolitics

 [6] Ibid

[7] Sakwa, Richard. “U.S.-Russian Relations in the Trump Era.” Insight Turkey 19, no. 4 (January 2017): 13–27. https://doi.org/10.25253/99.2017194.01.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Sakwa, U.S.-Russian Relations in the Trump Era

[10] Treisman, Daniel. “Why Putin Took Crimea: The Gambler in the Kremlin.” Foreign Affairs 95, no. 47 (2016): 47–54. https://sites.nextcompanies.com/bizSites/WAC/files/2672/why%20putin%20took%20crimea%202016.pdf