October 10, 2023
Professor Thomas Graham recently released a new book, Getting Russia Right, with Polity Books.
Drawing on his experience in the Foreign Service and on the National Security Council staff, Graham argues that the effort to integrate Russia into the Euro-Atlantic community ultimately failed because it was incompatible with the deeply-held national aspirations and strategic imperatives of both the United States and Russia. Clashing worldviews and national missions, grounded in geography, geopolitical circumstances, and historical experience, which could never be fully reconciled, inevitably injected a lasting element of tension in relations, which was exacerbated by US actions and Russian reactions.
In the post-Cold War era, strategic partnership may have been an impossible goal. But there was a pathway toward constructive relations of mutual benefit, which would have required the United States to respect Russia as a great power. Taking it would have, however, required greater clarity of vision, imagination, and political will than successive American administrations could muster at the time.
Now, Russia’s unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine has radically altered the context of relations, as have the dramatic geopolitical, technological, and other changes underway across the globe. Looking forward, the United States faces a two-fold challenge: Defeating the Russian assault on the European order in the short term, while preparing the ground for relations that will enable the United States to interact with Russia, as a major pole of power and competitor in the emerging polycentric world, to construct and sustain a long-term complex global equilibrium that advances American interests. The book proposes a way to meet that challenge that harnesses Russian power and ambitions to American objectives.
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