Implications for the United States
With the United States now arming the government of Ukraine, whose northeast border lies some 400 indefensible miles from Moscow, there are no political incentives in Russian politics for giving the United States the benefit of the doubt, or even of compromise. The reverse, of course, has been true for some years now in the United States. And Putin’s interventions in the November 2016 election, such as they were and for whatever reason they were taken, have acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy: The bipartisan consensus in Washington now is that there can be no progress in U.S.-Russian relations so long as Putin is in power.
But Putin in power may be the best that the United States can hope for. Every other scenario, plausible and less plausible, seems more unpredictable and even dangerous. Maybe it is time to start thinking about how to give the Russians something to hope for. For example, the cost of holding the indefinite future of U.S.-Russia relations hostage to Crimea seems wildly excessive given the contingencies stretched out over time that could imperil both nations. Short of the headlong collapse of the Russian state—which would actually be a disaster for U.S. and global security—there is no plausible route to severing Crimea from Russia. So why not consider a trade greased by the salve of a professional diplomacy: de facto U.S. acquiescence to the reintegration of Crimea into Russia in return for Russia’s leaving the rest of Ukraine alone, pending a suitable and achievable compromise over Ukraine’s geostrategic status and internal language and identity issues. If Russian-Ukrainian relations remain a powder keg when Putin has left the scene, Americans may well come to regret that they passed on exploring an outcome that Putin could agree to.
