American Committee for US-Russia Accord

An editorial in the January 9 Financial Times, “No reward for Putin’s aggression over Ukraine” evokes Ronald Reagan’s memorable and damaging words in a Presidential debate with Jimmy Carter: “There you go again” — in this case, with just one more opinion piece on the Ukraine situation that is one-sidedly incomplete.

The failed attempt by the Biden administration at regime change in a strategically located remote country sandwiched between Russia and China (which is manifold more strategic than Ukraine ever can be) exposes American diplomacy to ridicule in a vast region of Inner Asia. And it forecloses any best-laid plans by NATO to cross the Caspian ever.

A new war looks increasingly possible.

This war would be a disaster for all parties concerned: for NATO, whose military impotence would be cruelly emphasised; for Russia, that would suffer severe economic damage and be forced into a position of dependency on China with grave implications for Russia’s future; and above all for the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who would lose their lives.

Professor Cohen noted that 20 years ago, in 1997, President Bill Clinton made the decision to expand NATO eastward. That same year, in order to placate post-Soviet Russia, then weak and heralded in Washington as America’s “strategic friend and partner,” the Russian-NATO Founding Act was adopted. It promised that expansion would entail no “permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.” Cohen took the occasion of the anniversary year (2017) to ask whether NATO’s eastward expansion has created more insecurity than provide the security it promised.

Russians appear to believe that we are not respecting them in the way a great power deserves. Several political scientists actually mocked Francis Fukuyama for declaring the end of history after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and instead cited the work of Stephen Cohen.

The Biden administration began its NPR in July with the intention to release its report in January, along with the National Defense Strategy.