by Thomas Graham
Formulating Russia policy is always a fraught undertaking in Washington. It is not simply a matter of getting Russia right, a formidable task in and of itself. It is also a matter of understanding the limits of American power, which is often much harder for a country that is the world’s preeminent power. Indeed, dubious assessments on both counts have bedeviled relations since the end of the Cold War.
Washington’s excessive confidence in its ability to transform Russia and integrate it into the Euro-Atlantic community in the 1990s eventually gave way to an unrelenting effort to contain, and eventually defeat, a determined rival in the 2020s. President Donald Trump’s summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August 2025 suggests he is moving away from a policy of containment, although little progress has been made in normalizing relations. In any event, scant consideration has been given since the end of the Cold War to an approach between the extremes of integration and containment that might have resulted in responsible competition rather than the profoundly adversarial relations of recent years.
The Mirage of Integration
The grand strategy of integrating Russia grew out of the particular circumstances surrounding the end of the Cold War. The United States emerged as the unrivaled superpower in a unipolar world. Russia was in the midst of a debilitating systemic crisis. China had not yet begun its dizzying ascent. Other major countries counted largely as American allies or partners.
Moreover, the Cold War triumph, in the eyes of the American elite, had validated the US system of free-market democracy as the sole form of political organization that could guarantee a country’s security and prosperity in the long run. In part to sustain US primacy, in part to share the benefits of the US model, Washington set out to spread its system across the globe.
No country figured larger in Washington’s imagination than Russia. Its successful transition to a free-market democratic state fully integrated into the Euro-Atlantic community would seal the Cold War victory. For victory in war comes not when you have defeated your enemy’s armies, but when the enemy adopts your system, thus recognizing the superiority of your ways. That, at least, was the lesson of the Second World War, after which Germany and Japan were transformed from defeated fascist states into democratic US partners. Following that logic, the United States worked with its allies to fashion a multifaceted assistance program designed to implant free-market institutions and democratic practices in Russia.
Washington was not, however, wholly confident in its theoretical assumptions about the course of global developments, especially with regard to Russia. A hyperactive “red-brown” opposition of reactionary communists and ultranationalists, as well as Russia’s long history of autocratic rule and imperialist ambition, gave US policymakers pause. While publicly committed to Russia’s integration, they also hedged against Russian recidivism and the reemergence of a Eurasian threat of Soviet dimensions. To this end, Washington backed the sovereignty and independence of all the new states that rose out of the Soviet wreckage against Russian meddling. It also expanded Western institutions, notably NATO, eastward across Europe right up to Russia’s borders. As Washington sought to integrate Russia, it also sought to prepare the ground to contain a future Russia gone bad.
This dual policy ultimately failed. To start with, Washington misread Russia’s interest in political and economic reform. While Yeltsin and his chief advisors vowed commitment to reform and integration, they were more concerned about restoring their country’s power and reasserting their prerogatives as a great power in world affairs. They were largely indifferent to the character of the political and economic regime, as long as it generated the power they longed for. Russians supported Putin’s authoritarian measures in the 2000s at least in part because they restarted economic growth, enabling Russia to free itself of Western tutelage, regain its sovereignty, and posture as a great power.
By contrast, Washington was right to be concerned about Russian recidivism, but ironically its hedges proved counterproductive. They persuaded the Kremlin that all US talk of partnership was but hypocritical cant to cover the true goal of eroding and containing Russian power. That only made Russian leaders more determined to restore their might, push back against US initiatives in the former Soviet space, and drive wedges between NATO allies.
Although tension between US and Russian goals in Eurasia was likely inevitable—historically, these two expansionist powers were likely destined to collide in Eurasia at some point—less aggressive hedging arguably could have diminished the intensity of the competition and preserved greater space for cooperation on shared threats, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism. In the afterglow of the Cold War triumph, however, Washington was not interested in shades of grey. If a good Russia was not to be, the only alternative it could imagine was a hostile one.
Turning Points
Even as Washington pursued integration, tensions flared from time to time: Russia opposed US military action against Yugoslavia in the late 1990s; tension broke out over color revolutions in the former Soviet space in 2003-2005; Russia launched a short war against Georgia in 2008; and the two countries found themselves at odds in Syria in the early 2010s. Nevertheless, the United States did not abandon its policy of integration until Russia illegally annexed Crimea and instigated rebellion in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The Obama administration could not excuse acts it considered direct, unprovoked assaults on the norms of European security by a country that had turned authoritarian under Putin.
Earlier, the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations had tolerated Russian transgressions because they believed Russia was a weak power that could not pose a serious threat to US interests, while they needed Russia for other purposes. Clinton wanted to avoid widespread instability in Russia that could spill over into fragile East European countries; Bush wanted to keep Russia on side in the war against terror; and Obama could not advance his signature goal of a world without nuclear weapons without Russia’s cooperation.
Curiously, Russia’s critical reassessment of relations with the United States came a decade earlier, in 2004. It was provoked by two events that autumn: the Beslan terrorist attack in the North Caucasus in September and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which began in November. Putin interpreted Beslan as a consequence of the failure of the United States to cooperate fully in suppressing Chechen rebels. He saw US support for Ukrainian protesters as a deliberate effort to install a pro-Western president in Ukraine, while pushing aside the candidate for whom Putin had personally campaigned.
Putin and his Kremlin colleagues concluded that US talk of counterterrorism cooperation and democracy promotion was just a smokescreen for a concerted effort to erode Russian power in the former Soviet space. To resist, the Kremlin began to move aggressively against US policies in that region and to squeeze out foreign influence in its domestic affairs. The reaction culminated in Putin’s infamous remarks at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, with sharp criticism of alleged US hegemonic behavior and a vow that Russia would act as an independent great power.
Talk of integration, nevertheless, lingered for four years, as Obama reset relations with Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin definitively slammed the door shut on integration when he regained the presidency in 2012 and launched an ever more strident campaign against a US-led world order, increasingly in coordination with China.
The Dead End of Containment
Since 2014, Washington has steadily toughened its containment policy. Obama’s initial steps were tentative, in large part because he still hoped to work with Russia against what he considered graver threats—the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Then, the first Trump administration ratcheted up the pressure, shuttering Russia’s diplomatic missions and levying sanctions for what it considered malign Russian activities, despite the president’s warm words for Putin and expressed desire to get along with Russia. Containment went into overdrive after Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as the Biden administration made a concerted effort, in coordination with its allies, to isolate Russia diplomatically worldwide and undermine its economy with increasingly harsh sanctions.
Trump in his second term seemingly took the edge off the containment policy with more diplomatic engagement in the first ten months. More recently, however, he has acted against Russian partners in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, and reached out to former Soviet states in the South Caucasus and Central Asia, thereby narrowing Russia’s geopolitical space. He has rebuffed Kremlin calls to restart strategic stability talks. Whether or not there is a deliberate design to his policies, they have the effect of containing Russia’s geopolitical ambitions.
The assumptions behind the containment policy are the same as the ones that guided policy during the Cold War: that in time it would lead to the mellowing of the Russian system to a point where it could be drawn into a US-designed world order. That has not yet happened, however, and it is unlikely to in the years ahead, for the simple reason that the global context has changed radically since the Cold War.
The Cold War was a global bipolar geopolitical and ideological contest, pitting the United States’ liberal democratic worldview against the Soviet Union’s Marxist-Leninist vision. In this bipolar struggle, the US model was obviously superior. For confirmation, one had to look no further than to the gaping asymmetry in wealth and fortune between Western Europe under US protection and the Eastern European states locked in the Soviet bloc. That made it possible to contain the Soviet Union.
Today’s world is not bipolar. A multipolar order is slowly taking shape. It is impossible to contain Russia when other leading powers, notably China and India, are not prepared to follow suit. Moreover, while the US model might be superior to Russia’s, there are other attractive alternatives, starting with China. Finally, Russia is not the focus of US concern. China is. The effort to isolate Russia only drives it further into China’s embrace to the detriment of US strategic interests.
The Way Ahead
In the post-Cold War era, neither integration nor containment has reliably advanced US interests in relations with Russia. Washington needs a new approach, for no matter how and when the Russia-Ukraine war ends, Russia will almost certainly remain a formidable power, thanks to its vast nuclear arsenal, rich endowment of natural resources, and central geopolitical location in the heart of the Eurasian supercontinent. It may lag behind the leading powers, including China and the United States, by a significant margin in cutting-edge technology, but its scientists have repeatedly shown an uncanny ability to develop the military applications of technological advance.
A democratic breakthrough and radical fragmentation are remote scenarios. Russia will likely remain some version of its historical self: authoritarian, expansionist, economically and technologically lagging behind the world’s leading powers, yet determined to play the role of a great power on the global stage. And it will almost certainly remain a rival of the United States, as it has been for the most part since the United States emerged as a world power at the very end of the nineteenth century. The countries will remain divided by irreconcilable worldviews and competing geopolitical interests.
In these circumstances, US Russia policy should proceed from the assumptions that the United States lacks the wherewithal to transform or decisively defeat Russia and that rivalry will be a permanent feature of relations. The task then is to manage the rivalry responsibly in ways that advance American national interests. That entails avoiding direct military confrontation, which is fraught with the risk of nuclear cataclysm; erecting guardrails on geopolitical and other forms of competition; and preserving space for cooperation on a narrow range of transnational threats, such as climate change and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. A central task will be maintaining strategic stability. The renewal of strategic arms talks, even if they do not lead to downsizing arsenals, can clarify intentions, increase transparency, and thereby reduce the risks of misunderstandings that could imperil peace. That is the essence of a policy of competitive coexistence.
A major hurdle in adopting that approach is recognizing that, contrary to prevailing opinion, Russian power is not intrinsically malign. With deft diplomacy, the United States should be able to harness Russian power to American purpose to create a stable and secure Europe, attenuate Russia’s strategic alignment with China, fashion a stable balance of power in the Middle East, and ensure an opening up of the Arctic region that advances American security and prosperity.
In the end, strategic partnership is a bridge too far for US-Russian relations. Yet the countries are not doomed to be implacable foes. If Washington can see Russia clearly, grasp the trajectory of global developments, and accept its own limitations, it can fashion a relationship that supports a global balance that favors US interests while avoiding catastrophic conflict.
Thomas Graham is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he focuses on Russian/Eurasian affairs, US-Russian relations, and European security. He was a lecturer at the MacMillan Center at Yale University, where he taught courses on US-Russian relations and Russian foreign policy, 2011-2026. He was special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia on the US National Security Council staff 2004-2007 and director for Russian Affairs on that staff 2002-2004. Earlier, he was a US diplomat who served two tours of duty in Moscow, where he worked on political affairs. He also served as a managing director at Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international business consulting firm, 2008-2019. He has a BA in Russian studies from Yale and a PhD in political science from Harvard.