Wonk State: A policy blog exploring statistics, economics, and popular culture.

Hillary Clinton's Russia problem

8/27/2015

Summer is for baseball… and Bernie Sanders. Like baseball, Bernie Sanders relies on the sweltering malaise (baseball and Bernie are both slow news cycle summer games), lack of competition (there are no other sports—or Democratic campaigns—on TV), and an illusory yearning for an older and simpler time (America’s past-time is fading like a middle class supported by manufacturing). While Bernie Sanders will, like baseball, never compete with the true titans of the fall, as Hillary bides her time to intervene, he is opening the pathway for a qualified compromise candidate to knock her off the mantel.

Hillary Clinton has no shortage of vulnerabilities, despite having been in campaign mode for much of the past 25 years. But when it comes to her time as Secretary of State, her opponents continue to be distracted by details and not the underlying strategic failures (Benghazi and private servers are—largely irrelevant—details, Libyan intervention and the Arab Spring are—at least optically—blunders). While it is important to remember that foreign policy, at least since the Nixon Administration, has been increasingly conducted from the White House rather than the State Department, Hillary Clinton will remain accountable in the public eye for the international initiatives undertaken at President Obama's behest. Of the international conflagrations of Obama’s time in office, none should more worry Hillary than the, now infamous, “reset” with Russia.

Just press the button and everything will be back to (Soviet-era) normal!

What needed to be reset?

President Bush’s relationship with Russia—and its imperial despot, Vladimir Putin—began with great promise. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia undertook a rocky transition to democracy: gangsters fought in the streets for the remnants of denationalized industries, former satellites exploded into civil war, and the country defaulted on its debts in 1998. Following the bombing of an apartment complex in 1999 (an act that many conspiracy theorists, and scholars, believe to have been covertly orchestrated by the state), Putin acted decisively to punish the Chechen separatists assumed responsible and brought relative stability and security back to Russia.

For President Bush, there was reason to believe that Putin was a competent leader with a moral compass—sage counsel advised Putin to emphasize his Christian roots in conversations with President Bush, leading Bush to declare that:

"I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul"

However, despite the warmth of initial dialogue, the interests of the US and Russia diverged, and a spike in the price of oil (which accounts for ~52% of the Russian state’s revenues) emboldened Putin’s global ambitions.

The increase in oil prices made Russia flush with cash and confidence (source: Forbes)

In response to an increasingly assertive Russia, President Bush pressed forward with plans to build a NATO antiballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe—specifically, a radar facility in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland. While purportedly to counter Iran, and positively unable to intercept the barrage of nuclear warheads Russia could hurl at Western Europe, the NATO stations were important as the preface to extending the NATO response force to the boundaries of the alliance (rather than in Italy, Germany, and the UK where they are rather useless in propelling an initial ground attack, stationing US military personnel in the Czech Republic and Poland would raise the ante for Russia to conduct an initial incursion—the US can far more credibly commit to retaliate when its soldiers are killed).

In August of 2008, Russia invaded Georgia—although the European Union later found that it had been initially provoked by Georgia—and US-Russia relations reached their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union. The push for a missile shield seemed as prescient as ever and Republican nominee John McCain declared, "Today we are all Georgians" (below)—it seems to have rang on dead ears.

The reset

The Obama Administration, and by association Hillary Clinton, had grand ambitions for the hope and goodwill Obama inspired during the election. Whether it be removing troops from Iraq, nonproliferation, or pressuring regimes in North Korea and Iran, President Obama believed that a partner, or at least not an opponent, in Moscow would be necessary. But how could they reach an understanding?

Obama and Clinton may have believed that by making concessions to Russian President Medvedev—Putin in 2008 had acquiesced to the Russian constitution and temporarily taken over as Prime Minister--and politically empowering him, the US could detach the puppet (Medvedev) from the master (Putin). They may have also discounted the risk of future Russian aggression after say, another rise in oil prices, in the belief that political turnover could change international dynamics and kick-start cascading disarmament and cooperation.

Either way, Obama and his chief diplomat Hillary Clinton decided to “reset” relations with Russia and to open negotiations for a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) to reduce their respective nuclear arsenals. The policy shift showed signs of failure from the—pun intended—start.

The reset fails

In a hasty attempt at symbolism, Hillary Clinton delivered a red reset button to the Russian Foreign Minister. Unfortunately, and as a ringing endorsement of American language abilities, instead of writing ‘reset’ on the button they wrote ‘overcharged’—the Russian words peregruzka and perezagruka are notably similar. Overcoming the initial gaffe, Clinton set out to negotiate the START treaty and generally renew ties.

Obama and Putin's puppet-President Medvedev signing the START treaty

As the signed-START treaty was being pressed through the U.S. Senate, the Obama administration decided to scrap plans for the antiballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe in favor of a naval destroyer-based system stationed in the Mediterranean. While we may never know for certain, the optics and timing of the missile realignment make it look likely that the move was in part inspired as a quid pro quo for Russian cooperation on Iran and other international issues.

So, what has come of Russian cooperation? START passed, but while cutting the number of deployed nuclear warheads is a step in the right reduction, it does not change any strategic calculations; both Russia and the US will still have more than 3,000 deployed nuclear warheads—more than enough to destroy the planet.

The Russians cooperated in Afghanistan, permitting US supply chains to run through its airspace and sphere of influence—thus allowing Obama's troop surge and expansion of the war. This one is a real doozy: the US spent much of the 1980s financing an effort to bleed out Moscow in Afghanistan, just to turn around and pay for Moscow for the right to waste our money there. Like Iraq, Afghanistan will collapse shortly after our exit, as it has done throughout history, and revert to its natural state as a collection of warring fiefdoms. It is likely that we would have been better off without Russian cooperation on this one.

In contrast, the Russians have reasonably cooperated on Iranian nuclear sanctions. This may have been genuinely beneficial to the US, as the collective financial pressure likely pushed Iran to the negotiating table. But was it really a concession? The Russians likely calculated that reducing their trade with Iran in the short-term would be well compensated by a corresponding rise in energy prices (as Iranian oil is sanctioned from the market). More recently, they have preempted the enactment of the Iranian disarmament treaty to renew their own trade with Iran—including the sale of sophisticated air-defense missiles. This is not to mention their shared bankrolling of the Syrian regime—although given the alternative, the West may now ultimately decide against pushing Assad out the door.

Still worse, the Russian annexation of Crimea and ongoing proxy war in Eastern Ukraine have made the US commitment to Eastern Europe appear ever more hollow. Would NATO bases in Poland and the Czech Republic have altered Russian decision-making? You can never draw a straight line across history, nor will there ever be a sufficient counterfactual. However, there is without a doubt a growing consensus that a NATO military presence on Europe's Eastern periphery would be a highly valued deterrent--General Wesley Clark (a Democrat and former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe) and Radek Sikorsi (a former Polish Foreign Minister) have both called for one.

The iron curtain has been lifted for 25 years, but our troops sit a thousand miles from the window

Back to Hillary

All of the US actions I have written about, rightly or wrongly, will be easily attributable to the tenure of Hillary Clinton as chief diplomat--asked recently, she sticks by the reset policy. It is interesting that Hillary has been hawkish on Iraq (which still haunts her), Libya (which should haunt her), and Afghanistan (which will haunter her), but initially dovish with a country, Russia, long known for its taste for realpolitik. These topics will certainly be broached should Hillary make it to the general election, but will they appear in the Democratic primary?

Bernie Sanders will certainly skewer Hillary on the Iraq invasion—he voted against the war authorization as a congressman. However, it is less clear if he has any incentive to attack foreign policy decisions that are also linked closely to President Obama. Nor is it likely that the next presumptive challenger, Vice President Biden, will be able to attack these decisions due to his own association with them (Biden supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but actually had the foresight to suggest outright partition of the country rather than the bloody and prolonged partition we are getting).

Hillary’s diplomatic career may just be more writing on the wall for the same Democratic coalition that coalesced around Obama eight years ago. What should be an asset, her fluency in international relations, may be pinned up as yet another problem area where a practitioner's record is worse than a novice’s blank slate.

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