Opinion
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE MESSENGER

Many Republicans and other “realists” in the policy and academic worlds have a Big Idea. China, they say, is and will long remain America’s main competitor; Russia is therefore a potential American ally. As a result, they say, Washington should court Russia by downplaying the Ukraine war and focusing on the real threat, China. In effect, Washington should do a “reverse Nixon.”

The Big Idea turns out to be vapid upon closer inspection.

For starters, a reverse of Richard Nixon’s China outreach rests on the assumption that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin would be willing and able to forge a détente with a country that he and his entourage demonize as imperialist neo-Nazis committed to promoting sexual deviance and undermining Mother Russia and her pristine soul. One has only to glance at Russian propaganda and the statements of key Russian policymakers to see that they have no interest in reaching out to what they dismiss as the decadent West and its satanic leader, the United States. As far as Russia’s ruling elite is concerned, a partnership with China is far more natural and far more protective of Russia’s interests than a partnership with America.

(Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)

A China partnership is especially important for Putin and his minions because it enhances their security and survivability at home. The Russian public does not hold the West in high regard and could be easily manipulated to take part in protests, were the Kremlin to turn toward America. Worse, there are elements within Russia — both on the fascist right and the communist left — that would consider a rapprochement with the West as treasonous and deserving of a violent response. Recall that Vladimir Lenin was shot for having signed the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Central Powers, in which he exchanged land for peace with German and Austrian imperialism. 

Putin is too experienced as a former KGB agent to believe that rejecting everything he has been preaching for two decades would go unpunished. Although the regime he has constructed has all the hallmarks of fascism, the days of Stalinist totalitarian controls are gone and Putin knows that he couldn’t expect his about-face to be greeted with the slavish obedience that Joseph Stalin’s 1939 Nonaggression Pact with Nazi Germany produced.

It would be equally difficult for Washington to shake Putin’s bloody hand. An accused war criminal, Putin has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Ukraine and Chechnya; he has crushed democracy in Russia; he has promoted the killing of scores of political opponents and businesspeople; and he has pursued similarly repressive policies abroad. The United States has not been averse to supporting bloody dictators in the past, but it’s one thing to cooperate with tinpot tyrants in marginal countries when the notion of universal human rights was only just taking off and an entirely different thing to support a brutal great-power genocidaire in an age that glorifies human rights and has the institutional clout to make such support profoundly embarrassing.

None of these considerations will persuade realists and Republicans who will insist that, when it comes to objective “core” interests, both Russia and America will — or at least should — overcome their distaste for each other and find common geopolitical ground. Once again, however, the Big Idea dissolves upon closer inspection.

The first big problem with a geostrategic U.S. partnership with Russia against China is, quite simply, that Russia — and especially Putin’s Russia — is a loose cannon that cannot be relied on to be a responsible and reliable partner. The geopolitically idiotic war against Ukraine is proof of that. Any sensible analyst could have told Putin that launching a full-scale attack against Ukraine would produce a military slog, result in debilitating sanctions, galvanize NATO, and isolate Russia. Most importantly, it was obvious that the Ukrainians would fight and, having no alternative, would fight to the finish against a country and leader that denied their very existence and right to exist. And yet, Putin invaded.

Also testifying to Russia’s geopolitical irresponsibility is the casualness with which some leading Russian policymakers speak of incinerating Ukraine, Europe and the United States in a nuclear war that Russia would initiate. Yes, the Russians may be bluffing. And yes, initiating a nuclear war isn’t just a matter of Putin’s pressing a button. That said, no state that talks so casually about the possible end of the world can be taken seriously as a stabilizing geopolitical force.

The second, and ultimately decisive, big problem with a U.S. partnership with Russia is that it contravenes the teaching of “neorealism’s” deservedly eminent patriarch, the University of California’s now deceased political scientist, Kenneth Waltz. In his classic “Theory of International Relations,” Waltz argued that a bipolar world order, in which two hegemonic powers face each other, is more stable and less prone to violence than a multipolar order, within which three or more powers compete for ascendance. As Waltz put it: “It is to a great extent due to its bipolar structure that the world since the war has enjoyed a stability seldom known where three or more powers have sought to cooperate with each other or have competed for existence.”

In a word, a bipolar world defined by the United States and China will be more stable than a multipolar world including Russia. It follows that an American partnership with Russia against China makes no geopolitical “realist” sense and Russia’s demotion to middle-power status would be best for the United States, best for China, best for Russia, best for Ukraine, and best for the world.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.” 

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