beyondukraine.euandrussiainsearchofanewrelation

92 Beyond Ukraine. EU and Russia in Search of a New Relation
The benefits of talking with adversaries
The United States has often sought to isolate governments not
adhering to international norms. At the same time, however,
America diplomatically engaged the Soviet Union, and then
Russia, as common national interests meant talking. For example,
the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrates the benefits of
engagement and bargaining. John F. Kennedy took a tough stance
against the Soviet Union’s delivery of nuclear missiles to Cuba,
declaring that an attack from Cuba would be considered as if it
were an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States. But, he
also ruled out an invasion and negotiated a deal: the United States
would not invade Cuba, would remove its own missiles from
Turkey, and the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles from Cuba.
Subsequently, Richard M. Nixon opened the door to communist
China which changed Cold War geopolitics by dividing Moscow
and Beijing. Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union to
wind down the Cold War. Bill Clinton worked to enlarge NATO
but also to bring Russia into the European security framework,
offering Moscow concessions it never would have merited on its
own, like joining the G8. Bill Clinton remained engaged with
Boris Yeltsin even as his regime embraced a military doctrine
supporting intervention in the ‘near abroad’ to protect the rights of
some 22 million Russian minorities living outside of Russia;
leveled Chechnya; became autocratic; applied loose rhetoric about
the use of nuclear weapons; and elevated Vladimir Putin to
Russia’s leadership. George W. Bush quickly returned to normal
relations with Russia after it invaded the Republic of Georgia.
Barack Obama set out to ‘reset’ U.S.-Russian relations, which
paid dividends over sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program 1 . Despite
the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea in early 2014, the
Western allies have maintained diplomatic engagement and
calibrated political and economic responses while ruling out a
military solution. The clear objective of the U.S. and its European
1. See D. Nexon, “The ‘Failure of the Reset’: Obama’s Great Mistake, or Putin’s”,
The Washington Post, 4 March 2014.