Developments involving Russia in the Middle East and Eastern Europe suggest that recent White House administrations haven’t done well in reading that country correctly.
It may be that President Barack Obama doesn’t like Russian President Vladimir V. Putin much. But, like him or not, Mr. Putin is a force to be reckoned with. His popularity ratings at home are astronomically high for a politician, even as Russia’s economy sags because of weakness in the world oil price and the risk he is taking of plunging his people into an endless Middle East war.
Is there any reason to believe that other American and Russian contemporaries — Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, or Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev — were great personal friends? Yet they were able to do some useful and necessary business together — against the Nazis, against nuclear war and for freedom in Eastern Europe.
Russia stretches across the top of the world, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, and while Americans scoffed at Alaska’s former Gov. Sarah Palin for saying she could see Russia from her state, it’s possible to do that from some points. For that reason alone, the U.S. should treat Russia more as a neighbor.
In the past few days the United States has been surprised to see the Russians launch their equivalent of cruise missiles from ships in the Caspian Sea, in the landlocked center of their country, at targets in Syria. Washington might not approve of the missiles’ use or targets, but that wasn’t the Russians’ only point. It was also to demonstrate their capability.
On a different front, at Russia’s behest, the separatists in Ukraine who were organizing elections in eastern Ukraine have now postponed them until spring, with the approval of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. This could improve prospects for a peaceful resolution in that country.
All of this is a reminder that today’s leaders in Washington must see Russia not just as a rival, but as a potential partner in resolving world problems. Mr. Putin is just as alarmed as Mr. Obama at the threat of militant Islam, which the Russians have experienced in the Caucasus. The sooner the two presidents begin to collaborate, the sooner they can make progress against common dangers.
First Published: October 9, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
