The View from Moscow

By Jack Segal | July 14, 2018

The first Putin-Trump Summit on July 16, coming on the heels of a NATO Summit, has a deep historical foundation dating long before President Trump’s tenure. For Vladimir Putin, the build-up to this summit began in East Germany, where he served as a KGB operative during the collapse of the Soviet empire. On June 12, 1987, President Reagan gave his historic — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall …” — speech. By 1989, East Germans were slipping across the border into the West, demonstrators were besieging Putin’s KGB offices in Dresden, and on Nov. 9, the Wall was history. Putin would come to see the turmoil that ended Moscow’s domination of eastern and central Europe as a well-designed plot against Russia.

But by 1991, President Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin began a “bromance” that foretold great hopes for the future. The re-unification of Germany had carried a promise that Russia would be a central player in designing a new pan-European security architecture to replace NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Agreements reached by their predecessors (Bush senior and Gorbachev) seemed to say that the U.S. and Russia would move in close partnership — and without NATO expanding eastward.

But by October 1993, the mood in Moscow was already changing. The U.S. Chargé d' Affaires in Moscow, Jim Collins, warned that the Russians “expect to end up on the wrong side of a new division of Europe … if NATO expands into Central and Eastern Europe without holding the door open for Russia … ” Although Yeltsin was reassured that NATO would focus on its new “Partnership for Peace,” not new members, President Clinton announced that NATO expansion was a question of “not whether, but when.” Yeltsin felt betrayed and embarrassed, and Yeltsin’s internal support withered.

When Yeltsin handed power to Putin on Dec. 26, 1999, NATO was about to welcome into the Alliance Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Putin saw this as a bad faith move that violated promises made to Yeltsin in 18 Clinton-Yeltsin summit meetings held between 1991 and 1999.

For Putin, the presidency of George W. Bush marked a further turn back to the Cold War. After 9/11, Putin called for a global coalition against terrorism. Instead, Bush delivered his “axis of evil” speech, and the U.S. invaded Iraq without UN authorization. The next blow came quickly in Nov. 2003 when the “Rose Revolution” in former-Soviet Georgia toppled the government of Eduard Shevardnadze. Leading up to that change of government, USAID had cut funding to Shevardnadze’s government and IMF loans were suspended while US NGO’s poured money into a pro-democracy movement led by a Georgian-American, Mikhail Saakashvili. To Putin, this toppling of one of the successor regimes in the former Soviet empire was a new American provocation.

The new dividing line across Europe on Russia’s border went a big step farther when, in 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined NATO. Russia’s hard-won buffer zone — a goal dating back centuries — disappeared. Leaving no doubt about U.S. intentions, President Bush became the first president to visit Saakashvili’s Republic of Georgia in May 2005, and Bush announced that “there would be no Russian veto” over Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO. This was an easy commitment to make so long as Russia remained weak. But Putin had other ideas. In August 2008, provoked by the over-confident Georgians, Russian forces easily invaded the Georgian province of South Ossetia, where they remain today.

With the inauguration of President Obama, relations with Russia started off well enough with the “reset” of relations proposed to Medvedev (Putin was sidelined by term limits) that led to the “New START” Treaty limiting nuclear arms. Obama then shifted his attention to the Middle East and his “pivot” to Asia.

But Putin’s return to power in 2012 coincided with an oil price downturn, and Putin had to divert attention from Russia’s mounting economic problems. He began to promote Russian Orthodoxy, toughness, and nationalism, while harshly oppressing his critics. Grand gestures like hosting the Sochi Olympics were aimed at remaking Russia’s image as a nation that must be respected.

But just before and during the Olympics, demonstrators in Ukraine, encouraged by U.S. officials and USAID-funded NGO’s, demanded the ouster of the pro-Russian Prime Minister Yanukovych. Putin was outraged at US interference during his Sochi “coming-out party.” Putin felt confident that he held the advantage with half of Ukraine’s population favoring ties to Russia and 800,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border. He set the wheels in motion by instigating a separatist movement in heavily-pro-Moscow Crimea and orchestrating a “referendum” that caused Crimea to shift allegiance to Russia. Pro-Russian troops gained control of eastern Ukraine’s industrial Donbass region in bloody fighting. These two moves remain unchallenged to this day, aside from U.S. and E.U. sanctions against Russia.

Since the Ukraine crisis, Putin has pursued a strategic path to increasing Russia’s international role. He has increased his support of Syria’s Assad regime; harassed NATO operations in the Baltic Sea and Poland; and apparently attacked with a chemical weapon — in Kim Jong Un-style — a former Russian spy and his daughter in the U.K.

President Trump is in an awkward position with Putin. Putin and Trump have brushed aside allegations of collusion with Moscow as “fake news,” but making any major concessions to Putin in their first summit would raise questions about President Trump’s ability to stand up to Putin absent any concessions. Putin’s “wish list” — recognition of Crimea’s return to Russia, lifting of sanctions, rollback of NATO exercises in eastern Europe — would terrify our European allies and seem to validate Putin’s use of force.

Putin’s tenure runs to March 2024, or perhaps longer; President Trump likely sees his presidency running through January 2025 — plenty of time to break Clinton-Yeltsin’s record of 19 summits. As the North Korea Summit showed, a grand joint statement without much substance can be spun as a “success.” And in this case, both presidents want this summit to look like a success.

Jack Segal was NSC Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 1998 to 1999 and State Department Director for the Western Slavic States from 1996 to 1997. He co-chairs, with his wife, Karen Puschel, the International Affairs Forum, which is now accepting membership applications for its 25th Anniversary 2018–19 season (tciaf.com).