The term “‘sphere of influence’ … entered the vocabulary of diplomacy in the early 19th century,” according to Harvard’s Graham Allison, “but the concept is as old as international relations itself.” By way of illustration, Allison invokes the image of a “shadow” cast by a state that has become predominant after “the equilibrium of forces” between it and another state has shifted greatly enough. “Traditionally,” he goes on, “great powers have demanded a degree of deference from lesser powers on their borders and in adjacent seas, and they have expected other great powers to respect that fact.” While this definition does not seem to be contested by experts, the right of countries to claim spheres of influence certainly is.

In the opening argument of the debate below, Paul Saunders, a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Center for the National Interest, takes what might be called a “realist” approach: While he does not believe that the U.S. should publicly endorse Russian or other spheres of influence, he does call on U.S. policy elites to stop denying, in America’s internal policy debates, that “Russia and other states have national interests and that, while we may not agree with how those states define their interests,” they must be included “among other considerations in formulating U.S. policy.” With America’s relative power on the global stage diminishing over the past 20 years as China and, to a lesser extent, Russia have risen, Saunders concludes that “the United States will have to work much harder to have its way [in the world] and will not be able to expend such effort everywhere. Understanding this, and undertaking the tough job of setting priorities, is the best way to maximize America’s future power.” Responding to this argument is Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who believes that the U.S. should not “accept the legitimacy” of Moscow’s efforts “to establish a sphere of influence in its neighborhood.” While acknowledging that “Russia has interests and will pursue those interests,” Pifer does not always see Moscow’s interests in the same way other analysts do; he rejects the view, for example, that Russian military intervention in Ukraine, where Pifer served as U.S. ambassador in 1998-2000, had anything to do with the prospect that NATO—which Moscow views as a hostile military bloc—would be coming closer to Russian borders. More generally, Pifer wants to see a world in which small nations have the means for self-determination without being in a great power’s shadow: “[A]ccepting Moscow’s assertion of a sphere of influence means denying that countries such as Ukraine have interests of their own or a right to determine their own domestic and foreign policy courses,” he writes, adding: “Do we really want to accept a world in which the views and desires of little or smaller countries are sacrificed to the preferences, however legitimate or illegitimate, of their larger, more powerful neighbors?” In his rebuttal, Saunders argues that his original argument rejects the idea of publicly acknowledging spheres of influence, and calls instead for "a greater effort within America’s government and from its foreign policy elites to develop effective policies toward countries in regions where rival great powers—China and Russia—have greater capabilities and/or greater resolve to advance their goals than Washington does."

As competition among great powers intensifies, so, too, could debates about spheres of influence. Some U.S. policymakers—including, most recently, John Bolton (when he was national security advisor), Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Lyndsey Graham—have implied or said outright that the United States has its own sphere of influence that should be respected. Political analyst Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute has gone as far as to argue that, in order to avoid “needless conflict,” Washington should seek “a sensible agreement” with Moscow, in which it “would be willing to respect a Russian sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe and, in exchange, “should insist that Russia respect the Monroe Doctrine,” which claims U.S. predominance in the western hemisphere. Even if that were to happen, however, Allison suggests that the past two decades’ shifts in global power have created “facts on the ground” that cannot be undone and for many “nations and individuals around the world who have found shelter under the American security umbrella … the consequences will be tragic.” The only option available to Washington, he argues, is to “focus above all on its alliances and partnerships.”

Photo by Amber_Avalona shared under a Pixabay license.

Many of President Donald Trump’s critics have accused him of diluting Russia sanctions and/or appeasing his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Others, though not necessarily Trump supporters, have argued that this view is more smoke than fire. We did some research to test the claim, taking as our touchstone a recent New York Times op-ed by the newspaper’s former executive editor Max Frankel. The full list of evidence for and against Frankel’s claim can be read here.

Few watchful observers of international affairs would deny that Russia and China have grown closer over the past 20 years—the U.S. intelligence community even highlighted the tandem as a top threat in 2019, noting that the two countries “are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s." But there is still considerable debate about the depth of this rapprochement and what exactly it will mean for the U.S. and its allies. Below, we present three facets of this discussion. In one, Harvard’s Graham Allison argues that, although China and Russia are geopolitical rivals whose long-term prospects for an alliance are “grim,” they are nonetheless entering into a “grand alignment of the aggrieved … drawing closer together to meet what each sees as the ‘American threat.’” He emphasizes the role successive U.S. administrations have played in nurturing “the formation of this grievance coalition” and warns that continued missteps by the West could turn the alignment into a dangerous “grand coalition.” Another two authors, Russia Matters founding director Simon Saradzhyan and Ali Wyne of the Atlantic Council and the RAND Corporation, focus more on the growing disparities between Russia and China, especially in terms of their economies and demographics. While these authors describe significant convergence in the two states’ national interests and detail continuously increasing military cooperation between the two countries, they also see plenty of divergence, ultimately arguing that a formal military-political alliance does not seem imminent in the absence of two specific conditions—both of them unlikely. Finally, Wheaton College professor Jeanne Wilson highlights two additional features of the relationship: the importance of respect and “status granting” and the shared political norms and values that help to shape Russia’s and China’s political identities and national interests.

An earlier version of this debate was published Dec. 20 under the headline “Debate: Russia and China—How Close Are They?” before the addition of Prof. Wilson’s contribution.

Photo by Kremlin.ru shared under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Is Vladimir Putin’s Russia rising, declining or stagnating, and compared to whom?

The answer to this question is of fundamental importance for the U.S. and the global order. Changes in Russia’s standing shape America’s and other great powers’ policies toward Russia, as well as Russia’s own policies toward other countries. Measuring the dynamics of Russia’s power in the 21st century is also of vital importance to the U.S. because Russia will continue to impact America’s national interests and the global order in profound ways in the foreseeable future for a number of reasons. The alternate positions that Russia can take on a number of issues central to U.S. national security affect the safety and security of America in substantial ways.

In May 2018 numerous respected media outlets, including CNN, the Financial Times and Reuters, reported that Russia had slashed defense spending by 20 percent between 2016 and 2017, calling the decline the first in nearly 20 years and largely blaming it on the country’s economic woes. But is this true? Defense analyst Michael Kofman shows that the claim is erroneous: In 2016 the Russian government paid down billions of rubles in accumulated defense-sector debt, thus creating the illusion of a steep drop in military spending the following year. This same miscalculation, he adds, made its way into headlines in 2017 after Russia announced its planned defense spending for the year. The group of analysts who initially drew that conclusion acknowledged the mistake and rescinded their claim, but that did not prevent it from resurfacing in 2018. As Olga Oliker of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote last year, calculating defense spending is not a straightforward enterprise and it’s useful for anyone attempting cross-country comparisons to be aware of major complicating factors.

The upcoming fifth anniversary of the deadly Boston Marathon bombing serves as a reminder that U.S.-Russian counterterrorism cooperation was not easy even when the general relationship between the two countries was better than today. While no one disputes that Russia’s Federal Security Service sent information to the FBI about one of the perpetrators, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, back in 2011, U.S. officials have complained that Russia did not provide sufficient follow-up information and Moscow has responded that it gave all it had. In the decade before the bombing, the United States had been more interested in Russian intelligence sharing on al-Qaida, while Russia wanted information on émigré or exiled Chechens whom they suspected of supporting violent separatism—a disparity that complicated counterterrorism discussions.

We at Russia Matters have long believed that some of the most crucial questions related to U.S policies toward Russia have no easy answers and deserve to be debated by knowledgeable experts. Whether the U.S. should treat Russia as a viable counterterrorism partner is one such question. The two articles below attempt to answer it.