Eminent U.S. observers from presidents to a powerful senator have derided Russia’s role in the global economy as second-rate, with the late John McCain calling Russia “a gas station … masquerading as a country.” Russia’s share in world economic output is indeed in the low single digits. But that macro-level view obscures the key role that Russia, and to a lesser extent Ukraine, plays in some critical sectors of the global economy—all of which have been hard hit by the ongoing war between the two neighboring countries and its fallout. Below is a snapshot explainer of the damage done so far not just to the global energy sector, but to food supplies for millions of people worldwide, high-tech goods and services, metals and aerospace/aviation.

This week, the United States’ deputy national security adviser for cyber indicated that Washington had passed Moscow intelligence about criminal hackers operating on Russian territory and was “really looking for continued, real action”—a clear euphemism for arrests or other measures to curtail such groups’ activities against U.S. victims. For the Biden administration, what happens next could serve as a litmus test of Russia’s willingness to engage in substantive cooperation on cyber crime.

In the past, analysts have linked U.S.-Russian cooperation on cybersecurity with cooperation on counterterrorism—in part, because both rely heavily on intelligence sharing. This year we have been fortunate enough to have two Russia-focused former CIA officers write about prospects for the latter, and their views diverge considerably.

Paul Kolbe of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs argues that Russia’s only genuinely significant input into U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the past 20+ years was its “political support for U.S. bases and overflight in Central Asia” after 9/11. Other than that, due to “fundamentally divergent interests and worldviews,” as well as incompatible intelligence practices, neither of the two countries “found the other’s [shared] information compelling or of truly strategic value.”

George Beebe of the Center for the National Interest, on the contrary, believes that, although combatting terrorism is unlikely to transform the troubled U.S.-Russian relationship, “Russia has demonstrated a strong ability to help the United States prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. targets.” He points out that “counterterrorism cooperation is not binary but exists in varying degrees”; successful elements of such cooperation, such as exchanging threat warnings, should continue, he writes, and roads to more sharing of “both intelligence and expertise” should not be closed off.

In December 2020, Reuters first reported that hackers suspected to be working for Russia had been monitoring emails at U.S. federal agencies. While there are still few details as to the scope, scale and impact of the hack, what is known is that multiple U.S. federal agencies and dozens of private-sector companies were compromised through malware attached to a software update received by nearly 18,000 customers of Texas-based company SolarWinds. The massive, months-long cyber operation has garnered widespread calls for retribution, with some U.S. politicians going so far as to call it an act of war. As of publication of this debate, Russia continues to deny responsibility for the breach. So how should the U.S. respond to this extensive hack? We've asked three experts to weigh in on the issue.  

In the opening entry, the Belfer Center's Paul Kolbe writes that while a natural inclination is to strike back at Russia, such responses have been tried in the past with little to show for it. A carefully calibrated shot across the bow is appropriate in response to SolarWinds, according to Kolbe, but such responses will not stop cyber espionage or assaults. Russia is but one wolf in a growing pack of cyber predators, he writes, and the U.S. is simply too fat and easy a target.

Erica D. Borghard, a senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council and a senior director on the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, argues that while Kolbe is right in saying that retaliatory measures aiming to impose costs against Russia are unlikely to shift the Russian government’s risk-benefit assessment, he’s right for the wrong reasons. The pursuit of deterrence strategies to address other types of malicious behavior in cyberspace, beyond espionage, is not a fool’s errand, Borghard writes, and deterrence is not a one-size-fits-all concept in cyberspace—or in any other domain.

Finally, Anatol Lieven, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a senior fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington D.C., writes that Kolbe and Borghard are both correct in warning of the need for distinguishing between cyber espionage and cyber sabotage or terrorism. Lieven adds, however, that to be effective in constraining behavior, limiting disputes and maintaining peace, shared international conventions are necessary. Few things have been more damaging to U.S. and European hopes of a “rules-based global order,” according to Lieven, than the perception that the U.S. both makes the rules and breaks them whenever it sees fit, including in cyberspace.

Photo by Christiaan Colen shared under a Creative Commons license. 

The following is a four-part debate between Thomas Graham, George Beebe, Steven Pifer and Michael McFaul about the future of Russia. The exchange was hosted by Pairagraph—a new platform that brings together distinguished individuals for conversations about great events and great ideas. For the exchange in its original form, click here.

Photo by Evgeny shared under a Pixabay license. 

Has the conflict in eastern Ukraine become a training hub for violent white supremacists? Researchers generally agree that, beginning in the spring of 2014, some of Ukraine’s so-called volunteer battalions served as magnets for adherents of far-right ideologies, drawing foreign fighters from all over the world to the war in Donbas. Huseyn Aliyev, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, argues, however, that when Ukraine began disbanding paramilitary groups and integrating them into official forces, taking part in the conflict became significantly more difficult for foreigners and resulted in an outflow of foreign fighters. Two other analysts, the Soufan Center’s Mollie Saltskog and Colin P. Clarke, argue that Aliyev’s depiction downplays the ways in which behavior by parties to the conflict in eastern Ukraine facilitates the rise of a serious global threat: Foreigners, they write, “are still networking, training and fighting on both sides of the conflict … cultivating skills and connections” that strengthen transnational white-supremacy extremist networks. Policymakers, they say, must work to mitigate both “the immediate dangers posed by radicals with battlefield experience and the threat that comes from Ukraine's new significance as … a hub for far-right groups to network and exchange expertise.”