Getting Russia Right

New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

Thomas Graham on how to cope with Russia today as well as tomorrow.

Winston Churchill famously said that Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. After the end of the Cold War, many in the West thought the puzzle was solved. The Soviet Union had collapsed. Russians would embrace free markets and even liberal democracy. And President Obama could dismiss Russia as merely a “regional," not a great power. Case closed; time to pivot to Asia.

But reality has a way of complicating simplistic thinking. First, President Putin consolidated his domestic control, then allied his country with China in starting to rewrite the rules of global order, and finally invaded Ukraine last year. Now Putin is a “war criminal,” his country’s financial assets seized and exports have been banned (more in theory than in practice), and sanctions imposed on Russian officials as well as on oligarchs thought to be Putin supporters.

The Great Power has become the Great Pariah—but remains a great enigma.

Getting Russia Right is both a national security imperative and the name of a recently published book by Thomas Graham, one of America’s foremost Russian analysts. Graham has spent much of the last 40 years trying to understand Russia, not as the United States wanted it to be, but as it was and now is. His book is an important contribution to thinking about how to cope with Russia today as well as tomorrow.

What do you think? Is Russia still a Great Power?