The Problem With Russia Is Personal, Not Structural

Kathryn Stoner, Director of the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, debates for the New York Times with Matthew Rojansky, the Director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, about the U.S. foreign policy challenges, arguing that there is no natural conflict between two powers.  "As the long history of cooperation demonstrates, there is no structural reason Russia and the U.S. cannot get along. They have and did for over 30 years. It was Putin’s offer of asylum to rogue U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, followed by his unanticipated demand that the U.S. Agency for International Development leave Russia the same year, harassment of the U.S. ambassador and other embassy officials since, and finally his seizure of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014 and support of a low boil conflict in eastern Ukraine that ended cooperation. The next U.S. president will inherit not a “Russia problem” but a Putin problem, which makes Trump’s position not only odd, but dangerous." Read more here.