Right from the start, let’s acknowledge reality: Cutting a deal, any deal, with Vladimir Putin’s Russia right now would require some moral calisthenics. Putin’s goons are busy beating pro-democracy protesters; he’s locked up the country’s most prominent dissident, Alexei Navalny, having failed in an attempt to poison him; and his military intelligence agency has just perpetrated one of the most extensive cybersecurity breaches in U.S. government history.
Yet when it comes to nuclear arms control, using morals to avoid dialogue is pretty self-defeating. Whatever malign intent lurks in the Kremlin, it lacks entirely the pretentions to global leadership or revolution of its Soviet predecessor. It acts without shame, without the trappings of ideology, and, as recent cyberattacks indicate, still presents a thorny problem for the United States. So the last thing the world needs is a new nuclear arms race between powers that seem predestined to regard the other as “the enemy.”
