The United States and Russia seem so bitterly divided by their conflicting visions of world order, geopolitical interests, and values that many say there can be no question of a new partnership or reset. The best all sides can hope for, in that case, is unrelenting enmity with efforts to avoid a civilization-ending nuclear war or inadvertent escalation to military conflict.
That seems to be the kind of cooperation U.S. President Joe Biden was going for in his first call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, which focused on extending the New START treaty before moving on to the list of Russia’s malign actions—the detention (now imprisonment) of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the mass arrest of protesters, cyberbreaches, election meddling, and so on.But U.S.-Russian relations are worthy of another attempt at a deeper relationship—one that breaks the cycle of offense and revenge that has characterized U.S.-Russian relations over the past three decades since the exhilarating days when the Berlin Wall came down and the old Cold War ended. To do that, there are some clear policy steps that both sides might take to realize their shared interests.
