Opinion | What I Wish the U.S. Had Done About Putin Years Ago – And What Biden Should Do Now

The United States, with rare exceptions, has done little about this, giving Putin the impression that he can get away with hunting down enemies inside Russia and overseas while seemingly turning a blind eye to cyberattacks conducted by Russian-based hackers. In June and again in July, President Joe Biden warned Putin of consequences for ransomware attacks emanating from Russia. “We expect him to act,” Biden told reporters. Asked directly whether Russia would face consequences, Biden answered “yes.”

It is possible the administration has retaliated covertly. But the lack of public response — which seems to encourage Putin to do nothing to stop the attacks — continues the unfortunate mistakes of the past three administrations.

Indeed, the U.S.-Russian relationship over the past 15 years is littered with examples of American failure to hold Putin accountable and impose penalties that would induce him to alter his behavior. This is in part because U.S. policymakers have consistently failed to see Putin as a true threat who will only stop when faced with serious pushback. It also reflects a desire across administrations to minimize the risk of escalation with Russia. Finally, America’s cautious posture is rooted in concern about jeopardizing prospects for cooperation in other areas, like arms control, Afghanistan, Iran and climate change.

But the reality is that we are likely to get very little cooperation from the Putin regime. Instead, “playing nice” with Putin plays right into his playbook. While Biden may seek “predictability and stability” in the U.S.-Russia relationship, Putin’s end goal is precisely to stir up as much instability as possible. He has used hybrid warfare and outright invasion to destabilize neighbors like Ukraine and Georgia to try to make them unattractive candidates for membership in NATO and/or the European Union. He does not want to see thriving democracies along Russia’s borders that could pose threatening alternatives to the authoritarian model he has constructed. Every time the West responds weakly or not at all, he pushes even further with his destabilization efforts. On Afghanistan — the Biden administration’s most urgent foreign policy crisis at the moment and an area where the U.S. might be tempted to seek Russian cooperation — Putin reportedly brushed off a request from Biden during the leaders’ June summit to allow U.S. bases in Central Asia.

Today, I’d advise Biden to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors and to instead take the tougher approach that seemed to be his instinct early in his presidency. Hoping Putin will just go away so the administration can focus on China or, worse, that he can be channeled in a more positive direction ignores the lessons of the past 15 years. This will only lead to more regrets down the road.

In the fall of 2006, I was the deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia with responsibility for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Putin was halfway through his second term. Initially, relations with the United States got off to a decent start — Putin was the first foreign leader to contact President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks — and the two men developed a rapport.

But with Russia rebounding from the chaos of the 1990s, thanks to the spike in oil prices, Putin accelerated his campaign of marginalizing or even eliminating perceived threats, such as former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, arrested in 2003.

On Oct. 7, 2006 (which happens to be Putin’s birthday), journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed corruption and wrongdoing by the Putin regime, was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building. While several men were arrested and tried for her murder, nobody has been arrested for having ordered it. Since then, more than 20 Russian journalists have been killed.

Less than a month later, Russian agents traveled to London and poisoned the tea of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who had turned against Putin. He died an excruciatingly painful death three weeks later. A British public inquiry concluded that Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun had killed Litvinenko with polonium, a dangerous and banned radioactive substance — and that Putin “probably” approved of the murder. Instead of being held accountable, Lugovoy became a member of the Russian parliament.

In neither case did the U.K., EU or United States impose any sanctions. Despite growing awareness within the Bush administration that Putin was establishing a kleptocratic authoritarian state that could pose serious challenges, we continued to try to find areas of cooperation. Entering its final two years in office, the White House hoped to keep relations with Moscow cordial and even find common ground on contentious issues. We thought we could minimize the growing differences on missile defense, NATO enlargement, recognition of Kosovo independence and human rights. But neither the State Department nor the Pentagon, which tended to be more hawkish, had a similarly hopeful perspective.

Our failure to formulate any meaningful response to the two murders (including my own failure to not speak up more forcefully) unintentionally sent a green light to Putin that he could engage in outrageous behavior without paying any price.

A few months later, the United States didn’t respond to Putin’s tirade at the Munich Security Conference, where he delivered his harshest critique to date of the United States. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was scheduled to speak the next day. The decision was made to take the high road and avoid engaging in a rhetorical tit-for-tat with Putin. After all, our hands were full already with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. “One Cold War was quite enough,” Gates said.

As I wrote years later, “Had I been consulted, I would have recommended a different approach. I believed then, and continue to believe to this day, that Putin’s Munich attack warranted a firm reply making clear that the United States would not stand for such language … Not doing so meant that Putin would test us to see what more he could get away with.”

As with the murders of Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, we shrugged off Putin’s heated rhetoric. Instead of nipping the problem in the bud — minimizing our problems with Putin early on so we could concentrate on more pressing issues later — we essentially invited him to keep making mischief.

The next test came in April 2007, when Russia launched what was at that time one of the worst cyberattacks on record against Estonia, a fellow NATO member. We did little more than help Estonia beef up its cyber defenses after the attack, in part because the alliance had not considered whether the incident warranted any response under Article 5 security guarantees. That cyberattack was a precursor of many more to come.

The attitude inside the administration was starting to shift. A month after the cyberattack, I gave a speech in my official capacity, taking Putin’s regime to task for its treatment of its people and aggressiveness toward its neighbors. Calling out Russia so publicly, even at my level, was unusual enough at the time that the speech made it onto the front page of the New York Times. It triggered mild unhappiness from the top of the National Security Council, though it had been cleared by lower levels there, but was supported within the State Department and coincided with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s own characterization of the relationship as one of “cooperation and competition, of friendship and friction.”

By this time, Putin was fully doubled down on the strategy of justifying his governance by painting the West as a threat to Russia and himself as the man to restore his country to greatness. The strategy seemed to work, even as he switched positions in 2008 in the face of term limits and became prime minister while Dmitry Medvedev kept Putin’s presidential seat warm.

With Medvedev officially president but Putin still serving as the dominant decision-maker, Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008. The West again did not impose major costs for this act of aggression. NATO did suspend cooperation in the NATO-Russian Council, while the Bush administration halted high-level contacts between U.S. and Russian officials and pulled a civilian nuclear agreement with Russia from Senate consideration (little more than a slap on the wrist, as the deal was unlikely to be ratified anyway). As recounted in Peter Baker’s Days of Fire, there was no appetite in Washington for a muscular response, with the administration in its last months, an election on the horizon and little interest among Europeans in pushing back. Plus, the Bush administration was still preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan. Putin’s increasingly serious challenges to the Western-led international order would go unchallenged.