Obama & Russia Part 1: Prelude
NATO Expansion, Missile Defense, and Post-Soviet Russia under Putin
Relations between the US and Russian Federation (RF) between 2009 and 2016 were not guided or dominated by any one episode. A lot happened between the two largest nuclear powers. But human memory is selective, meaning that out of that maelstrom of activity, a few highlights remain in the public consciousness, leaving the rest to the archivists and antiquarians.
So what is it that people tend to remember about those eight years’ worth of interactions between Obama’s government and the Russians? Well if they remember anything, it’s probably some vague notion of a “reset” with Russia. Specifics might focus on the March 2009 red button incident, where US secretary of state Hillary Clinton presented to the Russian foreign minister a red button emblazoned with the English word "reset" and what she thought was the Russian translation. The Russian word on the button actually meant "overload." And to make the embarrassment complete, the type of button presented was that commonly used as an emergency stop on Russian industrial equipment.1
The memory of that episode came to encapsulate many interpretations of the Russia Reset as something that was at best incomplete and at worst fiasco. But memory is not a record of events; it’s a narrative of empirical impressions and emotional reactions. Does this narrative of diplomatic flub auguring a foreign policy failure hold true? If so, what might have caused the reset to fall short? And how does a better understanding of that diplomatic project help us understand the current predicament with the Russia of 2022?
To find out, we’ll need some context, for current events without proper context is the realm of the propagandist, not the historian.
This first part will cover the events that preceded Obama’s tenure, focusing on the expansion of NATO, the development of US missile defense technology, and Russian foreign policy immediately after Putin became president. We will then spend the next four parts analyzing Obama’s policies and performance, covering the bilateral cooperation his administration attempted with the Russian Federation (Part 2); the weakening of that cooperation during the crisis in Syria (Part 3); the breakdown of US-RF relations during and after the Maidan Protests in Ukraine (Part 4); and end with the 2016 US presidential election (Part 5).
1.1 NATO Expansion
1.1.1 What is NATO?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) developed after World War 2 and was the culmination of two primary factors. In the UK, planners realized that their traditional guarantee of military security (the sea) was no longer the barrier it once had been, as both the adoption of long-range bombers and the possibility of atomic attack made plain. The solution to this new reality was a more secure European continent. In the US, the Truman administration grew increasingly convinced that the Soviet Union was bent on world conquest and would make use of any and all methods in order to achieve this end. Reacting to this fear, Truman enunciated his doctrine of containment – Communism must spread no further. This meant increased US intervention around the globe, including closer military cooperation with US allies in Europe, most especially Britain, France, and West Germany.2
So for various reasons, western Europeans began discussing the prospect of a new military alliance. The result, after a year of debate among the various national participants, was the Washington Treaty which created NATO in April 1949.
On 5 May 1955, in the face of US-backed rearmament of West Germany and its official incorporation into the NATO alliance (which destroyed any chance for German reunification in the near-term), the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) as a counterbalance to NATO. For the next thirty-odd years, the two sides stood ready to do battle.
1.1.2 NATO in Transition
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the USSR shifted from reform to collapse, it became increasingly clear that the European security situation was changing. Looking towards this uncertain future, different European leaders made various, sometimes contradictory public statements.
In 1989, French President Francois Mitterrand floated the idea of a new European confederation that included the USSR but excluded the US. The next year, US secretary of state James Baker, while discussing the prospect of German re-unification, assured the Soviets that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east,” and agreed with Gorbachev that NATO expansion would be “unacceptable.” That same year, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher assured the Soviets that their security concerns would be honored; in 1991, her successor went further and assured the Soviets that when it came to NATO expansion, “nothing of the sort will happen.” NATO’s secretary-general echoed these sentiments and assured the Soviets that the USSR would not be isolated from any future European community. He informed them that a majority of the NATO council was against expanding the alliance. Even after Clinton took over as US president, US officials continued to assure the Russians that they would not be excluded from the European order.3
So, what we have so far is a murky picture of European security, one that doesn’t seem to include the eastward expansion of NATO but, regardless of the details, definitely has a place for the USSR/Russia. This ambiguity bled into the private statements and reports issued by the US government at the time.
The administration of Bush Sr. did not publicly advocate the expansion of NATO. Even privately, the president advocated for the expansion of NATO only in the case of Germany. He wanted Germany reunified and NATO “expanded” to include both parts of the once-divided country. Not all in his defense team shared this caution. Indeed, secretary of defense Dick Cheney began to get bolder ideas about the future of eastern Europe. In 1990, the department of defense, under direct influence from Cheney himself, produced a report which advocated for new strategy, one aimed at marginalizing the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) vis-à-vis NATO, expanding NATO beyond its current borders, and dismembering the USSR.4
With this context in mind, did the West, as is claimed by NATO’s critics, actually promise not to expand NATO, or did the Soviets (and their Russian successors) put too much stock in these informal mollifications? It is true that no western representatives made any official, concrete, or binding resolutions regarding the future of NATO, and what they said was certainly not consistent. Importantly, western statements were interpreted by their erstwhile enemies as far less expansionist than at least some western leaders had in mind. At this early juncture, US leaders in particular did not choose to correct that misapprehension. So when official US policy did begin pushing for NATO enlargement, betrayal boiled in the minds of Russia’s leaders.
It didn’t take long for Clinton to dispel this ambiguity and set US policy squarely in the direction of NATO enlargement. He articulated this decisive shift in January 1994 via the formula of “Not whether, but when and how.” The president did not pull this policy position out of thin air. Indeed, he merely echoed the emerging consensus among liberal US policy makers in favor of an unambiguous expansion of NATO into the post-Soviet states. Anthony Lake, Clinton’s National Security Advisor (1993 to 1997) was the first active politician to come forth with a doctrinal rationalization of the NATO expansion. He based this policy on two points:
NATO expansion would enlarge the zone of “stability,” which in turn would benefit the US economically, expanding export markets and thus creating US jobs. This would also (it was assumed) improve living conditions in the post-Soviet countries and therefore fuel demands for political liberalization in other places.
Based on the assumption that liberal democracies don’t fight one another, this spread of market democracies into the Warsaw Pact nations would augment US security. This line of reasoning was a shift away from the doctrine of containment (of communism) towards the doctrine of enlargement (of liberalism personified in NATO).
Lake’s arguments were echoed and enlarged by other intellectuals and politicians:
Although expansion proponents in the post-Soviet countries remained wary of Russia (and Germany), and thus saw alliance membership as a guarantee of independence from their larger neighbors, the theme of stability remained paramount. Moreover, western planners themselves made no mention of containing Russia. Few, if any, at the time saw the new Russian Federation as a legitimate military threat. For US liberals, NATO expansion was active destiny, not reactive countermeasure.5
The first and most important test of this new vision for post-Cold War NATO came in the wake of Yugoslavia’s disintegration into internecine violence.
The breakup of Yugoslavia was a decades-long process which began during the Cold War. The death of its long-time president in 1980 prompted political reform and a council-style leadership made up of the principal members of the federation (eight in total). This new leadership faced an increasingly worse economic situation throughout the 1980s that they attempted to ameliorate with foreign loans. The end of the Cold War brought an end to both US and USSR funding, which prompted the Yugos to seek financial assistance from the IMF. This western-dominated body agreed to lend the socialist federation money, but only if it engaged in wholesale economic reform. The council, deadlocked as to how it should proceed, was further hampered by Serbian efforts to consolidate power by dominating other smaller members of the federation. This prompted the Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians to secede from the union in the early 1990s. The Serbians, who still led the rump Yugoslavia, sent troops into various regions in order to restore the political status quo.
Although violence was widespread, two areas saw the most fighting. Bosnia came first, as ethnic Serbs clashed with other groups in the area. Serbia came to the aid of their ethnic kin, intensifying the conflict. NATO planes and troops intervened in 1994 and Serbia bowed to this pressure, acquiescing to a diplomatic solution.
A few years later violence erupted in the autonomous region of Kosovo, where Serbian forces again attempted to impose their will. In 1999, NATO, pushed along by the Clinton administration, once again intervened against Serbia.
Both of these NATO interventions were draped in the language of humanitarian assistance and anti-authoritarianism. Certainly, individuals involved may have seen their actions in this light, but nations and alliances do not act out of kindness. They act out of interest and necessity. In this case, economic and political interests prompted intervention, as, to quote a former Clinton official, “Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of Kosovar Albanians…best explains NATO’s war.”6
Moreover, this was a key moment for the future of the alliance, for failure to intervene decisively in the Balkans (the first time NATO had ever used military force) would have called into question the rationale for its subsequent expansion. As secretary of state Madelaine Albright wrote:
“[If NATO failed to act decisively in Kosovo,] we would look like fools proclaiming the Alliance’s readiness for the twenty-first century when we were unable to cope with a conflict that began in the fourteenth.”7
For the Clinton administration, intervention was thus not just in their economic interest but was a political a necessity, an affirmation of NATO’s efficacy in the new world.
Sitting on the sidelines of this intervention was a crisis-ridden Russian Federation, whose leaders and elites had to endure the spectacle of foreigners meddling in the affairs of Serbia, a country Russia had long considered under its protection and influence.8
1.1.3 Enlargement
With a policy established and a rational taking form, the only thing left standing in the way of NATO expansion was the Russian army, which still had some 500,000 soldiers deployed in the eastern region of a recently united Germany. By August 1994 they had departed, knocking down the last material barrier to the expansion of the alliance.
By 1997 the US and NATO were preparing to admit new countries into its ranks. Preliminary questions concerned which nations were to be admitted in the first round of invitations and how to pacify a skeptical Russian Federation. To sooth Russian pride, Clinton invited Russian president Boris Yeltsin to join the G7. Clinton elaborated: “As we push Ol’ Boris to do the right but hard thing on NATO, I want him to feel the warm, beckoning glow of doors that are opening to other institutions where he’s welcome.”9 Some consideration was also made towards giving Russia a “place” in European security discussions. While Western leaders did not give serious consideration to the possibility of Russia itself joining NATO, they did negotiate the formation of a new forum for NATO and Russia to coordinate on security issue, creating the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council.10
Phase 1: (1999) Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary
Phase 2: (2004) Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia
Phase 3: (2008) was supposed to have included Georgia and Ukraine. Intra-NATO disagreement complicated this round of expansion. France and Germany disagreed with US proposals for NATO expansion into these two countries, unwilling to antagonize Russia. By way of compromise, NATO announced that while neither country would gain membership immediately, the alliance endorsed the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine to join. The declaration stated unequivocally: “These countries will become members of NATO.”11
1.2 Missile Defense
In addition to the expansion of NATO military ties and EU economic ties, we should also mention something specifically tied to the United States (rather than the broader “West”): missile defense installations.
In 1972 the US and USSR signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (ABM), which severely limited the implementation (and therefore development) of missile defense technologies. Advocates viewed the treaty as a way to slow the nuclear arms race by curtailing the development of anti-missile defenses that would inevitably force the other side to develop ever more powerful and inventive offensive countermeasures.
This treaty made sense at the time because the threat of ballistic missile attack came primarily from state actors like the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War renewed US concerns over nuclear proliferation, especially with regard to North Korea and Iran (and the fact that both India and Pakistan had recently acquired nuclear arms). The Clinton administration responded to this perceived threat by first raising the possibility of amending the ABM so that the US could begin developing defenses against those rogue nations, should their weapons programs ever come to fruition.
Missile defense had been a high priority of Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, and before 9/11 it took up (from the view of posterity) a surprising amount of energy. In his first tour of Europe in 2001, Bush signaled early on that he wanted to shake up the status quo and dissolve the ABM.12
In late 2002, after 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan, Bush abrogated the treaty. Let’s dwell on Bush’s speech for a moment, for the language that he chose (or that his speech writers chose) presaged the kind of language Obama would use when talking about Russia; the continuity is striking because in both cases (spoiler alert) their administrations would end with extremely high tensions with the Russian Federation. Nevertheless, each administration began with a lot of hope that things were going to go differently.
I have just concluded a meeting of my National Security Council. We reviewed what I discussed with my friend Vladimir Putin over the course of many meetings, many months, and that is the need of America to move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty…I have concluded the ABM Treaty hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorists or rogue state missile attack.
The 1972 ABM Treaty was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in a much different time, in a vastly different world. One of the signatories, the Soviet Union, no longer exists, and neither does the hostility that once led both our countries to keep thousands of nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, pointed at each other…Today, as the events of September 11 made all too clear, the greatest threats to both our countries come not from each other, or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warngin, or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction…And we must have the freedom and the flexibility to develop effective defenses against those attacks…
At the same time, the United States and Russia have developed a new, much more hopeful and constructive relationship. We are moving to replace mutually assured destruction with mutual cooperation…President Putin and I developed common ground for a new strategic relationship. Russia is in the midst of a transition to free markets and democracy. We are committed to forging strong economic ties between Russia and the United States and new bonds between Russia and our partners in NATO. NATO has made clear its desire to identify and pursue opportunities for joint action…
We’re already working closely together as the world rallies in the war against terrorism. I appreciate so much President Putin’s important advice and cooperation. President Puitin and I have also agreed that my decision to withdraw from the treaty will not in any way undermine our new relationship or Russian security. As president Putin said in Crawford: ‘We are on the path to a fundamentally different relationship.’”13
This was the 6th proposed or existing international agreement the Bush administration had rejected. That a US administration ignored or discarded international treaties was nothing new – this was a staple of US foreign policy during the Cold War and goes all the way back to the treaties between the US and various Indian nations – but the perception among many countries, even US allies, was that Bush II acted in an unusually unilateral way. The eagerness of the US to act, with or without sanction or support, soon took ominous form in the Bush Doctrine of preventative war – first in Iraq, but (the planners hoped) other countries as well.14
Removing the US from the ABM liberated US defense contractors, allowing the development of new missile defense systems. And although Russia and the United States subsequently signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in Moscow on 24 May 2002, which mandated cuts in deployed strategic nuclear warheads, stockpiles were not affected, and no enforcement mechanism was included. This allowed Putin’s Russia to begin modernizing its nuclear arsenal in the face of expected US technological advances.15
In February 2007, the United States started formal negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic concerning construction of missile shield installations in those countries for a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System. On August 14, 2008, shortly after the 2008 South Ossetia war, the United States and Poland announced a deal to implement the missile defense system on Polish territory, with a tracking system placed in the Czech Republic. An agreement was signed with Poland on August 20, 2008.
1.3 Russia Responds
Russian intellectuals have long cultivated a sense of exceptionalism. Like the Puritan notion of America as a City on a Hill, the Jeffersonian notion of the United States as an Empire of Liberty, the contemporary Evangelical idea of America as a nation with a special place in God’s plan – similar notions of grandeur resound throughout Russian culture. Of most especial consideration for our purposes are three ideas.
Russia needs to be constantly on guard against attack by foreigners (consider the precedents set by the Mongols, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler);
Moscow, as the “Third Rome,” successor to Rome (conquered by barbarians) and Constantinople (conquered by Muslims) is the defender of the true faith (Orthodox Christianity);
Russia has a long tradition, following Christ’s admonition in John 15:13, of helping its friends, its political neighbors (recall Russia’s defense of Serbia during WW1).16
In addition to these long-term antecedents are two primary facts about the politics of the Russian Federation.
Russian elites did not consider their nation a defeated power akin to Japan or Germany after WW2;
Therefore, Russian foreign policy constantly strives towards recognition as a great power, a partner in global affairs, not some second-tier, backwater regional power that can be pushed around by a superpower.
This sense of Russian Exceptionalism and the continued sense among Russia’s political class that the Russian Federation was still a geopolitical force to be reckoned with did not jive well with the 1990s, where Russia seemed to face humiliation on every front. Its economy shrank by an average of 6% from 1990-1998, made all the worse by Western-imposed economic “shock therapy” that privatized much of the Russian economy without commensurate material benefits for the majority of its citizens. The new federation suffered military defeat on its own turf during the First Chechnya War (1994-1996). It watched with growing anxiety as NATO expanded and as the EU took concrete shape.
Meanwhile, traditional signs of Soviet grandeur (veto power in the UN Security Council, nuclear parity with the United States) seemed to yield few dividends these days. NATO and the US simply bypassed the UN when they wanted to (as in Serbia, 1999 and Iraq, 2003). Russia was also given “conditions” for joining major international organizations like the WTO that Russian patriots found condescending and humiliating.17
By the turn of the millennium, optimistic Russian expectations of integration with the West were thus replaced with widespread disillusionment with Russia’s “phony partnership” with the West. What might be characterized as a “national humiliation complex” stemming from the perception that Russia was being treated as a defeated country rather than as a valuable ally, began to grip Russia’s political class. Upon ascending to the presidency, Putin’s primary foreign policy goal, therefore, was to restore Russia’s autonomy and its great power status. In the wake of the identity crisis produced by the breakup of the USSR, Putin pushed a new meta-narrative that combined tsarist and Soviet symbols (the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs became the new national symbol, the Soviet national anthem was reinstated, albeit with updated lyrics). His administration also renewed support for the Russian Orthodox Church, rekindling the idea of Russia as the defender of the True Faith.
Cognizant of his country’s continued economic weakness, Putin nevertheless looked for ways to achieve prestige and status. Putin came quickly to the aid of the US in the wake of 9/11, assuring the Bush II administration that his country (with its long history in Central Asia and decades of experience fighting Islamic terrorism) would cooperate fully in anti-terrorist measures. This initial cooperation was extensive: intelligence sharing, allowing US planes to fly over Russian airspace, acquiescing to US bases in Central Asia, participating in search and rescue missions, assisting the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Taliban.
Putin also made several early attempts to shore up relations with the United States. He pulled Russian forces from a surveillance base in Cuba and a naval installation in Vietnam; his reaction to Bush pulling out of the ABM was relatively mild considering the stakes involved; he made little ruckus when the Baltic states joined NATO in 2004; he accepted the creation of the NATO-Russia Council as a vehicle for future cooperation; and he agreed to strategic arms reduction. From Putin’s perspective, these gestures and cooperations were meant to help create a new security structure, akin to the Concert of Europe that had guided Great Power diplomacy for much of the 19th century. Before the November 2001 US-Russia summit, for instance, Putin privately compared his partnership with Bush in the anti-terrorist coalition to that between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in the anti-Nazi coalition during World War II.18
This US-Russia partnership hit its apex in 2002, after which it became increasingly clear that Bush II regarded Russia as, at best, a useful regional partner, not an international equal. In 2003, for instance, the US did not even bother to consult Russia before it invaded Iraq (a former Soviet ally). More alarmingly still, from the Russian perspective, was US support for the revolutions in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and Kyrgyzstan (2005), regime changes that were perceived by Russian elites as humiliating interferences in Russia’s sphere of influence, perhaps even a model for destabilizing Russia itself.
The Ukrainian Orange Revolution was a particular shock, as it rejected a presidential candidate that Putin had personally and publicly favored. It now seemed to Russia’s leadership that the US not only demeaned their nation’s status as a great (global) power but was interfering in their Near Abroad with increasing heedlessness.
The second half of the decade saw a resurgence of Russian independence. This was prompted by the perceived failure of their diplomatic overtures towards the West and the insults and humiliations Russia was said to have endured, but it was made possible by a change in the nation’s economic situation. Not only was the confidence of Russia’s leadership buoyed by the fact that it paid off its international debt in 2006, restoring both its sovereignty and solvency, but the price of oil increasing dramatically, from $35 per barrel in 2004 to $147 per barrel in 2008. Since energy exports made up a significant portion of government revenue and economic life, this was a trend of singular importance. Sergei Ivanov, at this time Russia’s minister of defense, summed up the mindset of Russia’s leadership in the summer of 2006: “Russia has now completely recovered the status of great power that bears global responsibility for the situation on the planet and the future of human civilization.”19
Economic confidence brought back a rejuvenated sense of national pride, stoked by Putin’s brand of Russian exceptionalism. Russians planted their flag on the Arctic seabed in early August 2007 and resumed long-range strategic bomber flights weeks later. In 2008 he renewed annual military parades through Red Square and tested new ballistic missile designs. By August 2009, two Russian nuclear attack submarines were stationed off the US coast.
Most critically, Putin took a hard line to the prospect of Georgian and Ukrainian integration into NATO. By August 2008, with NATO’s declaration ringing in his ears, Georgian President Saakashvili assumed he had a tacit guarantee of western support and thus began to resist Russian political pressure. Putin responded to this stiffened will by invading Georgia in 2008, beginning Ossetian War.
The war went badly for Georgia and ended quickly, but not before Russia had been roundly condemned for its behavior. Despite the foreign capital flight that accompanied this criticism (which caused the benchmark Russian Trading System index to lose 46 percent of its value between May and September 2008), Putin’s government did not restore the status quo ante or apologize for its actions. Rather than flinching at the economic cost, it would seem that Russia’s leadership viewed the situation as a decisive opportunity to “just say No” to western encroachment.20
Putin’s government also stiffened its response towards US missile defense policy. In 2007, when the United States announced plans to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, Russia threatened to place short-range nuclear missiles on its borders with NATO if those installations were completed. That same year, Putin mentioned that Russia was developing “strategic weapons systems of a completely different type that will fly at hypersonic speed and will be able to change trajectory both in terms of altitude and direction…"21 This should have been clear indication that, while Russia as yet could not stop the tide of what its elites saw as western expansion, it was ready and willing to engage in a renewed arms race in order to counter the new threat.
This pattern did not end when Putin temporarily stepped down from the presidency. On November 5, 2008, his successor Medvedev reiterated the official Russian position to US missile defense efforts: “…the creation of a missile defense system, the encirclement of Russia with military bases, the relentless expansion of NATO—we have gotten the clear impression that they are testing our strength."22
The combination of Russia’s perceived post-Soviet humiliations and Russia’s resurgent resistance to US/EU policies meant that US-Russia tensions at the end of W Bush’s administration were at their fraughtest in years. Like Afghanistan and the financial sector, this was a low point out of which the Obama administration would attempt to ascend.
Conclusion
In this first part, we covered the aftermath of the USSR’s collapse, specifically the expansion of NATO, the development of missile defense by the United States, and Russia’s attempts to grapple with and counteract these developments. The next installment will focus on the first term of Obama’s presidency and his administration’s attempts at renewed bilateral cooperation with the Russian Federation.
Clinton, Hillary, Hard Choices, Chap 11.
Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, pp 149-153.
Eichler, Jan. NATO’s Expansion After the Cold War: Geopolitics and Impacts for International Security, pp. 33-35. Goldgeier, Jim, “Promises Made, Promises Broken? What Yelstin was Told about NATO in 1993 and Why It Matters,” War on the Rocks, https://tinyurl.com/4duu5efz
Eichler. NATO’s Expansion, pp 35-37.
Ibid, pp. 41. Eichler here notes that all supporters “presented [NATO expansion] as a necessary step toward the creation of a reliable deterrent [my emphasis] against possible Russian aggression in Eastern and Central Europe, even if the Russian Federation was in an unprecedented decline.” Nevertheless, none of the arguments he cites mention specifically the containment of Russia. At best, it was implied in the term “stability,” and various post-Soviet countries feared not just Russia but Germany and their other neighbors as well, with whom many wars had been fought over the centuries. Thus, when politicians like Hillary Clinton argue, especially after 2014, that NATO expansion had been carried out as a bulwark specifically against Russian ambition, that’s certainly projecting backwards. “Inevitable” Russian aggression was not the primary concern at the time, especially for the US liberals who championed the policy.
Norris, John, Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo, Introduction.
Albright, Madeleine and Woodward, Bill, Madame Secretary: A Memoir, Chap 23.
Lynch, Timothy J. In the Shadow of the Cold War: American Foreign Policy from George Bush Sr. to Donald Trump, pp 85
Talbott, Strobe, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy, Chap 9.
Larson, Deborah Welch and Shevchenko, Alexei, Quest for Status: Chinese and Russian Foreign Policy, pp 199.
Mearsheimer, John J, Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin, pp 2.
Smith, Jean Edward. Bush, Chap 8.
Bush, George W. “Remarks Announcing the United States Withdrawal From the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.” The American Presidency Project. https://tinyurl.com/38cxtfx4
Smith, Bush, Chap 8.
Gates, Robert, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, pp 159.
Carleton, Gregory, Russia: The Story of War, Chap 1.
Larson and Shevchenko, Quest for Status, pp 188.
Ibid., pp 199.
Ibid., pp 202.
Ibid., pp 203-204.
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Hyper-glide delivery systems and the Implications for Strategic Stability and Arms Reduction, pp 35.
Gutterman, Steve and Isachenkov, Vladimir, “Russia to deploy missiles near Poland,” SFGate, https://tinyurl.com/55nwynad