Friction with Russia is not in the US interest

U.S. relations with Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, have somehow become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. What is for the most part lacking in consideration of this question is historical perspective.

It is, for example, important to remember that as early as the mid-19th century, the question of how important a role then imperial Russia would play on the West Coast of what was to become the United States was by no means a foregone conclusion. It was more or less settled by the purchase of Alaska from a hard-up Russian czar by the administration of President Andrew Johnson for $7.2 million.

American administrations since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 have been somewhat adrift in terms of how to deal with post-Soviet Russia. On the one hand, it has been tempting to crow at America’s Cold War “victory.” At the same time, the “new” Russia has remained a force to reckon with, given its size in population and area, its oil wealth, its still-considerable military strength and thin skins on both sides.

U.S. peaceful co-existence with post-Soviet Russia is showing itself to be almost more difficult than it was with the Soviet Union.

That, of course, should not be. There are far more points of friction between the United States and Russia than there should be if both sides were being reasonable, in frequent high-level contact and acting in full cognizance of historical perspective. Issues include Ukraine, Syria and — easily the most alarming — lack of agreement and coordination on nuclear nonconflict, nonescalation and nonproliferation. Competition in the Arctic is a new area of potential discord.

Reasonable coordination shouldn’t be so difficult. Both countries have as perhaps their principal foreign policy objective not being rolled over by Islamic terrorism. There is also the fact that rivalry between the two, sometimes at intense levels, occurred between 1945 and 1990 without armed conflict. War between the United States and Russia should remain unthinkable. In that context, political campaign digs and charges are not useful, by either Democrats or Republicans.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette