by Jacob Bosen
For decades, the United States has actively pursued the containment and cornering of Russia with the goal of asserting its own power and influence. Instead of formulating a relationship with a major regional power, this process has brought the United States to the significant challenge of the Russian and Chinese coalition. Because of the active containment and cornering, Russia distrusts the United States and has been looking for a relationship elsewhere. While the United States offers Russia the door, China offers Russia partnership and a homogeneous viewpoint of the West. The United States had several opportunities to bring Russia into partnership – helping avoid China’s challenge to the United States as the major global power. United States foreign policy has tried to keep Russia at bay and the United States in a position of global power but has helped cement the rise of a feared, difficult to address, anti-Western coalition between Russia and China – The Grand Miscalculation.
The story of The Grand Miscalculation largely starts with declassified documents in the National Security Archive at George Washington University that show U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s “not one inch eastward” discussion about NATO with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. Former CIA Director Robert Gates stated that the Soviets were “led to believe” that NATO would not expand beyond Germany. In 2001, President Putin stated, “The simplest [solution] is to dissolve NATO…The second possible option is to include Russia in NATO. This also creates a single defense and security space.” The United States missed its opportunity. To this day, NATO has expanded all the way up to Russia’s border and is now pushing for Finland and Sweden to join. Finland and Sweden provide the United States with no strategic advantage, but a security liability. Russia has repeatedly identified NATO expansion as a direct threat to its national security for decades. Further, the United States could have avoided the current destruction of already strained relations with Russia by seriously considering Russia’s security concerns for Ukraine in early 2022. Instead, the United States labeled most of Russia’s concerns in Ukraine as “non-starters.” Earlier this year, Russia invaded Ukraine because of the hard push for Ukraine to join NATO. It is obvious why Russia does not trust the United States and is looking for a trusting partner elsewhere. This distrust has resulted into the formation of a coalition against the United States and its Western partners. The United States certainly has not benefited from its foreign policy towards Russia.
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