America’s New Twilight Struggle With Russia

Max Bergmann, Michael Kimmage, Jeffrey Mankoff, and Maria Snegovaya

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced Washington to rethink its fundamental assumptions about Moscow. Every U.S. president from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden had sought some degree of engagement with Russia. As late as 2021, Biden expressed hope that Russia and the United States could arrive at “a stable, predictable relationship.” But Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine has radically altered that assessment. It is now clear that the two countries will remain antagonists for years to come. The Kremlin possesses immense disruptive global power and is willing to take great risks to advance its geopolitical agenda. Coping with Russia will demand a long-term strategy, one that echoes containment, which guided the United States through the Cold War, or what President John F. Kennedy called a “long, twilight struggle” against the Soviet Union.

More than 75 years have passed since the diplomat George Kennan first formulated that strategy in his famous “Long Telegram” from Moscow and then in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym “X.” In his 1947 article, Kennan described containment as a political strategy reinforced by “the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.” The goal was to avoid direct conflict with the Soviet Union while halting the spread of Soviet power.

A new containment strategy must account for the novelty of the present moment. It must lean on U.S. allies more than its twentieth-century antecedent did. And it must be sustained for the long haul—a task that will be harder without the bipartisan consensus that marked the Cold War fight against communism. The geography of containment will also differ. Kennan’s vision of containment focused primarily on Europe. Today, post-Soviet Eurasia and the rest of the world will be more central.

A clearly articulated new containment strategy would presume that Russia will continue trying to dominate Ukraine. This strategy would signal to NATO allies and to Ukraine that the United States remains steadfastly committed to European security, while reassuring U.S. officials and American citizens worried about escalation. 

Ukraine’s defense is crucial for European stability and for preventing the spread of Russian power globally. Containing Russia in Ukraine means keeping the line of contact as close to the Russian border as possible, constraining Russia’s expansionist tendencies. But containment will remain necessary irrespective of how the war in Ukraine ends. As in Kennan’s day, a containment strategy enables Washington to check Moscow’s aggression without risking a direct conflict between two nuclear powers. But it is not enough to simply dust off Kennan’s prescriptions. New times call for new thinking.

CONTAINMENT’S NEW MAP

Cold War containment was never a single policy. Kennan emphasized political tools and the limited application of “counterforce.” Other Cold War strategists promoted a more militarized version. Paul Nitze, Kennan’s successor as director of the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning, called for “the rapid building up of the political, economic, and military strength of the free world.” Nitze favored military intervention against Soviet-backed insurgencies in what was then called the Third World.

Old debates about containment still apply. Although the United States has marshaled military aid to Ukraine, checking Russian influence in Central Asia and Africa will require different tools, such as support for governance reform and trade. Containment will not look exactly as it did in the twentieth century. Geography marks the most important difference. Whereas the fault lines of the Cold War were in Germany, the flash points of today’s conflict with Russia are in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states on Russia’s western periphery. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine are all likely to achieve varying levels of integration into Western institutions but will remain places of contestation. Some countries may hedge, working with both the United States and Russia.

Without the stark ideological divides of the Cold War, countries in other regions will remain on the sidelines. Important regional powers such as India and South Africa have bad memories of Western colonialism and see the West’s invocation of a moral struggle as self-serving and hypocritical. A still larger number do not want to imperil their own economies by imposing sanctions or otherwise partaking in a conflict they do not see as theirs. For this reason, the United States should contest Russian influence outside Europe primarily through development assistance, trade, and investment rather than through military intervention. In the Sahel, for instance, the United States can counter the brutality and corruption of Russian-backed juntas by supporting locally led initiatives to bolster civil society.

A BALANCE OF THREATS

In the twenty-first century, the United States will not be able to orient its foreign and security policy solely around the struggle with Moscow. Any strategy for containing Russia must account for resource commitments to the Indo-Pacific and for the impact of U.S. policy on the Chinese-Russian relationship. That complicated reality requires U.S. allies, especially in Europe, to take on a larger share of directing the containment of Russia.

Europe has shown its political and economic resilience in the face of Russian aggression. Yet militarily, the continent remains dependent on the United States. This dynamic must change, in part because the United States must commit more of its resources to Asia. The growth of European defense spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is an encouraging step. In 2023, 11 NATO members hit their spending target, allocating at least two percent of GDP to national defense, up from just seven members in 2022. The rest need to follow suit.

Europe must also resolve the problem of coordination. Right now, the United States coordinates more than 25 militaries in Europe. While it must continue to do this in the short term, it must push individual European countries and the European Union to take over this role and to create a stronger European pillar in NATO. The goal should be for European states to provide at least 50 percent of funding, troops, and materiel for responding to a contingency under NATO’s Article 5.

Facing threats from revisionist neighbors, Japan and South Korea see the sovereignty of Ukraine as a matter of their national interest.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also connected Washington’s challenges in Asian and European theaters. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have all made important contributions to Ukraine’s struggle. China, by contrast, remains one of the most important diplomatic backers of Russia’s war. Beijing echoes Moscow’s talking points about NATO expansion as the main driver of the conflict. It has also provided navigation equipment, fighter jet parts, and drones, even as it tries to present itself as a potential broker and has held back from providing substantial lethal military assistance.

Facing threats from revisionist neighbors, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian powers see the sovereignty of Ukraine as a matter of their national interest. Tokyo and Seoul have supplied humanitarian assistance and nonlethal military aid, such as helmets and bulletproof vests, and South Korea is emerging as a major arms supplier for European militaries.

The tradeoffs inherent in confronting both China and Russia will be acute. Even if Russia remains the principal threat to the international order, the United States will have to increase its focus on China in the coming decades. A strategy of containment can enable the United States to deter Russia in Europe while still dedicating more resources to deterring China in Asia.

A U.S. containment strategy toward Russia would pay additional dividends in Asia. Russia’s unprovoked war has been a quagmire. Washington’s continued support of Ukraine impedes Russia’s military ambitions and dilutes its potential to support Chinese aggression in the future. The war in Ukraine has made Moscow and Beijing more united than at any time since the days of Stalin and Mao. Biden and his immediate successors will not be able to peel Beijing away from Moscow the way that U.S. President Richard Nixon did following his 1972 visit to China; China and Russia are too tightly bound, and both see U.S. global leadership as a threat. The war has also deepened the relationship between Russia and North Korea, which has supplied Russian forces with weaponry and, with Moscow’s backing, may now feel emboldened to act on the Korean Peninsula with impunity.

Still, the United States and its allies have leverage with China. Whereas Chinese-Russian trade stood at $240 billion in 2023, China’s trade with the EU amounted to about $800 billion, and China’s trade with the United States was more than $660 billion. China has more at stake in its economic relationships with the United States and the EU than it does with Russia. The EU has leveraged its economic relationship, blacklisting Chinese firms suspected of providing materiel to Russia. Maintaining this leverage is one reason the United States and the EU should be wary of economic decoupling from China.

The war in Ukraine has made Moscow and Beijing more united than at any time since the days of Stalin and Mao.

For much of the Cold War, a hypermilitarized version of containment backfired in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The United States intervened militarily in civil wars and tolerated or abetted abuses by anticommunist partners such as the shah of Iran and President Suharto of Indonesia, which created long-standing resentments in these countries and elsewhere. Today’s Russia exploits those resentments to stoke anti-Americanism and obscure its own past as an imperial power.

A new containment strategy toward Russia must not repeat these mistakes. Many countries in the developing world will seek to hedge, by establishing productive relations with both Russia and the United States. Instead of pushing countries to take sides, Washington will have to avoid the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mentality that often colored Cold War strategy. To successfully counter the anti-American narratives that animate Russian diplomacy and disinformation, the United States must make support for democratic governance and civil society a centerpiece of its foreign policy.

Special care should be taken with respect to the Middle East, which is home to major energy resources and trade corridors vital to U.S. national interests. U.S. policymakers must not underestimate the lengths Moscow is prepared to go to secure its influence in the region: its brutal military intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the Syrian civil war is a case in point. As Washington has pulled back from two decades of military intervention in the region, Russia stands to benefit from doubts about the durability of U.S. commitments to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and from anger about U.S. support for Israel. Containing Russia in the Middle East will require the United States to reinforce its commitments to its regional partners through expanded defense and security cooperation. Washington should also work with these states to push for a negotiated peace in Gaza. This is a feat that Russia, although it styles itself a regional mediator, cannot accomplish.

CONTAINMENT AND THE FATE OF UKRAINE

Europe’s security hinges on the fate of Ukraine. If Moscow realizes that its war is a dead end, it could be compelled to admit failure. But even if Ukraine does not achieve total victory on the battlefield, it could nevertheless be integrated militarily and politically with the West. In the worst-case scenario, a large-scale forward movement of Russian forces in Ukraine would bring the Russian threat to NATO’s door, making containment more urgent but also more difficult.

A new containment strategy does not depend on Ukrainian victory. Still, that strategy should retain Ukrainian victory as a long-term goal. Forcing Russia to abandon all or most of the territory it has occupied there will push the Russian threat farther from Europe’s borders, leaving the Kremlin to grapple with the consequences of a failed war of aggression—much as the Soviet Union did in the 1980s after its Afghanistan debacle. Ukrainian victory would embolden other countries to push back against Russian malign influence.

A Ukrainian military victory will require larger and more sustained Western military assistance, including weapons with long-range strike capabilities. The EU recently stepped up with a $50 billion military assistance package. The United States needs to follow suit and pass the $60 billion in supplemental funding stalled in Congress.

Two decades of war in the Middle East combined with domestic travails have sapped American public support for foreign engagements. Questions about U.S. staying power only embolden Russia (and other expansionist powers). It believes it can wait out the West in Ukraine, winning a victory that will mark the end of an era of U.S. preeminence.

This situation is like the one the United States faced in the aftermath of World War II, when Soviet power was on the march in Europe. Just as during the Cold War, the United States can neither risk a direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Kremlin nor simply allow its aggression to go unchecked. Between these extremes, containment offers a middle path.

Russia has transitioned to a war economy sustained by vast energy resources, particularly oil.

A strategy of containment should prioritize defending Russia’s threatened neighbors, especially those that do not have a clear and immediate path to NATO membership. Apart from Ukraine, Russia’s most vulnerable neighbors include Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova—all of which remain outside the alliance. The United States should offer these countries training and weapons. It should also bolster these states’ resilience against Russian gray-zone threats, ranging from cyberattacks to election meddling. It should share intelligence with them and invest in critical infrastructure, such as power grids and data storage.

The war in Ukraine has severed Russia from the West to a significant degree, but there remain critical linkages that serve the Kremlin’s aims. Although sanctions have imposed real costs on the Russian economy, Moscow has adapted, transitioning to a war economy sustained by vast energy resources, particularly oil. The United States has been reluctant to impose sanctions on Russia’s oil sector for fear of exacerbating inflation at home. But Russia’s dependence on oil is a vulnerability on which the United States should capitalize. Western policymakers should take more proactive measures to push down the price of Russian oil, following in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan’s early 1980s policy, which contributed to the economic crises the Soviet Union experienced in the 1980s.

Any U.S. strategy toward Russia must recognize the peril of direct military confrontation. Washington must remain open to negotiating with Russia on arms control, cyberwarfare, and regional conflicts between each side’s allies. Without predicating these talks on large-scale political change in Russia, Washington must plainly demonstrate that the United States does not seek war with Russia and must even cooperate with Moscow on issues such as climate change and space exploration. Implementing a modern containment strategy will require bipartisan buy-in and a commitment to maintaining sufficient defense spending. In today’s polarized political and media environment, securing the kind of bipartisan consensus that sustained containment for much of the Cold War will demand political effort and creativity.

Kennan acknowledged that Washington had to commit to containment for as long as necessary—until Soviet power had “mellowed” and no longer threatened global stability. Containing Russia today will require a similar commitment of time and resources. It will be another twilight struggle, although it will unfold in a world vastly different from that of the late 1940s.