A LITTLE over a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt got an early glimpse into the makings of history’s greatest manmade catastrophe. In 1904, he observed that Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II

believes that the English are planning to attack him and smash his fleet, and perhaps join with France in a war to the death against him. As a matter of fact, the English harbour no such intentions, but are themselves in a condition of panic terror lest the Kaiser secretly intend to form an alliance against them with France or Russia, or both, to destroy their fleet and blot out the British empire from the map. It is as funny a case as I have ever seen of mutual distrust and fear bringing two peoples to the verge of war.

The case’s denouement proved not so funny. As Europe stumbled unawares toward disaster some ten years later, the British and Germans had attempted to assure each other that they had no aggressive intent. But because each government knew that its own intentions were defensive, it could not grasp why the other would claim to feel threatened. It regarded the other’s self-professed fears as disingenuous—indeed, as proofs of the other side’s mendacity and aggressive ambitions. Efforts to reassure and resolve only made the problem worse, compounding a number of other factors that ultimately combined to produce Europe-wide conflagration. As historian Barbara Tuchman later put it in her classic history of the descent into war, “the nations were caught in a trap … a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit.”

World War I resulted more from miscalculation and ineptitude than from design. Historians have long debated which of the combatants bore the most responsibility for the conflict, but few dispute that “each of the major powers contributed its quota of shortsightedness and irresponsibility” to the disaster. Germany feared encirclement by France, Russia and Britain, but ham-handedly threatened each in ways that encouraged them to unite in an unprecedented alliance against Berlin. That alliance, in turn, cemented Germany’s dependence on Austria-Hungary and ultimately made it a hostage to its southern neighbor’s actions. Britain believed the alliance would contain Germany’s growing military and economic might, not lock London into a set of rigid commitments that made diplomatic resolution of a localized conflict all but impossible. Austria-Hungary’s fear that nationalism could tear its empire apart from within blinded it to the dangers that a limited war in the Balkans could spin quickly into a catastrophic European conflagration. Tsar Nicholas II assumed that a limited mobilization against Austria-Hungary could deter aggression against Russia’s friend, Serbia, only to learn that his general staff’s war plans mandated a full mobilization against both Austria-Hungary and Germany. The spread of railway technology, in turn, meant that any state that did not mobilize its army quickly in response faced the near-certain prospect of a rapid military defeat. The result was a potent mix of volatile ingredients that fueled what Henry Kissinger called “a political doomsday machine,” susceptible to any number of potential triggers.

Few people in Washington today believe that our tense relations with Russia pose this type of challenge. Rather, the dominant paradigm for understanding and responding to the Russian threat is the World War II problem. American editorials and op-ed columns about Russia abound with disparaging references to Munich, where British prime minister Neville Chamberlain made his tragic bid to appease Hitler’s territorial ambitions in 1938 and achieved his ill-fated “peace in our time.” During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton explicitly warned that Moscow’s claims that it must protect Russian minorities in Ukraine echoed Nazi Germany’s arguments that it “had to protect German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia.” Similarly, Senator Lindsey Graham and many other Republicans have likened Russian president Vladimir Putin to Adolph Hitler, while newspaper columnists refer to him as “Putler.” Like Hitler, Putin is perceived as an authoritarian leader harboring deep resentments over lost territory and unfair treatment. Like Hitler, Putin is believed to regard calls for diplomatic compromise as signs of weakness that he can exploit. Like Hitler, Putin is thought to harbor expansionist designs that will be curbed only by pushing back now before he grows too bold and too strong.

For those who see the Russian threat through this prism, the chief danger is the Kremlin’s aggressive intentions, and the imperative is to deter aggression through strength. Wars often happen because those who start them think they can win. For intelligence analysts, this concern translates into a focus on studying Russian war plans and weapons systems while looking for signs of impending attack. U.S. and NATO military experts analyzing Russia’s preparations for its large Zapad (West) military exercise in 2017, for example, issued warnings that the event could be “a Russian Trojan horse” masking preparations for occupying Belarus or invading one of the Baltic states. British intelligence officials caution that Russian cyber operators have acquired the ability to shut down power plants, hijack air traffic control and even turn off air conditioning systems. U.S. Intelligence Community leaders sound alarms about Moscow’s desire to undermine Western democracies and destroy the “post-World War II international order.” Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman, sponsored by a committee that included former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, solemnly warned Americans in a viral social media video that we are at war with Russia and must fight back or suffer defeat.

For policymakers, this prism focuses on demonstrating the will to fight and the ability to triumph. Diplomacy plays a minor role in dealing with World War II-type aggression. One does not strike deals with aggressor states, one punishes and isolates them. Failure to resist Russia’s aggression in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria and the cyber sphere only invites more aggression. Strength and resolve, on the other hand, prompt the would-be aggressor to back down and look elsewhere for easier conquests. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy largely reflects this broad consensus: “Experience suggests that the willingness of rivals to abandon or forgo aggression depends on their perception of US strength and the vitality of our alliances.” To paraphrase the old Roman aphorism, if we want peace, we must show ourselves ready and willing to fight a war.

Not everyone views Russia as offensive-minded, however. A smaller and less popular school of thought sees Russia under Putin as a weak and declining power fighting a defensive battle against NATO’s eastward expansion and Washington’s efforts to transform Russia’s internal politics. “Putin has been primarily reactive,” according to New York University professor emeritus Stephen Cohen. Realist scholar John Mearsheimer puts it even more bluntly: Russia’s actions, including its annexation of Crimea and proxy war in eastern Ukraine, “have been defensive, not offensive … motivated by legitimate security concerns.” Adherents of this school are wont to quote George F. Kennan, the father of America’s Cold War containment strategy, on the likely consequences of NATO expansion some twenty years ago: “There is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.’’ Russia is not, he said, “a country dying to attack Western Europe.” Russia is not Nazi Germany, nor is Putin comparable to Hitler. For these analysts, such analogies not only produce more emotional heat than analytic light, but they also lead to policy responses that are dangerous.

Those in the “defensive Russia” school point out that when a country’s hostile actions are rooted in fear and vulnerability, the unwavering resolve and military readiness that are so vital to dealing with a Hitler-type threat can be counter-productive. Rather than averting aggression by demonstrating the will to fight back, coercive steps against a state that already sees itself as threatened can magnify perceptions of vulnerability and kick off a dangerous escalatory reaction. They point out that the United States experienced this phenomenon in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008. Convinced that Russia harbored aggressive designs on its southern neighbor, Washington policymakers accelerated U.S. military training of Georgia, openly advocated bringing Tbilisi into the NATO alliance, and issued multiple warnings to Moscow against military action, believing this firm support would deter Russian aggression. It in fact had the opposite effect. Russia grew increasingly alarmed by the prospect of Georgian membership in NATO, while Tbilisi felt emboldened by American support to launch a military operation in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, which produced an immediate and massive Russian military response that included a coordinated set of cyberattacks. The result was a readily foreseeable war that the United States failed to avert, leaving the White House with an unpalatable choice between ineffectually protesting Russia’s conquest of Georgia’s breakaway regions, or threatening nuclear war in response to Russia’s local conventional superiority.

For those who perceive Moscow to be playing defense, the preferred policy response is largely Hippocratic and diplomatic: stop doing harm by threatening the threatened state, and start talking about compromise and conflict resolution. Cohen argues against reintroducing intermediate-range missiles in Europe and selling weapons to Ukraine, for example, and calls instead for cooperating against shared threats and reaching agreement on new rules to govern the relationship. Mearsheimer proposes ending what he calls the “triple package of policies,” NATO expansion, European Union (EU) enlargement and democracy promotion. The goal for Ukraine, and presumably for other states in the “gray zone” between Russia and the NATO alliance, he avers, should be to “abandon [the] plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War.” If we want peace with Russia, they reason, we need to stress common ground and compromise, not weapons and sanctions.

Neither of these contrasting schools for explaining and dealing with Russian behaviors is entirely wrong. There is little doubt that Russia sees itself as on the defensive in the face of NATO expansion and Washington’s extensive involvement in Russia’s domestic affairs in the 1990s. Moscow harbors deep resentments, misperceptions and mistrust of American intentions, and its views of the United States have changed from partner to adversary over the course of the past twenty-five years, in part due to American actions that it perceives as threatening. At least some of the Russian behavior that appears to Americans as unprovoked aggression—such as interference in the 2016 presidential election—appears to Russians as a natural reaction to years of perceived Western meddling in Russia and its neighbors.

But Russia’s behavior is not driven solely by defensive motives. It also sees itself as rightfully a great power, albeit one that was down on its luck in the 1990s, that should play a key role in international affairs along with the United States, Europe and China, and that should dominate its neighboring states, as it believes all great powers do. It is difficult to argue that Moscow’s military involvement in South America, a region far from Russia’s borders with only the most tenuous of connections to any vital Russian interest, is motivated by anything other than a desire to show Washington that Russia is a great power capable of stirring up trouble in regions dominated by the United States. Part of the resentment of the United States that has grown within Moscow’s political class over the past two decades stems from the belief that Washington treats Russia as a subordinate and has stood in the way of its return to great power glory. Russia’s desire to dominate neighboring states has been a key factor driving their efforts to join NATO and seek American help, which in turn has fueled Moscow’s insecurities in a spiral of escalating hostility. This mix of offensive and defensive motivations is, in fact, an old theme in Russian foreign policy. Commenting on tsarist Russia’s behavior in the period leading to World War I, Henry Kissinger observed, “Partly defensive, partly offensive, Russian expansion was always ambiguous, and this ambiguity generated Western debates over Russia’s intentions that lasted through the Soviet period.”

THE FIELD of management science has a term for the kinds of conundrums that resulted in World War I: wicked problems. The term is not meant to connote the given problem’s evil nature, but rather the enormous challenges it presents. One of the hallmarks of such problems is that efforts to break them down and address their component parts incrementally are counterproductive. Addressing one aspect of the problem can make others worse and often adds new dimensions of difficulty. Multiple individual elements are connected to and interact with each other in ways that change over time. Relationships in such a system are not arithmetic, and good intentions do not necessarily bring success. Every individual action inevitably has effects on other parts of the system, some of which may be damaging. And recognizing in advance what those cascading effects will be is immensely difficult.

While our Russia challenge does not fit neatly into either the “offensive Russia” or “defensive Russia” schools of thought, the tangled set of issues crisscrossing the U.S.-Russian relationship does reflect the complexities of a classic wicked problem. Starkly differing perceptions of the other side’s intentions have garbled the signals that each believes it is sending and reinforced mistaken assumptions about how the other will react to events. Unsettled questions about Europe’s post-Cold War security architecture are fueling antagonisms. New and still poorly understood cyber technologies, coupled with the development of advanced strategic weapons delivery systems, are providing enormous advantages to the attacker over the defender, reinforcing perceptions of vulnerability while incentivizing aggression. Changes in the global geopolitical order have simultaneously threatened U.S. preeminence and provided tempting opportunities for Russia and other rival powers to advance their influence. Each side has increasingly tethered itself to unreliable proxies whose interests overlap with—but do not coincide with—those of their sponsors. And each side is struggling to cope with domestic political challenges that magnify its feelings of vulnerability and complicate its ability to formulate and implement effective foreign policies. Meanwhile, the old rules that governed the Cold War competition between Washington and Moscow have withered away, and new understandings that could contain and stabilize the renewed rivalry have not replaced them. All these factors are reinforcing each other in a vicious cycle of dynamic interactions. Moreover, the interconnection between component parts of these issues means there is a high potential that accidents and incremental actions will produce unintended knock-on effects. Just as in Sarajevo in 1914, small events can cause ripples in this complex set of problems that produce large, catastrophic outcomes.

Echoing the British and German experience in the period leading up to World War I, the United States and Russia are caught in a spiral of threat perceptions today. Russians have long been convinced that Washington is moving to encircle their country with hostile puppet regimes and overthrow their government. Americans have more recently become persuaded that the Kremlin is trying to use cyber weapons to divide our society and destroy U.S. democracy. Each regards the other’s purported fears as exaggerations at best, if not self-serving lies. U.S. accusations of Russian paranoia are nearly equaled by Russian charges of American Russophobia. Dismissals of the other side’s fears are reinforcing, not ameliorating, each side’s threat perceptions.

Cyber technology is making this problem more acute. On the one hand, its destructive potential is enormous. As the U.S. Defense Policy Board put it, “The integrated impact of a cyber attack has the potential of existential consequence. While the manifestations of a nuclear and cyber attack are very different, in the end, the existential impact to the United States is the same.” On the other hand, there is very little that cyber defense can do to thwart sophisticated attackers, who can with enough skill and determination exploit inevitable flaws in software code or other human failings to penetrate nearly any system they target. This fosters a deep sense of vulnerability on the part of defenders.

Devoting countless hours to scouring millions of lines of code to uncover malware is often a fruitless approach when dealing with skilled hackers. Even when searches come up empty, defenders cannot be certain that a cyber bomb is not lying undiscovered somewhere in their vast web of infrastructure. Nor can they be certain that what they do discover is not a false flag operation, malware planted by a third country in disguise. Even more disturbing is the fact that the intentions of cyber intruders are seldom clear even after the intrusions are detected. Intrusions meant to gather data can initially look just like those aimed at preparing for sabotage, blurring the distinction between espionage and warfare. Subversive cyber influence efforts intended to divide and conquer an adversary can in practice appear identical to those simply aimed at forcing concessions the adversary is loath to make. These vexing problems incentivize defenders to play offense: to penetrate an opponent’s networks even more deeply to learn what exactly it might be doing—and to plant cyber weapons of one’s own in an attempt to deter the adversary from any detonation.

As a result, cyber technology has created a new form of existential threat that is reminiscent of the impact of nuclear technology on the Cold War, but operates according to a different logic. Largely invisible, these weapons can quickly become ineffective if they are not implanted and updated, even if they are not detonated. Their nature encourages states to assume and plan for the worst. Unlike in the Cold War, when nuclear vulnerability produced the concept of mutually assured destruction and had a stabilizing effect, cyber technology has created a destructive feedback loop of aggression and counter-aggression in the cyber arena, where the real or imagined compromise of systems on one side prompts it to redouble efforts to compromise its rival’s systems.

This would be dangerous enough if strictly contained within the cyber sphere. But in a globalized, highly connected world—in which financial networks, commercial operations, media platforms, and nuclear command and control systems are all linked together in some way—limiting spillover from the cyber domain is inherently problematic. When cyber uncertainty magnifies fears of other states’ strategic intentions, while at the same time prompting questions about whether warning systems can detect incoming attacks and whether weapons will fire when buttons are pushed, crisis management becomes a distressing issue. Unlike in Las Vegas, what happens in the cyber world is not likely to stay in the cyber world. It will sooner or later spill into other domains, including economic and kinetic military operations.

HOW, THEN, does one deal with a nascent World War I problem? Unfortunately, there is no universal recipe for success. Like Tolstoy’s observation that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, every wicked problem exhibits its own individual qualities that require particular approaches. But there are nonetheless some important principles that can help to reduce the prospects for disaster and improve the likelihood of progress in dealing with Russia.

Broaden our focus. One common cause of failure in dealing with a wicked problem is to treat it as if it were a narrow linear problem, rooted in a single or primary cause that can be resolved through a focused and determined effort. The United States has repeatedly crashed into this shoal in its attempts to deal with Russia since the Cold War’s end. We have habitually sought to compartmentalize issues, preferring to focus on disputes that are salient to U.S. domestic politics and on selective opportunities that we hope will advance American goals. We have tended to look for primary causes of bilateral maladies, recently attributing the growing dangers in the U.S.-Russian relationship to the nature of Putinism and Russia’s endemic expansionism, believing resolute counter-pressure will quell Russian appetites for aggression. We have attempted to seek progress through incremental steps, in the hope that making headway on such issues as counter-terrorism can build momentum toward larger U.S.-Russian success.

This incremental and compartmentalized approach makes abundant sense intuitively. Why complicate things, when one can break the problem down into its component parts and focus on what is most salient or easily achievable? It is also driven by the bureaucratic silo effect, which encourages narrow specialization while discouraging cross-organizational integration. But it has not worked in practice. Despite our best efforts, the U.S.-Russian relationship has spiraled ever deeper into dysfunction and distrust from administration to administration since the end of the Cold War. As planning expert Russell Ackoff has observed about “messes,” his term for wicked problems, “if we do the usual thing and break up a mess into its component problems and then try to solve each one separately, we will not solve the mess.’’

Dwight Eisenhower often counseled that the best way to tackle a seemingly insoluble problem is to enlarge it. An enlarged, more holistic approach to dealing with our wicked Russia problem would make for a greater challenge in managing the U.S. interagency process, necessitating a larger number of players and deeper integration of regional and functional issues, but without one we are likely to continue slipping backwards as we struggle for progress. Ending the bloodshed in Ukraine will require addressing the barbed issue of Russia’s role in Europe’s security architecture. Reducing Russian cyber aggression will require agreeing on rules to govern U.S. as well as Russian involvement in the internal affairs of other states. Punishing Moscow’s transgressions must be complemented by rewards for good behavior, or we will simply reinforce perverse incentives for Russia to defy American policies, deepen security cooperation with China, and subvert NATO and the EU. None of these individual steps will be effective absent a broader détente with Russia that keeps our great power competition within manageable bounds.

Recognition that our problems with Russia are not linear has other implications, as well. It suggests that we should approach our ambitions with a good deal more humility, acknowledging the limits of our knowledge and our capabilities, while remaining alert to the risks of unintended knock-on effects from our policies. This has particular relevance to the question of promoting democratization, an issue that has plagued the U.S.-Russian relationship for nearly the entire post-Cold War period. Advancing the causes of liberty and justice in the world is an inherent part of what America is and what it represents. But how we advance these ideals matters immensely. If liberalization is not a linear process, but one shaped within the contours of a complex, interacting set of factors, most of which we do not and cannot control, then a humbler, less intrusive approach might minimize the prospects of counter-productive actions while improving our dismal results in encouraging the spread of democracy abroad.

Build shock absorbers into the system. Our interwoven and dynamic world makes shocks—surprise developments that diverge sharply and suddenly from the trends preceding them, sometimes producing disastrous outcomes, sometimes not—all but inevitable. In recent decades, these shocks have included the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Arab Spring, all discontinuous “black swan” events resulting from complex systems dynamics. The exact form and timing of these shocks are nearly impossible to predict, but their impact can be cushioned, their effects managed. If the first order of dealing with wicked problems is to avoid treating them as if they were linear problems, susceptible to piecemeal resolution, the second is to build resilience into the system, rendering shocks, when they come, less damaging than they would otherwise be.

Enhancing systemic resilience does not imply a quest for stability. Although well-intentioned, such an aim can produce postures too inflexible to withstand shocks, too unimaginative to adapt to challenges, too protective of the status quo to accommodate change. The pre-World War I system in Europe grew increasingly rigid, unable to adjust to new geopolitical challenges and shifting social forces. Europe devolved into a system of rival alliances focused on reinforcing the bonds within each camp rather than making the adjustments necessary for maintaining broader equilibrium on the continent. Diplomacy lost touch with new technologies and their implications for warfare, and proved unable to cope with the imperatives that were driven by the advent of the railroad and the advantages that would flow from preemptive attack. As a result, the system amplified rather than buffered disturbances, and became highly susceptible to shocks generated by relatively minor disputes.

Communications are a critical part of resilience in crisis situations. In the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and Soviet Union established the so-called “Hot Line” linking leaders in Washington and Moscow, because it was evident that direct and timely communications were vital to avoiding inadvertent war. A similar recognition about the need for American and Russian military commanders in Syria to avoid accidental clashes between their forces led them to establish an official deconfliction channel there in 2016. Extending this narrow channel into broader U.S.-Russian discussions of how we might handle possible security crises in Europe and beyond would be an important preparatory step toward reducing the prospects of escalation. There is much potential danger to discuss in Ukraine, North Korea, Iran and elsewhere, in our parallel efforts to battle terrorists, and in how we cope with the thorny issue of cyber operations, including false-flag attacks designed to deflect blame or even spark U.S.-Russian conflict. The time for discussing how to handle such problems is now, however, not in the suffocating heat of a crisis.

Another part of designing resilience into the system involves identifying technological “single points of failure” and building back-ups that can compensate for their damage or loss. 

America’s Global Positioning System, space-based assets, electoral systems, and public and private utilities are all examples of systems on which numerous critical military, political and commercial functions depend, but which are highly vulnerable to disruption. Too few of them have independent alternatives in place that could function in the event of an emergency. In the age of cyber vulnerability and anti-satellite weaponry, technological redundancy is a necessity, not a luxury. It both reduces our fears of single-point failures and disincentivizes the targeting of critical infrastructure by our adversaries.

Resiliency requires establishing and enforcing a set of rules that both friends and foes view as legitimate. The U.S.-Soviet relationship was most vulnerable to instability during the early Cold War period when rules to govern it had not yet been clearly established. The crises over Berlin and Cuba had their roots in Soviet probing of the limits of America’s tolerance and of its willingness to run risks. As those limits became evident, a set of formal and informal rules began to take shape that reduced the chances that Third World proxy wars and other forms of superpower competition in the 1970s and 1980s might escalate into broader conflict. Today, both the cyber world and the space domain are in an analogous state to the early Cold War period, with no consensus among the great powers on rules that might contain dangers.

But a system with rules that are too rigid can fail to adapt to change and manage shocks. The arms control regimes and “Helsinki rules” that characterized the mid- to late-Cold War world have crumbled in recent years because they failed to adjust to the stresses of emerging multipolarity, new technologies and political change. Europe’s security architecture and the governance of international financial institutions are current examples of areas in which America’s preferred norms are under challenge by Russia, China or other emerging powers. Finding a balance between too much rigidity and too little structure is critical to building international consensus around a set of rules that enhance systemic resilience in the twenty-first century.

Skeptics in both the United States and Russia scoff at the notion that rules might somehow limit the actions of either side, which they see as having little respect for rules or treaties, while harboring deadly intent toward its adversary. And it is indeed true that when states believe their vital national interests are at stake, neither treaties nor political agreements will stand in the way of actions that they regard as necessary. But history shows that even deadly enemies can reach understandings that encourage mutual restraint and reduce the likelihood of a crisis arising from misinterpretation or miscommunication. Moscow and Washington certainly viewed each other as untrustworthy adversaries during the period of détente, yet both saw their interests served by understandings that limited and contained the dangers of their rivalry. Even if rules ultimately carry little weight in a conflict, they can reduce the chances of winding up in that conflict, particularly if they are bolstered by strategies to incentivize their observance.

Exploit indirect system effects. In dealing with wicked problems, the path to success is seldom straight. Just as ill-considered actions can trigger negative feedback loops and cause a damaging cascade of unintended effects, there are other moves that can do the opposite. What can seem to be lateral or even regressive steps can counterintuitively kick off processes that help the United States to reach desirable destinations not attainable through frontal assaults or incremental moves forward. The U.S. deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe in the early 1980s was decried at the time for stoking Soviet fears of nuclear “decapitation” and heightening the dangers of war, but it helped to initiate a virtuous circle that brought Moscow to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty negotiating table and eventually led to improved U.S.-Soviet relations. Similarly, the 1975 Helsinki accords were accused of being “the biggest hoax in postwar history” that would entrench Moscow’s domination of Eastern Europe, but they unexpectedly wound up playing a large role in undermining Soviet control in the East, improving humanitarian conditions and providing a common reference for improved East-West relations.

One area where a step backward might produce forward progress lies in the goals that Washington and Moscow articulate for their bilateral relationship. To arrest the downward spiral in relations, the two sides should acknowledge candidly that they are competitors and declare that their goal is not to build a partnership but to keep their competition within safe, mutually respected bounds. Rather than focusing on what little Washington and Moscow can agree on, we should enumerate our many areas of disagreement and expose our contrasting perceptions.

Why would such a step backward help? Its biggest virtue is that it both reflects reality and resonates with the domestic politics of both countries. The United States and Russia are not partners, nor is there much remaining desire in either country to pursue this goal given their deep mutual suspicions and bitter disappointments over the past two and a half decades. Explicitly acknowledging this reality keeps expectations for progress sensibly low. It does not require quixotic efforts to change perceptions of the other side’s hostility, and it does not make progress contingent on resolving intractable problems that have torpedoed past efforts at cooperation, or on grand bargains that neither side is in a position to consider. But at the same time, it also forces the sides to reckon with the danger of inadvertent conflict, to make clear that they do not desire war, and to lay the groundwork for discussions on how to keep their competition within safe and mutually acceptable bounds.

Another opportunity lies in Central Asia. Putin’s help in establishing American military bases in Central Asia in 2001 was an important indication of his desire at the time for strategic partnership with the United States. Washington’s insistence that these allegedly “temporary” bases would remain firmly in place for an extended period, even after the initial American success in driving the Taliban from power, contributed to Putin’s growing disillusionment with that partnership. This played a small but significant role in poisoning Russian perceptions of American intentions and trustworthiness. The continuing U.S. military presence in the region has also served as a unifying factor in cooperation between Russia and China, encouraging them to subsume what might otherwise become a growing bilateral competition for influence in the region to their shared concerns about Washington’s activities. U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan might not only encourage regional players to take greater responsibility for combatting extremism and maintaining order, but also allow the forces of Russian-Chinese rivalry for Central Asian influence gradually to re-emerge. This might begin subtly to rebalance the triangular U.S.-Russia-China relationship, currently tilted heavily toward cooperation between Moscow and Beijing against the United States. It might also prompt Russia to appreciate anew the role of Washington as an off-shore balancer in Central Asia, as Moscow lacks the economic muscle to compete with Chinese dynamism in the region, and the legacy of Soviet-era ties with the Central Asian states is fading.

A third lies in Europe. As Chinese power waxes and Russian assertiveness grows, Europe must play a key role as a systemic counterweight to establish and maintain international equilibrium. It cannot play that role, however, if fissiparous forces continue to rend NATO and the EU, threatening to hasten European disintegration and trans-Atlantic decoupling. A situation in which Russia sees itself as locked out of European security decisionmaking, incentivized to exacerbate the continent’s divisions and widen its fissures, reduces the chances that a strong and healthy Europe can play that balancing role. The threat of American disengagement from Europe has a similarly damaging effect, exacerbating divisions on the continent by stoking fears in eastern European states that NATO might not be willing or able to defend them against Russian aggression, while resurrecting old fears of German hegemony.

Within what appear to be discouraging European trends, however, lies potential for gain. Whereas not long ago, both NATO and the EU thought of themselves figuratively as sharks, requiring the forward motion of expansion to sustain their functions in the absence of a unifying external threat, such expansion is no longer viewed as necessary or even desirable. The illusions that Russia can be integrated into European institutions on Western terms, or somehow transformed into a variation of Sweden, a once-formidable military power now focused on creating a great standard of living for its people, content to defer to American stewardship of a rules-based international order, have disappeared. Moreover, the appetite in the United States and other NATO members for using the alliance in expeditionary activity has long since dissipated. These changes open the door to new approaches that until recently were impractical.

A renewed NATO focus on its original purpose, collective defense, might produce several advantageous effects. It would reassure Poland, the Baltic states and other NATO members fearful of Russian aggression that the alliance is committed to their security, and in so doing, reduce intra-alliance tensions. It would also provide a secure basis for sending a nuanced message to the Russians about NATO’s intentions, underscoring resolve to defend member states and drawing a firm line against Russian involvement in internal alliance affairs, while at the same time signaling reluctance to stray beyond current NATO borders to add members or undertake out-of-area missions. The corollary to these signals would be that Europe and Russia share an interest in working to contain and manage instability in the unaligned states in-between NATO and Russia, to minimize these states’ incentives to seek an alliance that might threaten either side and to reduce the chances of being drawn inadvertently into direct conflict. Such signals would facilitate bilateral and multilateral discussions of the ground rules for interaction in these in-between states, a prerequisite for any progress in settling the volatile ongoing conflict in Ukraine and frozen conflicts in Moldova and the Caucasus.

ULTIMATELY, THE aspect of our wicked Russia problem that we are best positioned to affect is the United States itself. Ronald Reagan famously advocated dealing with adversaries from a position of strength, a position that facilitates favorable compromises when possible and victorious outcomes when not. Such strength is more than a military or economic matter; it also derives from such intangible factors as self-confidence and societal vitality.

Kennan, one of the Marshall Plan’s conceptual fathers, saw the post-World War II Soviet challenge as more psychological than military in nature, and his recommendations for dealing with it tended to be largely political and psychological. He wrote in 1947 that the best means of restoring a balance of power in Europe and Asia was “the strengthening of the forces of natural resistance within the respective countries which the communists are attacking.” This natural resistance, however, was threatened by a “profound exhaustion of physical plant and of spiritual vigor.” A long-term aid program in which the aid recipients themselves were responsible for planning and implementation would go far toward restoring self-confidence in Western Europe and Japan, bolstering their resistance to Soviet political and psychological pressure. “Remember,” he told a National War College audience, “it is not Russian military power which is threatening us, it is Russian political power.”

Americans have long benefited from the geographic protection of two large oceans, the blessings of abundant natural resources, and a set of inherited political habits and beliefs refined over centuries of British history. In many respects, we are the most secure great power the world has known. Over the course of the past two decades, however, America has transformed from a nation brimming with self-confidence, eager to lead the world and spread its values and system of governance, into a semi-Balkanized country vexed by societal divisions and political dysfunction, afraid that Russian social media trolling might destroy the foundations of American society. Soviet disinformation campaigns were a constant feature of the Cold War, but the United States typically regarded them as troublesome complications rather than as deadly threats to the nation’s survival, and for the most part, it was able to deal with them from a position of strength and self-assurance.

But America recently has become infected with an acute sense of internal vulnerability, gripped by fears that Russian propaganda might mesmerize American voters and that Russian intelligence might coopt the American presidency itself. This lack of confidence is playing an important role in distorting American perceptions of the Russian threat and increasing the dangers of escalatory spirals. Projecting America’s internal problems onto its perceptions of Russia is, in fact, a longstanding Western tendency. In his classic study of U.S. and European views of Russia over the centuries, historian Martin Malia observed that 

Russia has at different times been demonized or divinized by Western opinion less because of her real role … than because of the fears and frustrations, or the hopes and aspirations, generated within European society by its own domestic problems.

Westerners have too often, he said, “produced our images of Russia out of ourselves.” To no small degree, that is as true today as it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Addressing this growing self-doubt will be no easy matter. It will require grappling with the problems of economic inequality, political partisanship and societal fragmentation that began plaguing America long before the 2016 election. And looming in the background is a disturbing question: Can America’s deep-rooted political tradition of constrained government meet the new challenges posed by the loss of institutional authority within atomized and disaffected societies, not only in the West, but increasingly across the world?

George Beebe is Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for the National Interest, and former head of Russia analysis at the Central Intelligence Agency. This article was adapted from his book, The Russia Trap, with the permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

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