International security

How the next U.S. president should manage Russia

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz calls Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bully and a dictator.” Republican senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio says he’s a “gangster.” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton jokes “I don’t admire very much about Mr. Putin.” Even President Barack Obama is not immune from the name calling,describing Putin as “looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom” and taunting him by calling Russia merely a “regional power.”

There’s one problem with all these insults: Assuming he is re-elected in 2018, Putin looks likely to remain president of a resurgent Russia until at least 2024. This requires the next U.S. president to depersonalize the relationship and develop a broader policy framework for managing Russian-American relations, just as George Kennan did when he wrote his famous “Long Telegram” in 1946.

What should this broader policy framework entail today? One possibility lies with the acronym “DCC.” This stands for Define, Contain and Cooperate. Here’s what it means...