International security

The Third Neighbor: Can America Live With Putin's Russia?

CHUKOTKA, A Russian region marginally larger than Texas, lies some three miles from the Alaskan coast. This startling proximity illustrates a fact of enormous significance for relations between the world’s two major nuclear powers, though one that is practically ignored by Americans from Main Street to Capitol Hill. Besides its largely peaceful borders with Canada and Mexico, the United States has a third neighbor—Russia.


The U.S.-Russian relationship has long been overshadowed by cycles of engagement and confrontation, culminating in the twentieth century with a Cold War that lasted over four decades. At the turn of the millennium, Americans no longer thought of Russia as a serious adversary. Indeed, they no longer thought of Russia much at all. In recent years, Russia has come roaring back into headlines thanks to its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and its intrusion into the 2016 U.S. presidential election.


More recently, Russia has been elevated to the status of a great-power competitor, right alongside China—which it calls a “strategic partner”—in the foreign-policy and national-security outlook now dominant in Washington. And the Russia preoccupation goes well beyond the U.S. government. No cable news debate, no investigative article, no district-level “town hall” meeting, can escape at least some mention of Russia and its role in the world, including right here at home.